The claimant's CE is scheduled, the 10-day letter is outstanding, and three other files are sitting at ALJ awaiting decisions. At any given moment, a disability representative carries a caseload where each file is at a different procedural stage — and every stage has its own deadlines, documents, and follow-up obligations.
The Architecture of a Disability Claim
A Social Security disability claim is not a single event. It is a sequence of gatekeeping decisions, each with its own procedural rules. The template maps this reality directly: Stage tracks where a claim sits in the administrative hierarchy — Initial, Recon, ALJ, AC — while Detailed Status captures the operational meaning of that stage. "ALJ - MR Outstanding" and "ALJ - Prepped" are both ALJ-stage cases, but they have completely different next actions.
That operational specificity is the template's central design choice. Generic status fields like "Pending" or "Active" collapse distinctions that matter. Whether a file is at "Pre-App - SSI Client Review" or "Pre-App - File Rep Submit SSI later" determines which phone call gets made next.
The Two Parallel Timelines
Every claim runs on two simultaneous tracks: the legal procedural timeline and the internal firm workflow. The template handles both.
Procedural dates — DIB Submitted, Appealed to ALJ, EF Received, Hearing Date — are the external record, the spine of the file. These are non-negotiable. But the internal dates — Welcome Call Date, Rep Filed Date, RH Review/Call, Attorney Pre-Hearing Call — are the operational discipline that keeps a case from stalling between procedural milestones. A case that reached ALJ status six months ago but has no documented RH Review/Call is a case at risk.
The financial structure follows the same bifurcated logic. Authorized DIB Fee and Authorized SSI Fee represent what SSA has approved. DIB Received and SSI Received represent what the firm actually collected. Tracking both is not redundant — the difference identifies outstanding balances and flags Fee Petition Needed cases before they slip.
Intake to Close
The intake layer collects the durable identifiers: SSN, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Mother's Maiden Name, Citizenship. These aren't CRM niceties — they're required for SSA representative filings and identity verification across the life of a case that may span three to four years.
Medical Conditions, AOD (Alleged Onset Date), and Primary Care Physician Info sit in the same layer because they define the legal theory of the claim. PRW (Past Relevant Work) and DLW (Date Last Worked) establish the vocational dimension. A case's stage and its medical/vocational picture must be readable in the same view.
The close-out fields — Approved Date, Approved Stage, Award Letter Received, Fee Petition Submitted — document the resolution. Knowing that a case closed favorably at ALJ, with fee petition submitted but not yet resolved, is different from knowing that an AC-approved case has its award letter and the fee has cleared.
Retention Date marks when the file can be archived. Until that date, it stays live.