Written by Thanks, everyone, for the impressive engagement with our latest poll about adding signature lines to reports! Without further ado, let’s jump into the results.
The first question was about whether your representative payee clients need to sign anything at all. The large majority of you (86%, to be exact) indicated that they do. Here’s how the graph came out:
There was also a question that was asked only to those of you who answered “yes” to that first question about having clients sign things: Are the signatures associated with a certain RPM report? Only a small portion (28%) of the answers to that question were affirmative, meaning that most of the signatures from payees are not made on a report from RPM.
Please note that this graph reflects only the responses of the subset of respondents who indicated they do request signatures from payee clients.
A few specific follow-up questions also appeared after this question, all related to what exactly your clients are asked to sign. More than half of respondents whose clients sign a report from RPM are signing a budget-related report, and a handful of others sign Client Statements and transaction-related reports.
Those who don’t use RPM reports for signatures mentioned several different categories of items that need signed: Intake and Social Security forms, budgets and spending plans, allowances and receipts of spending money, and other miscellaneous forms. Some of these things, like budgets, can be created through the RPM reports, but many cannot.
Note: In case you didn’t know, any documents can be uploaded to RPM in the Documents tab on the Clients screen to keep track of them electronically. Details about that can be found here: Linking documents.
After asking all about client signatures, I wanted to know whether you request signatures from folks other than clients. A little less than half of respondents indicated that they do:
For those who do request signatures from other individuals, I asked who exactly those individuals were. Case managers, program managers, and other rep payee team members were the most common answers, followed by clients’ guardians, then anyone who picks up a check on behalf of a client.
Finally, I asked everyone to rate how likely they would be to make use of a signature line on reports. The most common answer was “very likely,” followed by “neutral/not sure.” Here’s the full breakdown of responses:
To summarize the results: Every payee agency is different, and you all have different procedures; however, many of you request signatures, both from beneficiaries and others, and could make use of a line or two added to the bottom of reports.
These signature lines would be optional, meaning you could turn them on or off each time you run a report, and it’s possible that they would be customizable so you could title them however makes the most sense for the specific signatures you expect.
Thanks again, everyone! Keep an eye out for more polls coming soon.