Getting started

Everything you need to go from no account to a filed, compliant record of your first client meeting. Which route you take depends on whether you are setting your firm up on TakeNote or joining a firm that is already using it.

Create your account

Open Create your account and complete the form. TakeNote asks for your full name, work email, company name, and your role, alongside a password you enter twice.

Use your work email rather than a personal address. It becomes the identity your firm's administrators invite, the address confirmation and reminder emails are sent to, and the account name recorded against everything you do in the audit trail.

Your password must contain:

• Between 8 and 64 characters
• One uppercase letter (A–Z)
• One number (0–9)
• One special character, such as ! @ #

A strength meter below the field ticks off each requirement as you type, so you can see what is still outstanding before you submit. The special character is the one most people miss.

TakeNote then sends a confirmation email and shows a Check your inbox screen. Your account is not active until you select the link in that email, so complete this step before trying to sign in.

Join an existing company

If your firm already uses TakeNote, an administrator invites you rather than you signing up independently. You receive a link that opens an invitation page naming the company, the role you have been invited as, and the email address the invitation was issued to.

Invitations are tied to that exact email address. If you already have an account, select Sign in to accept and sign in with the invited address. If you do not, select Create an account — the email field is pre-filled and locked to the invited address so the two cannot drift apart. Once signed in as the right person, select Accept invitation.

If you are signed in as somebody else, TakeNote says so rather than letting you accept on the wrong account. Sign out, sign back in with the invited address, and open the link again.

If you signed up on your own before being invited, accepting the invitation moves the work you have already done into the company workspace: your clients, meetings, transcripts, documents, forms, tasks, and signature requests all move across, and your own separate workspace is closed. Nothing is left behind and nothing needs re-entering.

You can belong to one company at a time. If your account is already a member of another shared company, TakeNote refuses the invitation rather than moving you silently — an administrator at your current company has to remove you first. Managing members from the other side is covered in Managing your company.

Signing in

Sign in at Sign in with your work email and password. If your firm uses Microsoft 365, you can select Sign in with Microsoft instead and authenticate with your existing work account, with no separate TakeNote password to keep.

Forgot password? emails you a reset link. The password rules above apply again when you set the new one.

Finding your way around

Signing in lands you on the dashboard. The sidebar on the left is grouped into three sections, which is the quickest way to build a mental model of the product.

• Workspace — Dashboard, Meetings, Clients, Documents, and Tasks. Everything tied to a client and what came out of talking to them.
• Workflow — Complete a Form, Form Library, and Signatures. Filling provider paperwork from client data and getting it signed.
• Practice — Audit Export, Company, and Settings. Firm-level administration; Company is visible to administrators only.

The dashboard itself summarises the month — meetings recorded, recording time, and clients covered — and flags Documents requiring attention, meaning transcribed meetings that have no documents generated from them yet. On a new account these are all empty, and they fill in as you record.

Capture your first meeting

The fastest way to understand TakeNote is to put one real meeting through it end to end. In order:

• Record a Teams meeting — or upload a recording you already have, if your next client meeting is not imminent.
• Read the transcript, name the speakers, and correct anything the transcription got wrong.
• File it against a client record so the meeting sits on that client's timeline rather than loose in your meeting list.
• Generate the suitability report and review it against what was actually discussed.

Use the navigation on the left to browse by area, or press Cmd/Ctrl+K to search every page and heading in these docs.