Reports holds the home's formal regulatory reports — Regulation 44 independent-visit reviews and Regulation 45 six-monthly quality-of-care reviews. Both run through the same four-step lifecycle, and it is the lifecycle, not the report type, that most people need to understand.

Reg 44 takes a shorter route. There is no Submit for review step: the home attaches the visitor's report, a manager writes their comments into it and uploads it, and ARC emails the commented report back to the visitor. Its cards use their own badges. See Regulation 44 visits. The rest of this article describes the shared lifecycle as Reg 45 uses it.

Reports belong to the home, not to a young person. You will find them in the sidebar under Compliance.

The four states

Badge	What it means	Who moves it on
Compiling	Being written. Editable.	Any home member
In review	Handed to a manager. Still editable.	Any home member, via Submit for review
Submitted	Manager has signed it. Frozen.	Manager only, via Review & submit
Retained	Kept as the permanent artefact.	Manager only, via Retain

The state is worked out from the timestamps on the record rather than stored as a word, so it cannot drift out of step with what actually happened.

Compile one

Select Record Reg 44 visit or New Reg 45 report. Both buttons sit at the top right of the Reports page.
Fill in the form and save it. For Reg 45, leave the title blank if you want — ARC generates one from the period. For Reg 44, ARC names it from the visit month.
ARC compiles it straight away. Creating the record gathers its source context there and then: for Reg 44 the home's current published Statement of Purpose and a count of children in placement; for Reg 45 the period's incidents, physical interventions, missing-from-care episodes, complaints and children in placement.

That snapshot is deliberately point-in-time. If a source record changes afterwards, the compiled copy keeps what it gathered. Saving an edit while the report is still Compiling or In review refreshes the snapshot; once submitted it cannot be refreshed at all.

Send it for review

Select Submit for review. The badge changes to In review.

Any home member can do this — you do not need to be a manager to write one or to hand it on. Submitting something that has already moved past Compiling is refused with "Only a report being compiled can be sent for review."

The manager review gate

Only a manager can pass this gate. On an In review card a manager sees Review & submit, which opens a dialog: "Record the registered manager's response, then submit. Once submitted the report is immutable."

The manager fills in Manager's response and an optional Review note, then selects Submit report. Anyone else is refused with "Only managers can review and submit reports."

This happens once. A second attempt returns "This report has already been submitted."

What "submitted" locks

The Edit button disappears and an Immutable padlock badge appears on the card. Behind it, edits are refused with "A submitted report is immutable and cannot be edited." and a re-compile with "A submitted report cannot be re-compiled."

Reg 45 has one further effect at this moment: each action arising becomes a task. See Regulation 45 reports. For Reg 44, sending the commented report is this moment, and it emails it to the visitor.

Retain

Retain is the last step, and it is also manager-only and once-only. It marks the record as the permanent, versioned artefact. Something that has not been submitted cannot be retained — "Only a submitted report can be retained."

The PDF, and what ARC does not do

PDF streams the compiled document at any stage. ARC compiles it; ARC does not submit it anywhere. Sending it on is yours to do.

Due dates and versions

Set a next-due date and leave it unsubmitted past that date, and the card carries an Overdue badge. Every save bumps the v number on the card, and each version is kept.