CCH iFirm Engagement Release Notes

What's New in Customer Services and Support

Combining the best of digital and phone support, our customer support services continue to evolve with the following enhancements.

Single sign-on for support cases and My Account

The new unified sign-in experience on the Support Site now provides access to the following features and resources using a single set of credentials:

  • Support case creation

  • Virtual Assistant

  • My Account

  • eStore

Register for our Support Site to take full advantage of this simplified experience.

Billing and Account Help Centre

Accessible from the My Account section on the Support Site home page, the Billing and Account Help Centre enables you to quickly find the information you need to manage your My Account activities, including invoices, payments, subscriptions, and account information.

Schedule a callback with one of our support agents

You can now schedule a callback at a time that works best for you when creating a support case through our Virtual Assistant.

Simply select the date and time that best fit your schedule and continue with your day. A member of our team will contact you at the scheduled time.

Digital and phone support: choose the option that works best for you

Digital Support

Our Knowledge Base, Live Chat, and online support cases provide fast and efficient ways to get help.

Register for our Support Site and sign in to our Virtual Assistant to find answers to your questions, submit support requests, or chat live with an agent.

Phone Support

Phone support is available when you prefer to speak directly with an agent. Be sure to select the appropriate options from the phone menu so that you are directed to the team best suited to assist you.

 

Useful Support Links

See the Useful Support Links topic to learn about the support resources available and choose the option that best meets your needs.

 

Contents

October 9, 2026 Release

July 17, 2026 Release

June 5, 2026 Release

February 13, 2026 Release

Release Notes - Prior Years

 

Release Notes - Current Year

October 9, 2026 Release

New features available in this release:

  • Import from another engagement – You can now search for engagements from a different client to import from. Also, any changes made to the source engagement will automatically notify users in the target engagement, removing the need to check for updates.

  • Export account drill down (analytics) – When drilling down on an account in the trial balance, you can now export the GL details to Excel.

  • Finalize engagements with analytics – When finalizing an engagement with analytics, you can choose to keep, hide or delete the analytics in the finalization wizard.

  • Support for larger engagements – Engagements with trial balances of up to 40,000 accounts are now supported.

  • Hide unused reports – Show/hide reports in the Engagement View based on your preferences for your engagements. These settings will be saved in engagements that are saved as a template, copied or rolled forward.

  • Multi-tier consolidated engagements – Engagements with multi-tier consolidations can now be copied and saved as a template.

  • Export analytics – Easily export the standardized trial balance, chart of accounts and General ledger from data analytics for use outside the engagement.

  • Engagement View – With the changes made to the Engagement View, there is now an improved interface that allows you to expand/collapse folders, create up to 10 custom views and mark a view as favourite and/or default. You can also upload workpapers directly into a folder.

  • Tickmarks and comments in the trial balance – You can reposition the Tickmarks and Comments columns in the trial balance and not have them anchored to the final balance.

  • Multiple references to a single account – You can now add multiple workpaper references to an account balance (Tax and Financial) and manage the references from the trial balance, leadsheets and reports.

  • Summary Views bulk actions – Save time by deleting multiple notes simultaneously and managing roll forward settings for multiple workpapers at once.

  • Remove cleared notes during finalization – When you finalize the engagement, you can now choose to remove all the cleared notes during finalization, along with the open notes.

  • Change the tax entity type in copied and rolled forward interim engagements – The tax entity type can be changed when you copy or roll forward an interim engagement to accommodate changes to your client since the past year.

Workpaper Monitor enhancements (update required)

  • Single sign-on – Login credentials can now be passed directly to Workpaper Monitor from CCH iFirm Engagement. You will not have to log in again when opening Workpaper Monitor.

  • Improved TB Link and OLE functionality – Workpaper Monitor support for trial balance links and OLE (object linking and embedding)-based workpapers has been enhanced, providing a more reliable experience when working with linked content.

  • Available workpapers are now listed in the Insert Workpaper Reference interface when selected in Microsoft® Word or Excel.

