Punchcard product updates

Features

• Higher-capability AI at Max reasoning. For eligible users, selecting the Max effort level in the CoAudit AI model picker now runs on a more powerful model — no extra menu entries or separate option to find. The picker looks the same; the Max rung silently upgrades the engine for those with access.

• Write approval dock in web chat. When the AI pauses to ask for your approval before writing to a workpaper cell, the confirmation now appears as a full-width dock anchored to the message composer in the CoAudit web interface — the same consolidated experience previously available only in the Excel add-in.

Bug Fixes

• Saved model preference holds while the picker loads. A chat conversation saved with a specific AI model no longer briefly switches to a different model (or another chat's preference) while the available options are loading on re-open — it waits for the correct model to resolve and then restores your saved choice.

• Multiple Excel workbooks no longer interfere with each other's sign-in. Opening Punchcard in more than one workbook simultaneously no longer causes the workbooks to share or overwrite each other's sign-in state; each pane signs in and operates independently.

• Save As in Excel preserves add-in context. Saving your workbook under a new filename no longer causes the add-in to lose track of which workbook it is attached to — the connection carries over correctly after the rename.

Bug Fixes

• Command picker displays in the right place in the Excel and Word Add-ins — the slash command menu was appearing at an incorrect position when used inside the add-in panel. It now anchors reliably to the correct spot on screen regardless of the surrounding layout.
• Clearer dismiss behavior for the command picker — pressing Escape now permanently closes the picker until you type / again. Clicking outside or switching focus temporarily hides it; your next keystroke in the same search brings it back automatically, matching how it works on the main web app.
• Slash command suggestion menus close cleanly — menus that appeared after typing / now dismiss properly when no longer needed, and outdated suggestions no longer linger in the composer footer.

What's new

Skill library now available in the Excel add-in

Firm-saved and personal saved prompts are now accessible directly from the CoAudit pane in Excel. Browse your firm's authoring conventions, invoke prompts with @-mentions, or save new ones — without switching to the web app.

Approval controls redesigned for clarity and speed

Several improvements to how CoAudit presents pending actions for your review:

• "Approve all" now settles every pending action in one click. Previously, certain actions (file deletions, moves, patches that merge cells or clear evidence) were excluded and required one-by-one handling. They're now included. What each action will do — "merges cells," "clears evidence," "clears reasoning" — is stated in plain text on each row and in the strip summary so you know exactly what you're authorizing before clicking. All confirm buttons are consistently blue; the nature of the action is communicated in words, not button color.

• Each pending action has its own quick Approve button. Alongside the existing Skip button on each collapsed row, a matching Approve button lets you settle individual actions without expanding the card.

• Clickable cell-reference badges show where CoAudit will write. Each pending write displays cell-reference pills (e.g., "B5:D12 · 18 cells"). Clicking one selects that range in your workbook so you can inspect the target area before approving — nothing changes until you confirm. When any pending write lacks a sheet qualifier, all badges become plain text so a navigation click can't accidentally retarget a waiting write to the wrong sheet.

• Applied-writes summary after each AI turn. Once CoAudit finishes writing, an "Applied N cells in M writes" line appears with clickable badges for each range — a quick way to see and navigate to everything that just landed.

• Approval cards no longer get permanently stuck. On some machines, reading the workbook before showing the Approve/Decline buttons could stall indefinitely, leaving the card unresponsive with no way out. After a short wait, decision buttons now become available regardless, with a clear note describing what approving will do.

Performance

• Citations highlight faster after CoAudit writes. When CoAudit fills in multiple cited cells at once, all citation highlights now resolve together in a single request rather than sequentially. On a heavily cited grid this is the difference between highlights appearing in seconds versus a minute or more.

• Workbook writes complete faster for large batches. CoAudit now groups multiple cell writes, format loads, and container saves into fewer Excel round-trips. Larger workpaper fills — especially those spanning many rows or columns — complete noticeably faster.

