Fictional example — no live record

Team guide — what you do next

Three people touch a hold: the authorized executive, the department it affects, and accounting. Each reads different things, may record different things, and hands the work to a different person.

Fictional example — no live record

Cedar Works is invented for this walkthrough. The people, the documents, the amounts and the dates do not exist. Nothing on these pages reads the record, asks Microsoft for a file, or records anything. Every document-access outcome shown is simulated for illustration.

The authorized executive

Fictional example — no live record

Dana Whitfield, in this example

What you read

  • Every open hold on the engagement, with the instruction standing on each
  • Which departments have answered the instruction that stands, and which answered an older one
  • What the accounting capture says, and which figures nobody could read
  • Whether a cited document could be checked — allowed, refused, or could not check

What you may record

  • Raise a hold over a named scope, with a reason
  • Set the instruction: Go, Wait or Stop, in your own words
  • Grant a bounded exception: permitted scope, reason, responsible person, review date
  • Release the hold, naming it, with your own stated basis

What you may not do

  • Acknowledge on a department's behalf
  • Report readiness for a department
  • Change what accounting recorded
What your act changes
Your instruction is the standing answer for everyone on the engagement. Your release is the only act that ends a hold.
Who receives it next
The department named in the scope, who must answer the instruction you set.

Department staff and leads

Fictional example — no live record

Marcus Oyelaran, Delivery, in this example

What you read

  • The hold that affects your scope, and the instruction standing on it right now
  • Any exception permitting narrow work, with its responsible person and review date
  • Why the hold was raised, in the executive's own words

What you may record

  • Acknowledge the instruction that is standing — the acknowledgment binds to that instruction instance
  • Report readiness, when you are ready to resume

What you may not do

  • Set or change an instruction
  • Grant yourself an exception
  • Release a hold, by any route, including by reporting readiness
What your act changes
Your acknowledgment tells the executive the standing instruction has been read by your department. If the executive changes the instruction, your acknowledgment becomes historical and a fresh one is needed.
Who receives it next
The executive, who decides whether anything changes.

Accounting

Fictional example — no live record

Priya Nandakumar, in this example

What you read

  • The engagement, its invoices, receipts and applications inside a named capture
  • Which figures have a registered document behind them and which do not

What you may record

  • Declare a capture: what it covers, for which entity, over which period, and how many rows it took
  • Record observations — invoices, receipts, applications — each naming the capture it came from

What you may not do

  • Acknowledge, instruct, grant an exception or release a hold
  • Make a payment count as an approval
What your act changes
Your capture is what makes a figure readable at all. A figure with no capture behind it is not a smaller number — it is a separate reading, outside the arithmetic.
Who receives it next
The executive and the department, who both read the same figures you recorded, with the same limits.

Fictional example — no live record

Four things that never become permission

Only an executive's release, naming the hold and carrying its own basis, ends a hold.

  • A recorded payment

    Money arriving is an observation about the book. It leaves the hold awaiting review.

  • A department acknowledgment

    Acknowledging says the instruction was read. It does not say it was lifted.

  • A readiness report

    Ready to start is a statement about the crew, not a decision about the work.

  • A review date arriving

    A date is when somebody must look. Nothing becomes permitted because a day passed.

Fictional example — no live record

Five readings that are not the same reading

Each document-access outcome below is simulated for this example. No check was made.

  • A workbook reading

    $108,000 owed on CW-2210 only · total owed unknown

    Invoice CW-2211 has an unreadable amount. The engagement's total owed is unknown. This is a dated workbook reading from the named capture, not an executed instrument proving the debt.

  • Instrument evidence

    Fictional change order, 19 Sep 2026 · clause 3

    A registered document, with a version the register states, cited at a section. This is what backs a claim. A workbook figure never becomes one by being larger or newer.

  • An unreadable amount

    Unknown

    Invoice CW-2211 was captured, but its amount could not be read. It remains a named gap; the engagement total stays unknown. It never becomes zero or quietly disappears.

  • Document present, access separate

    A document is attached · you may not open it

    That something exists and that you may read it are two different answers. The presence is shown; the name, folder and link are withheld.

  • Could not check

    Could not check

    The access check itself failed. That is not permission and not refusal — it is a third answer, and it never quietly becomes either of the other two.

Fictional example — no live record

If you ask an authorized agent instead

An authorized agent asking about Cedar Works receives exactly what the person would receive — the same holds, the same instruction, the same figures, the same withholdings — plus a declared envelope saying who read it and when. It never receives more than the person, and a refused or unreadable answer arrives refused or unreadable, never as a blank.