Back to top

New features available in this release:

  • Classified trial balance report enhancements – Remarks are now supported on classified consolidated and tax reports.

  • Show/hide leadsheets – Show/hide leadsheets based on your preferences for your engagements. These settings will be saved on engagements that are saved as a template, copied or rolled forward.

  • Snapshots and reporting for ratios - Take a snapshot of your ratios that you want to log as part of your documentation. You can also add snapshots to a report and export that report to Excel.

  • Add multiple placeholders in the Engagement view and when rolling forward – When creating a placeholder, you can now add up to five placeholders at once. You can also designate a workpaper to be replaced with a placeholder during roll forward.

  • Allow Microsoft® Excel to open in single or separate instances – There is now an option to choose whether you want to open Microsoft Excel workpapers in a single running instance of Excel or separate instances. Opening workpapers in a single instance will now be the default behaviour to allow additional formatting, formulas and tables to be copied between workpapers. To change that option, all Excel workpapers need to be closed.

CCH iFirm Engagement migration updates

  • Multi-tier consolidated trial balances – Multi-tier consolidated trial balances are now eligible for migration.

    • Currently, CCH iFirm Engagement supports engagements with up to four-tiered consolidated trial balances.

  • Eliminating journal entries – Eliminating journal entries for the current period can now be migrated for consolidated trial balances. As part of this migration process, a subsidiary will be created and assigned to the consolidated trial balance(s) that contain eliminating journal entry data. These new subsidiaries will be identifiable by having an EJE prefix to their trial balance name. They will carry the chart of accounts for all the accounts listed in the eliminating journal entries but will not carry a balance.

  • Ineligible trial balances – Binders that are part of a migration plan that contain ineligible trial balances are now in a separate pane of the Binder Assessment Results page. Below the Trial Balance tab is an option to Show Ineligible TBs, which displays any trial balance in the binder that is ineligible along with details about why it is ineligible.

Back to top

New features available in this release:

  • Import a trial balance from another engagement: You can now import current year and prior year trial balances from another engagement for the same client, using a simple client search, engagement selection and balance/year pick list. After the import, you can manually check for changes in the source trial balance, with any differences clearly highlighted and reported. This pull only workflow helps you start a new engagement with accurate balances while keeping the source engagement unchanged.

  • Enhancements to TB links and EJEs for multi-tier consolidations: You can add TB links to any entity in the engagement, including parent entities that do not have a subsidiary directly below them. You can create an eliminating journal entry by selecting accounts belonging to any subsidiary in the engagement and not be restricted to just those subsidiaries under the parent in context.

  • Add new grouping list function available for consolidated engagements: You can add up to eight new custom grouping lists for financial consolidated engagements.

    • For engagements that consolidate based on tax, there is currently no option to add an additional grouping list.

  • Workpaper placeholders are now available: You can now add placeholders for workpapers in the Engagement view by selecting the Create Workpaper > Create Placeholder option or the Actions context menu from a custom folder.

  • Enhanced ratio analysis is available in Data Analytics:

    • Visualizations for ratios

    • Amount type-based ratio calculations

    • Snapshots and reporting (coming soon)

  • New self-service options available for some scenarios: You can now delete an engagement if it has remained in process beyond the time expected to complete the roll forward or copy process. In addition, you are also now able to revert a workpaper to a prior version if it is available when the workpaper access has become unavailable (unable to download and/or unable to open in Workpaper Monitor).

  • Classified trial balance reports enhancements: You can now create a classified TB report for tax trial balances. You can also create classified reports for financial and tax consolidated engagements.

  • Account details in consolidated TB reports: Consolidated TB reports now display by group, subgroup and account details. You can also add journal entry details to this report.

  • Drill down on trial balance accounts: Drill down into an account from the trial balance to view the journal entries associated with that account.

    • Note: The General Ledger must be imported.

  • A new version of Workpaper Monitor is available:

    • Workpaper references can now be added to workpapers: When opening Microsoft® Word and Excel workpapers through Workpaper Monitor, you can now insert and open workpaper references in the CCH iFirm Engagement ribbon.