Bug fixes

• Numbers now land as numbers. When CoAudit writes a value like "5000," it now correctly becomes a number in Excel — picked up by SUM formulas, sortable, and format-aware — rather than text that formulas skip.
• Dates written to date-formatted columns become proper Excel dates. A date string written to a column already formatted as a date (or declared with a date format) now converts to an Excel date value — sortable and formula-compatible — rather than quote-prefixed text.
• Lasso dates from Excel sources write as proper date values. When you Lasso-select a date from an Excel or CSV source, the captured date now writes to your workbook as an Excel date in your locale's format, rather than as a text string.
• No more false "overwrites existing data" warning for dates. CoAudit was incorrectly flagging a write as destructive when re-sending a date that already matched what was in the cell. Re-sending the same date is now correctly recognized as a no-op.
• Import retry stays available in the Files view. The option to retry a failed document import was disappearing when you were on the Files tab; it now remains accessible.
• Current view is preserved when importing context. Importing a context no longer navigates away from whichever view (Files, Documents, Viewer) you were on.

CoAudit: Approve multiple AI-proposed changes in one step

When CoAudit proposes two or more changes to your spreadsheet — for example, filling in a schedule or populating a set of fields — those changes now appear as a compact, scrollable list instead of stacked individual cards.

• "Approve all" stays pinned in view: A summary strip anchored at the bottom of the list shows how many writes are pending and how many cells are affected ("3 writes · 12 cells · one click covers all"). It stays visible regardless of how many items are in the list — only the rows above it scroll.
• One-click approval for routine writes: Click Approve all to accept every standard value write in a single step. Each item in the list can also be expanded individually to review the before-and-after detail and approved or skipped on its own.
• Before-and-after always visible on expand: Opening a collapsed change row now reliably shows what the cell currently contains and what CoAudit will write — this preview was hidden in certain cases before.
• Bulk approval waits for full disclosure: The Approve all button only becomes active once every change that touches an existing cell value has fully loaded its before-and-after preview. You can only bulk-approve changes you have actually been shown.
• Changes that can't be undone stay separate: Any action that permanently removes data — such as clearing audit notes or evidence — is excluded from Approve all and appears as its own item labeled "needs review," requiring an individual decision.
• Clearer button style: The button to approve a routine data overwrite is now blue, consistent with standard confirm actions. Red is reserved for changes that permanently delete or clear content.

Excel workbook chat reliability

• First message in a new workbook chat now behaves correctly: Sending your first message right after opening a workbook chat could previously result in each approval appearing one at a time with pauses in between, instead of all together. This is now resolved.

Bug Fixes

• Workpaper data source card actions restored: The three-dot menu on data source cards — used to rename or delete a source — was not opening when clicked. This is now fixed; Rename and Delete work as expected again.
• Chat rename shows a clear error when it fails: Renaming a conversation via the three-dot menu now displays an error message if the title couldn't be saved, so you know to try again rather than assuming the change was applied when it wasn't.

Bug Fixes

• Date variables can now be created without losing the form. In Engagement Settings, when adding a new variable with the Date type, opening the calendar to select a value previously dismissed the entire form — making it impossible to save a date variable. The form now stays open while you pick a date and choose a format, so you can complete and save the variable without starting over.

New Features

• Document search now works in Excel and Word files — a search button in the viewer header opens the same tiered search panel for Excel spreadsheets, CSV files, and Word documents that was previously available only for PDFs. Exact text matches surface with neighboring cell context (for spreadsheets) or surrounding lines (for PDFs), and semantically related results appear in a "Related by Topic" section below. Scope your search to the open file, its document group, all files in the task, or your full engagement library.

• "Cite" draw mode — a new Cite option in the draw mode menu lets you annotate which part of a document supports a cell value without overwriting the value itself. Lasso remains available when you want to extract text directly into the cell.

• My Engagements header stays pinned while scrolling — on the home page, the "My Engagements" title and filter chips now pin to the top of the screen as you scroll through your engagement list, so your selected filters and engagement count stay visible at all times.

• Navigate to any document directly from the viewer — the filename at the top of the document viewer now opens a full list of every document group in the task, letting you jump to any file without returning to the file explorer.

