As a Charity, you may have casework - maybe for tracking instances of individual support, or working with beneficiaries. Tracking this work using Cases in Beacon allows you to track the Case Management process from the point of identifying a support need, through to service delivery.

The Case record is made up of a number of different core fields that we feel apply to most Casework scenarios:

Case Number

This is an autonumber field, so as you add Cases, Beacon will automatically set them a case number

Owner

This is the member of your team who is responsible for the Case. They'll need to have a Beacon account in order for the case to be assigned to them.

Type

This dropdown allows you to set the 'Type' of Case this is. We've put a few in this list for you to choose from, but you'll likely want to add some more so! To do so, click on this dropdown whilst in 'Customisation Mode', and you'll be able to add more options.

Status

As above, this is a dropdown which we've added a few options to choose from, but you may want to add more in order to match the language your organisation uses

Priority

Another dropdown! Here you can set the priority of the case and, as above, you can edit the options in here if needed.

Notes

Fairly self explanatory - you can add notes in here as required

Attachments

Documents relating to this case can be uploaded here

Referred By

Allows you to choose the Person who referred this case to you. Start typing their name in the Box - if they're already in Beacon, their name will come up, and if not, you'll be prompted to add them.

Reason and Channel

Drop-down fields that you can utilise if required - as before, feel free to add your own options in here!

Use these to track the reason that a person is seeking support or advice, as well as where they were referred to you from.

Date Opened and Date Closed

Allow you to set the specific timeline of the case

Time to Close (Days)

This is a smart field that will determine how long a case was open, using the dates you've entered above.

Every charity defines "casework" differently because every service is unique. While a dog rehoming application and a counselling intake form may seem worlds apart, they both follow the same essential journey: assessing a need, taking action, and tracking progress.

Our core fields are designed to give you a strong head start, but they are just the foundation. To truly capture the heart of your work and the specific stories of those you help, you’ll likely want to customise and build upon these records to ensure they fit your specific operational needs.

By their very nature, the statuses of your cases are likely to change over time. Now, you could obviously go into each case and update the status from the dropdown menu, but this is going to be time consuming if you've got a number of statuses that you need to change at any one time.

This is where Pipeline views can come in handy.

The Pipeline View will help you manage your cases in a wonderfully efficient fashion - it enables you to drag the cases from one status to another, and gives you a clear view of the positions that all of your cases are in.

We go into more detail on how to create the Pipeline View here

You'll likely want to set the Dropdown field that the Pipeline View is based on, to Status and you can then move the cases between status as required.

So - that's the basics on Cases covered - you'll likely want to customise them to suit your specific needs, but hopefully this article has helped you to see how to do that.

Pipeline views only work with single select drop-down fields. If you can't choose your desired dropdown as a pipeline field, edit the dropdown and ensure the Allow multiple drop-down values to be selected? toggled is switched off.

Multi-select drop-downs are not permitted as a pipeline field as it would mean records appear in two pipeline columns at once!