    • Additional Microsoft® Excel file types can now be opened through Workpaper Monitor: You can now open .xlsm and .xlsb file types through Workpaper Monitor, allowing additional functionality for macro-enabled files and binary files.

    • TB links functionality when working with consolidated and multi-tier engagements: TB links will more consistently pull balances from the correct parent or subsidiary entity, including proper handling of eliminating journal entries (EJEs), at each consolidation level.

    • Improvements that provide consistency when working with workpapers and trial balance data were made, along with platform updates that strengthen performance and reduce the risk of disruptions.

    • Security and dependency updates were also applied to help ensure the application continues to meet current compliance and safety standards.

    • Account Groupings page: Users can now manage significantly more complex engagements with a large number of groups and subgroups with expanded limits and improved performance through the Account Groupings page. The maximum number of financial groups has increased (up to 500), and financial subgroups have expanded (up to 200), enabling smoother migration and support for large, complex engagement structures. This new limit is currently available for non-consolidated engagements.

  • Additional enhancements include:

    • Improved performance by removing legacy ordering methods used during report loading.

    • A new group/subgroup ordering function in the Trial Balance selection pane, allowing users to reorder groups and subgroups via drag-and-drop.

    • Groups with subgroups move together when reordered; tax grouping lists cannot be reordered at this time.

    • Ability to add groups and subgroups to financial grouping lists (tax grouping lists support adding subgroups only).

    • A grouping list selection dropdown list for the selected trial balance.

    • A filter row allowing users to search by index, name or classification.

      These updates remove previous size constraints, support large-scale migrations and significantly improve usability and scalability for complex engagements.

Back to top

New features available in this release:

  • Roll forward Knowledge Coach engagements: You can now seamlessly roll forward Knowledge Coach engagements, preserving key elements such as tailored responses and linked procedures. This enhancement reduces rework during engagement setups and improves consistency across engagement periods. Workpaper linkages, procedure tailoring and sign-off history carry forward, saving time and supporting continuity in documentation and strategy.

  • Release active user session for KC forms: This feature introduces the ability for administrators to release an active user session in a Knowledge Coach engagement. If a user exits unexpectedly or forgets to check in a file, an administrator can now manually release the lock, enabling others to access the file without delay. This improves team collaboration, reduces bottlenecks and ensures files are accessible when needed, which is especially critical in time-sensitive review cycles.

  • Notes categorization and assignment for KC: Engagement teams can now categorize and assign notes within Knowledge Coach. Categories help organize notes by theme, while assignments allow notes to be directed to specific team members for follow-up or resolution. This streamlines communication, enhances accountability and supports efficient resolution of outstanding items during engagement preparation and review.

Back to top

 

December 5, 2025 Release

New features available in this release:

  • Fund engagements: Save fund engagements as templates and create a fund engagement from a template.

  • Independent balances: You can now add up to three Independent Balance columns to your trial balance and TB reports, making this an ideal solution for tracking original and final budget amounts side by side. Independent balances let you record, compare and customize balances at different points in time, with full support for editing, importing, exporting and reporting. Available for all engagement types and regions, this feature streamlines budget analysis and reporting, giving you more control and flexibility than ever before.

  • Other journal entry types (OJEs) and other balance types (OBALs): A user can now add up to three OJEs. In addition, three corresponding OBALs are now available and can be configured within the right-hand menu of the Financial trial balance. This functionality is currently supported in annual fund or non-fund engagements and for subsidiaries in single and multi-tier fund or non-fund consolidated engagements.

  • Engagement Analytics: Copy and roll forward Analytics settings to a new engagement and save the Analytics engagement as a template.

  • Trend analysis on trial balance (Analytics): Users can now perform a trend analysis on their trial balance with interactive visualizations and detailed account-level tabular data. Additionally, a new feature allows users to capture snapshots of any chart, including its underlying data and comments, and save or export these as reports for easy sharing and documentation.