Improvements

• Excel files render with full formatting — Excel (.xlsx) files now display frozen panes, merged cells, conditional formatting, charts, and images as they appear in the original spreadsheet. Files up to 100 MB are supported. CSV files use a dedicated grid viewer.

• Zoom controls and sheet tabs in Excel and CSV viewers — zoom in/out and sheet navigation (for multi-sheet workbooks) are now available directly in all spreadsheet viewers, consistent with the PDF viewer.

• "Lasso" replaces "By Individual Cell" in the draw mode menu — the draw mode previously labeled "By Individual Cell" is now called "Lasso," matching the terminology in the Excel add-in.

Bug Fixes

• European-format dates display and export correctly — dates written in day-first format (e.g., "10.07.2023" meaning 10 July) now appear and export correctly when your firm is configured for DD.MM.YYYY. Previously, ambiguous dates with a day value of 12 or under could show the day and month transposed, both on screen and in exported files.

• Clicking cell references in the Excel add-in no longer jumps the spreadsheet's selection — in the Excel add-in, clicking an inline cell reference in the reasoning panel now marks that reference as "Viewing" and shows an explicit "Open →" button for navigation, rather than silently moving Excel's active cell.

• Drawing over very large areas now shows a prompt instead of freezing — selecting an oversized region with Lasso, Cite, or Sum now shows a message asking you to draw a smaller range, instead of causing the viewer to become unresponsive.

• Draw modes no longer accidentally capture unintended regions — Lasso, Cite, and Sum no longer commit evidence when clicking column headers, chart areas, or viewer controls; only intentional cell selections are captured.

Workpaper — MATCH Column Improvements

• Edit MATCH cells directly: Double-clicking a classic MATCH cell now opens an inline editor so you can type a correction when the matched value was misread or left blank.
• Lasso corrects MATCH values: Drawing a selection box over the correct text in a document now replaces a MATCH cell's value with the selected text — the same way it works for other column types. Useful when a matched source value was misread and you want to point at the right region.
• Format control for MATCH and Table columns: The display format selector (number, currency, date, plain text) is now available on classic MATCH columns and Table columns, so you can fix how values are displayed without re-running extraction.
• Pasted integer columns display without forced decimals: When you paste a column whose values are all whole numbers (invoice IDs, reference codes), it now defaults to plain number display instead of showing unnecessary decimal places.

Files — OCR Visibility and Control

• Extraction method badge on the Text tab: Each file in the Text tab now shows a small labeled badge indicating how its text was extracted — Text (fast recognition), OCR (thorough optical recognition), or Native (built-in document or spreadsheet text). Hover the badge for a description. Helps you spot files that may need a thorough re-run when text coverage is poor.
• Choose fast or thorough when re-running OCR: The re-run option in the file menu is now a two-choice submenu — Text Recognition (fast) uses the default extraction path; Optical Character Recognition (thorough) forces a deeper scan for PDFs, images, and Word documents. The thorough option only appears for file types it actually supports, so it can no longer be applied to spreadsheets or plain-text files where it would erase existing good text.

Bug Fixes

• European decimal amounts now parse and sum correctly: Values like "768,15 EUR" (comma as decimal separator) were being misread as a thousands-grouped number and corrupting column totals. These amounts now display and sum correctly regardless of the format tag on the column.
• Format changes reliably revert when a save fails: If a column format change could not be saved, the displayed format now reverts to the last confirmed value rather than getting stuck on an incorrect intermediate state.
• Financial Statement Review: Math items you confirm as passing now correctly leave the Needs Review queue instead of remaining listed.

Engagement Exports

• Export ZIP folder structure now mirrors your board's row grouping. When you download engagement files as a .zip, the folder layout matches however your board is currently grouped — by category, assignee, priority, or status. If your board is grouped by assignee, the zip arrives with one folder per assignee; switch to category and you get category folders instead. Requests with no value for the active grouping (unassigned, no category, etc.) go to the zip root. If the board is set to no grouping at all, all requests land at the root with no subfolders. Both the auditor "Files + Workpapers" export and the client "Files" export follow the same rule.

