SQM How to - Design - Review and publish

SQM How to - Design - Review and publish

Design - Review and publish

The following describes the functionality and features included in SQM.

Objective

The objective of this page in SQM is to review and approve the firm’s draft system of quality management, afterwards the system will be published for all users to implement.

Page position

Review and publish can be found in the design module.

Page content

1. Review the draft SoQM
The firm reviews the draft system of quality management to ensure that all
• Objectives are identified and recorded;
• Risks are identified and appropriately assessed;
• Responses, as designed, are sufficient to reduce the impact of quality risks; and
• Links between the objectives, risks, policy and procedure responses, tasks and monitoring activities are appropriate.
Note that only signed off items are reflected in the draft system of quality management and only these signed off items will be published to the firm’s system of quality management.
The system will reflect each signed off objective, risk, policy and procedure response and task with their linked items   .


Errors
Errors are those items where:  
• Objectives do not have risks linked to them (or the linked risks are not signed off as ‘prepared’);
• Risks do not have objectives linked to them (or the objectives are not signed off as ‘prepared’);
• Risks do not at least have either a policy or a procedure response linked to them (or the linked policy or procedure response is not signed off as ‘prepared’);
• Policy responses do not have risks linked to them (or the linked risks are not signed off as ‘prepared’);
• Procedure responses do not have policy responses linked to them (or the linked policy responses are not signed off as ‘prepared’); or
• Tasks do not have procedure responses linked to them (or the linked procedure responses are not signed off as ‘prepared’).
The firm cannot proceed to approve the draft system of quality management (draft SoQM) until all errors have been resolved and there are no error messages in the draft SoQM.
Errors are resolved in the individual pages, for example, in the case of an objective that does not have a risk linked to it, by either:
• navigating to ‘objectives’ and linking a risk to the objective; or 
• navigating to ‘risks’ and linking the relevant risk to that objective
Warnings 
Note that warnings indicate potentially incomplete data and do not necessarily   indicate errors in the draft SoQM.
Warnings are those items where:
• Policy responses do not have procedure responses linked to them (or the linked procedure responses are not signed off as ‘prepared’); or
• Procedure responses do not have tasks linked to them (or the linked tasks are not signed off as ‘prepared’).
The firm must consider each warning and, if necessary, resolve the warning by either adding additional content or linking the relevant items.
No action is required if the firm has intentionally not linked the items highlighted in the warnings, for example:
• Where a firm has designed a policy response, but there is no procedure response to action that policy response, then the warning for that policy response will remain in the draft SoQM.
• Where the firm has designed a procedure response, but the action will be taken outside of SQM there won’t be a task linked to the procedure response and the warning will remain in the draft SoQM.
2. Approve the SoQM 
The draft SoQM is approved by clicking on Approve in the Review and Publish page.

When the draft SoQM is approved, the status reflects the approval by indicating:
• the date of approval and 
• the name of the person that approved the system.
A notification is also reflected at the bottom right corner.

The draft SoQM cannot be approved while there are unresolved errors.

3. Publish the SoQM
The firm’s system of quality management can be published once the draft SoQM has been approved.
To publish, click publish.

A dialog will confirm that the firm’s system of quality management, as approved, may be published to all users. Select yes.

When the firm’s system of quality management is published, the status page reflects the
• the date of the most recent published system of quality management and
• the name of the person that published the system.
A notification is also reflected at the bottom right corner.

4. Export the draft SoQM
A network firm may want to export the network-required objectives, risks, policy responses, procedure responses and tasks   to be distributed to network member firms.
This function can be performed in Design – Review and Publish.
To export, click Export

A dialog will confirm that the user wants to export the firm’s system of quality management.
Set a name for the exported file.
Select Save.

The exported data will be saved in the ‘Downloads’ folder of the user from where it can be distributed to network member firms.

Network member firms will import this file as network mandatory items. 
Network imports are done in Settings.

Page outcomes

Before continuing to operate the firm’s system of quality management, the firm should have:
• Reviewed and approved the draft system of quality management.
• Published the system of quality management for all users to implement.

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