  • Filter by group (Analytics): Users can now filter and view general ledger analytics and journal entry testing results by their chart of accounts, enabling a clearer breakdown of group-level data. This enhancement also allows users to drill down to journal entries with lines posted to the selected group, providing deeper insights and improved analysis.

Back to top

September 12, 2025 Release

New features available in this release:

  • Fund engagements: Copy and roll forward fund engagements and import the funds setup via Microsoft® Excel, using the Import wizard.

  • Engagement analytics: Import general ledger transactional data, perform journal entry testing and explore transactions and trends with visualizations and reports.

  • Availability of Analytics license: Users now have the option to enable the Analytics module to utilize the data analytics capabilities in an engagement.

  • Please select Pro and Analytics together in an engagement to use this capability.

  • The Data Analytics (DA) menu is available for engagements with the Analytics module selected in the licenses.

Note: All existing Pro customers now have access to the Analytics module with their account.

  • Dynamic journal entry reports: Create journal entry reports for annual non-consolidated engagements and subsidiaries of consolidated engagements with the standard journal entry types.

  • Editing of the PY balance in the trial balance: The prior year (PY) final balance can now be edited by users in the Financial and Tax tabs of the Trial Balance page. Updated balance values will be updated automatically in both the Financial and Tax views of the trial balance.

  • The Edit option is disabled when the engagement is in a Locked state and for migrated engagements with an Unapproved state.

CCH Engagement migration updates

  • Annual fund trial balances are now eligible for migration: Annual period binders with fund trial balances now display as eligible for migration in the CCH Engagement migration application. Interim periods and consolidated binders remain ineligible for migration.

  • Quarterly interim period binders are now eligible for migration: Quarterly period binders now display as eligible for migration in the CCH Engagement migration application. Semi-annual binders remain ineligible for migration.

  • OBAL and OJE data is now eligible for migration: Other Journal Entry (OJE) and Other Balance (OBAL) data is now available for migration in the CCH Engagement migration application for fund, annual, quarterly and monthly trial balance types. Consolidated trial balance data remain ineligible until a later release.

Back to top

July 18, 2025 Release

New features available in this release:

  • Fund engagements: You can create fund engagements for your governmental and nonprofit audits, as well as customize the fund hierarchy to generate detailed trial balance and journal entry reports. Custom journal entry types, multiple grouping lists and TB links can be utilized to meet specific governmental reporting needs.

  • Custom journal entry types: In fund engagements, you can create up to three new journal entry types and define where they post to derive new balances. These custom journal entries and balances will flow into the trial balance and reports and be accessible in TB links.

  • Custom grouping lists: You can create multiple custom grouping lists (up to a maximum of eight) for your annual and interim engagements.

    • Groups and subgroups can be added to any of the custom grouping lists and can be assigned to a custom list that is set as default for an engagement.

    • Leadsheets, the Financial Summary Report and the Engagement View will reflect the accounts and associated groups and subgroups for the default grouping list.

  • TB links for fund and quarterly engagements: You can insert trial balance links in both fund and quarterly engagements from Microsoft Excel and Word workpapers.

    • In quarterly engagements, TB links are available for each quarterly period in the current year and seven prior years.

    • In fund engagements, you can insert TB links for account balances grouped by fund, fund type and fund subtype.

  • Additional categorization and assignment of notes: You can further categorize your notes by selecting a note type and assigning it to a staff member of the firm. The Notes Summary View can be filtered and sorted by note type and by the assigned staff member.

  • Finalize engagement: When the work in an engagement is complete, you can choose to finalize the engagement. The Finalize feature guides you through a wizard that analyzes the status of workpapers, notes, diagnostics and sign-offs. Additionally, the wizard ensures that all open engagement items are completed.

  • Permissions: The following permissions have been added to provide access to the Note Type and Assigned To fields of a role:

    • Assign note type

    • Assign note type for others

    • Assign staff

    • Assign staff for others

    Back to top

January 24, 2025 Release

New features available in this release:

  • Knowledge Coach – Content now available in French: Following the release of Knowledge Coach content in English, we are pleased to announce that the compilation content is now available in French.