Financial Statement Review

• Back-to-review shortcut in the Files browser. Opening the Files browser while a document is already under active review no longer leaves you stranded. A back-arrow button now appears in the browser header; clicking it returns you immediately to the document you were reviewing without having to navigate through folders and re-select it. The button disappears automatically if the file under review is deleted.

Notifications

• Auditor activity digests now show only client-initiated activity. Auditor digest emails now include only what clients have done — status changes, file uploads, and comments by client users. Activity between auditors is no longer included, keeping the digest focused and actionable. Client digests are unchanged.

CoAudit Add-in (Excel & Word)

• Faster, smoother sign-in. After completing sign-in, the add-in moves directly into the review surface with no white gap or unresponsive button in between. For brand-new accounts where your access role is still being granted, the add-in now self-heals within a couple of seconds rather than showing a "Checking sign-in…" screen for up to a minute.
• Improved sign-out on desktop. Signing out from the ribbon now shows a branded "You've been signed out" confirmation inside the add-in before returning to the sign-in screen. The session is properly closed on both Mac and Windows — identical behavior to signing out on the web.
• Word add-in loading screen. The Word add-in now displays the same branded loading experience as the Excel add-in while a document is loading, replacing a blank or partially-rendered state during slow opens.

Evidence viewer — image files

• Photos and screenshots open at a readable size — image files now display at a comfortable width in the evidence viewer, matching how PDF documents look. Previously, a high-resolution phone photo could render far too large to read, while a small screenshot could appear too small.
• Portrait photos display upright — photos taken in portrait orientation now appear correctly in the viewer instead of landing on their side.
• Citation highlights and lasso boxes land on the right region — when you draw a lasso or CoAudit places a citation on an image file, the highlighted area now aligns with the actual content. Previously, highlights on image files were positioned far outside the visible page.
• In-document search highlights work on image files — when CoAudit searches within an image, matching regions are now highlighted in the correct location.
• TIFF files show a clear explanation — opening a TIFF file in the evidence viewer now displays a message explaining that this file type cannot be previewed inline, with a prompt to download the file instead of showing an error.

Excel and Word add-in

• Workbook references display a link chip — when CoAudit's reasoning includes a reference to a cell or range in the workbook, it now shows a small "↗" chip next to the linked value, making it clear the reference is a live workbook link rather than plain text.
• Hovering a workbook citation card moves Excel's selection — moving your pointer over a workbook citation in the cell detail panel temporarily highlights the referenced cell or range in the spreadsheet, making it easy to see where the citation points. When you move the pointer away, the selection returns to where it was.
• Hovering a citation does not dismiss active error messages — briefly moving the pointer over a workbook citation no longer clears an error message that was already visible in the panel.
• Citation ledger stays accurate after CoAudit updates reasoning — when CoAudit rewrites a cell's reasoning, the citation list in the detail panel now reflects only the references in the updated text. Removed references are cleaned up automatically; the panel no longer accumulates outdated entries over time.
• New users no longer get stuck after signing in — auditors signing in to the Excel or Word add-in for the very first time no longer encounter a "sign out and back in to finish" screen. The add-in now waits silently for your account to be fully recognized and proceeds automatically.

Workpaper sampling

• Monetary Unit Sampling shows guidance when no numeric columns exist — if you choose Monetary Unit Sampling for a population that contains only text columns, the Amount Column selector now shows a clear message explaining what is needed and how to proceed, instead of displaying a blank dropdown with no options.

Bug Fixes

• Excel & Word add-in — sign-in loop for new accounts: Fixed an issue where a user whose account had just been activated could get stuck in an unescapable cycle: the add-in would show a sign-in pop-up, the pop-up would detect a valid session and close itself automatically, then the whole sequence would repeat. Affected accounts now move directly into the add-in after sign-in. If a session has genuinely lapsed, the add-in displays a clear prompt to sign out and back in — no loop.

Workpapers

• Workpaper numbers are always unique: Two team members creating workpapers at nearly the same moment no longer get assigned the same number. Each task now receives a unique sequential workpaper number regardless of how quickly tasks are created back-to-back.

CoAudit Excel & Word Add-in

• Hover-to-cell shortcut restored: Hovering over a cell reference in CoAudit for Excel now jumps the spreadsheet to that cell so you can see the source data while your pointer rests there, then returns to your previous selection when you move away. This behavior was inadvertently removed in a recent update and is now back.
• First-time sign-in no longer requires signing out and back in: New users completing their very first sign-in no longer land on a screen asking them to sign out and sign back in. The add-in now handles the initial account setup automatically and brings you straight to your work.
• "Try the EU region" suggestion appears only when it would actually help: The option to switch to the EU region during sign-in now appears only when your firm might genuinely be on the EU cluster — it no longer shows up during a first-time sign-in delay or an email verification step.
• Signing in again after a failed attempt works cleanly: If a sign-in attempt doesn't complete, signing in again now always shows the full account chooser, preventing a stuck state from the previous attempt.
• "Update available" refresh is smarter and more resilient: Clicking Refresh when an update is ready now confirms the new version is available to serve before reloading. If a deploy is still in progress, the add-in shows progress and retries automatically — rather than opening a browser tab or appearing to do nothing. The prompt also automatically clears if the update is no longer needed (for example, after a rollback).

Platform

• Automation progress updates are more reliable: Automation progress is now reported correctly even immediately after the server restarts, closing a window where progress notifications could be silently lost.
• CoAudit chat citation lookups are more resilient: Brief connectivity hiccups no longer cause citation lookups in CoAudit chat to fail — the request recovers automatically without any action needed.

Features

• Settings tab on the board: Engagement settings are now a Settings tab in the board header, sitting alongside Requests and Tasks. Clicking it opens the settings panel in place — team management, engagement variables, board visibility, and all other configuration is accessible without navigating away from the engagement. Any saved bookmarks or links to the old settings page redirect automatically.

• Excel add-in — engagement history empty state: The engagement history panel now displays a clear message when no prior sessions exist, rather than appearing blank.

Bug Fixes

• Settings tab always visible for auditors: Auditors who had previously viewed an engagement in client mode could sometimes find the Settings tab hidden or inaccessible. This is now resolved — the tab appears consistently based on your account role, regardless of how you last viewed the engagement.

• Clients page error recovery: When an unexpected error occurs on the Clients page, you now see a Try again button that reloads the page, rather than a dead-end screen that only offered sign-out. Also fixed a display issue where the access management panel showed "undefined" instead of a team member's name or email when a client had no associated engagements.

• Accurate engagement counts: Engagement counts shown on client rows and in the sidebar were sometimes inflated by internal system entries. These counts now reflect only real engagements, so what you see matches what's actually there. The same internal entries no longer appear in client lists or the Office add-in engagement picker.

Private Requests

• Auditors can mark any request private using the lock icon in the request's property row. Private requests are hidden from clients unless they are explicitly granted access.
• A per-request access panel lets auditors toggle each engagement client on or off — granting or revoking their view of that request without affecting other tasks or other auditors.
• Clients who have been granted access see a "Private" badge on the request. Clients without access don't see the request at all, including in document search results.
• Document search now respects request privacy: searching within an engagement no longer returns files from private requests to clients who aren't on the access list.
• Auditors are never restricted by request privacy — any engagement auditor always has full access regardless of the privacy setting.

CoAudit Add-in: Workbook Citations

• Hovering a workbook cell reference in CoAudit's reasoning now peeks that cell's document evidence in the viewer — the same behavior as hovering a document citation. Clicking commits the view and lights the citation card "Viewing."
• A new "Open →" chip on workbook citation cards navigates to the referenced cell in Excel directly.
• Viewing and Peeking indicators now appear consistently on both document and workbook citation cards and their matching inline pills, staying in sync as you hover and click between them.
• Whole-column and whole-row range references (e.g. E:E or 28:30) now correctly find and open evidence when any cell in the range is cited.