  • 2024 tax groups: New engagements created with a 2024 tax year end will now have access to the 2024 tax groups when mapping accounts to tax groups.

Back to top

December 20, 2024 Release

New features available in this release:

  • Knowledge Coach – Review content: In addition to the compilation content launched in our previous release, we are pleased to offer content for your review engagements to ensure that your review engagement needs are seamlessly integrated and efficiently managed.

    Note: Compilation and review content is now available in Knowledge Coach, but in English only. The French content will be available at the beginning of the new year.

Back to top

December 6, 2024 Release

New features available in this release:

  • Notes and sign-off summaries. New notes and sign-off summaries provide the ability to see the status of the engagement from a single viewpoint. Sort and filter the notes and the sign-off statuses by workpaper and by staff. Take action on each note and perform sign-off directly in the Summary Views page. Open the Summary Views page from the Engagement View page to access this feature.

  • Drag and drop workpapers into the folders of the Engagement View page. Move multiple workpapers directly into a folder from your computer. This option allows you to optionally assign indexes to each workpaper during the upload process.

  • Import multiple years of trial balance data. Import up to five years of trial balance data using Microsoft® Excel or CSV files for a more comprehensive view of the financial statements.

  • Roll forward multi-tier consolidations. Gain efficiencies in the second year by rolling forward multi-tier consolidated engagements.

  • Export the Financial and Tax Summary reports for multi-tier consolidations. Export and download summary reports to Microsoft Excel. The data you see on screen will export to Microsoft Excel with all rows expanded. Subtotals for each entity will be displayed at the group and subgroup levels.

  • Add annotations to single and multi-tier consolidated engagements. Add real-time updates using tick marks, comments and workpaper references to trial balances, leadsheets and reports at the consolidated and subsidiary level. Create your own custom ratios and edit or delete existing ratios.

  • Perform ratio analysis on consolidated engagements. Review the automatic report created with 30 standard ratios based on the group assignments in the consolidated engagements.

  • Add trial balances with up to 10,000 accounts. Import up to 10,000 accounts into your CCH iFirm Engagement trial balance.

  • New trial balance report options available for all engagement types. Customize trial balance reports by choosing the columns that should be included in each report for annual, interim, single and multi-tier consolidated engagements.

  • Roll forward or copy engagements without accounts. It is no longer required to have at least one account in the trial balance before rolling forward or copying the engagement, or saving the engagement as a template. In addition, you can delete the last account in the trial balance. This applies to annual, interim and consolidated engagements.

  • CCH Engagement (on-premise) migration to CCH iFirm Engagement. It is now possible to migrate your binders from CCH Engagement (on-premise) to CCH iFirm Engagement. This is a paid service completed with the assistance of the Professional Services team.

  • Knowledge Coach. We are now offering Knowledge Coach, our award-winning patented methodology. This methodology is integrated with CCH iFirm Engagement, providing you access to all content relevant to your engagement, including letters, reports and memos.

    Currently, Knowledge Coach supports only compilations. We are actively working on expanding this support to include reviews and audits in future releases, ensuring that even more of your engagement needs will be seamlessly integrated and efficiently managed.

Back to top

September 13, 2024 Release

New features available in this release:

  • Enhanced trial balance import. A new import wizard with more flexibility and functionality that eliminates the need to pre-format your data before uploading it is now available. You can import data from both Excel and CSV files, map columns in any order, handle debits and credits in one or separate columns and multiple-row headers, import multiple subsidiaries or monthly periods simultaneously from one file, import group and subgroup assignments, and create new groups and subgroups. In addition, the wizard provides clear diagnostics to detect potential issues with the data and help you resolve them.

  • Ratio analysis report. A report is automatically created with 30 standard ratios based on the group assignments in your financial trial balance. Ratio categories include Liquidity, Leverage, Activity and Profitability. You can add your own custom ratios as well as edit, delete and hide existing ratios. Comments and explanations can be added to each ratio, and you can choose whether and when to recalculate them.