CoAudit Add-in: Smarter Viewer Navigation

• When you're working in full-screen CoAudit chat and select a cited cell, the add-in now asks whether you'd like to open the document viewer — rather than switching automatically. The prompt dismisses on its own if you navigate to a different cell, clear the citation, or ignore it for a few seconds.
• Pressing the Viewer tab or Viewer ribbon button while the prompt is showing accepts it and opens that cell's evidence directly.
• Selecting an empty or uncited cell while in full-screen CoAudit no longer disturbs your chat context at all.

CoAudit Add-in: Region and Updates

• A region selector now appears inline next to the "Sign in to Punchcard" button. Reviewers routed to the wrong cluster (US vs. EU) can switch before attempting a login, instead of completing a failed sign-in first.
• If a new version of CoAudit is deployed while your pane is open, an "Update available" notification appears with a Refresh button. The pane never reloads automatically — you choose when to pick it up.

Bug Fixes

• Stale add-in UI after updates: Users occasionally saw outdated CoAudit screens even after reopening Excel or Word. The add-in now always loads fresh when opened, and a mid-session update notification handles the in-between case.
• Financial Statement Review crash: The FSR route occasionally hit a repeating error that displayed a "Try again" button that immediately re-crashed. The error is now identified correctly and a clear, non-repeating message is shown instead.
• Fixed a flicker where moving the cursor from a citation card to its action button ("Open →" or "Set primary") briefly cleared the Peeking indicator.
• Inline citation pills in the evidence and contra-evidence sections of CoAudit's reasoning now show the correct Viewing and Peeking state, matching the behavior of the main rationale section.
• The document viewer no longer occasionally paints over the CoAudit chat column when switching between full-screen and side-by-side layouts.

Excel and CSV Evidence Citing

Lasso, Cite, and Sum now work on Excel and CSV source files in the Office add-in, not just PDFs and images. When the active source document is a spreadsheet, each tool draws on the underlying cell values — so the precision you see in the source workbook is exactly what gets captured, with no OCR involved.

• Sum on a spreadsheet selection inserts a signed formula (e.g. =1000+250-300) into the target cell, keeping the arithmetic transparent in Excel's formula bar. If a selection contains more than 200 numeric cells, the tool declines with a clear message rather than silently using a partial figure.
• Lasso on a single spreadsheet cell writes the workbook's exact underlying value — the actual number behind a formatted display such as a percentage or a rounded figure.
• Date-formatted cells are automatically excluded from numeric operations regardless of how they display.

Lasso Numeric Accuracy

Several improvements make Lasso more accurate when interpreting values from PDF and image sources:

• Accounting-style negatives — parenthesized amounts like (500) and currency-prefixed variants like USD (500) — are now correctly written as negative numbers.
• Space-grouped numbers common in European documents (e.g. 1 043,50) are recognized as numeric rather than treated as text.
• Prose containing digits (reference codes, names with numbers) is no longer misread as a numeric value and written into the cell.

Citation UI Improvements

• Inline citations and the Citations ledger stay in sync: hovering an inline citation pill in the Reasoning section highlights the matching card in the Citations ledger, and hovering the card lights up the inline pill — both surfaces always reflect the same state.
• "Viewing" takes priority immediately: when you click a citation to commit the evidence viewer to it, the card badge switches to "Viewing" right away, even while the pointer is still resting on the card.
• Hovering a citation in Reasoning peeks the source in the evidence viewer after a short pause rather than showing a pop-up card — consistent with how the Citations ledger cards already behaved.

PDF Search

Pressing Enter in the PDF search bar now advances to the next result instead of restarting the search from the beginning. Shift+Enter moves to the previous match.

Fixes

• Citation drawing errors are now always visible — if the details panel was closed when a drawing was refused, the error was hidden; it now appears in all panel states.
• The workpaper Run button no longer gets stuck disabled after an automation finishes or when a run was started from a different session; it recovers automatically.
• Large file deletions now complete reliably — files with extensive OCR data could previously time out during deletion, leaving the file apparently stuck.
• Deleting a workpaper column with many values no longer fails for large columns.
• Multi-file ZIP downloads now place all files at the top level of the archive correctly, regardless of special characters in file names.