  • Remarks in trial balance reports. You can add up to two columns to a trial balance report, in which you can enter remarks next to any balance. The remarks that are entered are local to the trial balance report. Select these columns while creating or editing the trial balance report in the Format Columns tab. You can rename and/or reorder the columns. This feature is not available with consolidated trial balance reports.

  • Single-tier consolidated engagements. New features are available:

  • Consolidated trial balances:

  • Add comments and tick marks to the consolidated trial balance.

  • Create trial balance reports with default trial balance columns.

  • Export the consolidated Financial Summary Report.

  • Subsidiary trial balances:

  • Create trial balance reports with custom trial balance columns.

  • Multi-tier consolidated engagements. New features are available:

  • Consolidated trial balances:

  • Create trial balance reports with default trial balance columns.

  • Subsidiary trial balances:

  • Create trial balance reports with custom trial balance columns.

  • Monthly engagements.

  • Create trial balance reports with custom trial balance columns.

  • Edit the current year unadjusted account balances in the trial balance.

  • Trial balances.

  • Apply one or more filters on any of the trial balance columns. Click the column header menu and select the Filter tab. Saving a trial balance view will also save any filters. Filters are not available with consolidated trial balances.

  • The requirement to have at least one account in the trial balance has been removed.

  • Bug Fixes.

  • Keep me logged in: if the check box is selected, the username and the password will not need to be re-entered when CCH iFirm automatically locks out the user after four hours of inactivity.

  • Note.

  • QBO is temporarily disabled due to maintenance.

Back to top

May 17, 2024 Release

New features available in this release:

  • Engagement templates. Staff with relevant permissions may save an existing engagement as a template for annual, monthly and single-tier engagements. Templates may include a chart of accounts, grouping lists and the folder structure in the Engagement View page as well as uploaded workpapers. Once created, the firm administrator can rename, edit and delete the templates, as needed.

  • Annotations – Workpaper references, tick marks and comments. Add workpaper references, tick marks and comments to the trial balance, the leadsheets, the Tax Summary Report and the Financial Summary Report in annual and monthly engagements. Add, edit and delete these annotations in one location and they will flow to other pages and reports, where applicable. You can add local tick marks to Microsoft Word and Excel workpapers.

  • Trial balance report options. Select the balance columns to be included in each report, including all prior years and variances, as well as options to show classified subtotals and journal entry details. Trial balance reports will copy to a new engagement if the chart of accounts is copied as well. The trial balance report is available with interim engagements and includes default columns.

  • Single-tier consolidated engagement enhancements. New features include:

    • Variance columns that are displayed in the consolidated trial balance.

    • Creating and applying custom grouping lists to the subsidiary trial balance.

    • Exporting the consolidated Tax Summary Report.

    • Adding workpaper tags to the workpaper properties in the Engagement View page.

  • Multi-tier consolidated engagements. It is now possible to create a hierarchy of parent and subsidiary entities with balances that roll up to the consolidated totals. The common grouping list can now be shared across all subsidiary trial balances. View each entity’s balances at all tiers throughout the application. Once the journal entries have been entered, create trial balance links in Microsoft Word and Excel, and link to CCH iFirm Taxprep.

  • Trial balance export will export the columns in the current TB View. The export option in the trial balance will export the same columns you see on screen to Microsoft Excel.

  • Copy monthly engagements. It is now possible to copy charts of accounts, journal entries, workpapers, sign offs and notes. Tax groups will be available in the new engagement or updated to the latest tax year once they become available.

  • Licenses used with complex engagements. Complex engagements will count as two licenses. This includes interim, single-tier consolidated and multi-tier consolidated engagements.

Are you interested in providing feedback on future enhancements and want to have a voice in the audit of the future? Please visit this page: https://support.cchifirm.ca/en/content/cch_ifirm/support/feedbackcomments.htm.

Back to top