Staff write what they did in their own words: referred her to the debt advice team, signposted him to the food bank. That sentence is a perfectly good clinical note and completely invisible to reporting, because nothing structured was created. Six months later, the service cannot show the referral ever happened.
The save-time prompt closes that gap. When something you have just written reads like a referral or a signpost that already happened, Joy offers to log it as a structured record — once, at the moment you save, with no extra screens to go and find.
What you will see
After you save a note, record, appointment note or similar, a dialog may appear titled Log this referral or signpost? (or Log these referrals or signposts? when there is more than one). It explains itself:
Your note about [client] reads like this already happened. Logging records it for reporting — no messages are sent and nothing reaches the receiving organisation.
Underneath is one line per thing it spotted, each with a tick box, and two buttons:
Log it (or Log selected when there are several) — creates the records.
Not now — creates nothing at all and closes the prompt.
When Joy is confident of the service it asks straight out: Did you mean [service] — [provider]? with Yes, that's it and No, show others. When it is not sure, it offers a shortlist under No exact service match. Did you mean one of these?, or lets you pick the service yourself with Choose the service. You can only log against a service that is offered — the prompt never invents one.
Confirming shows Logged — [n] record(s) added. Nothing was sent.
What it does, and what it definitely does not do
It creates service referral or signpost records against the client, of exactly the kind you would have created by hand on the Services tab. That is all.
It does not:
send any message, email, text or WhatsApp to the client;
send anything to the receiving organisation — a logged referral is a record of something you already did elsewhere;
create a second note or duplicate your text;
change your note. Your words are saved either way, whichever button you press.
Not now is always safe. Nothing is created, and you can still log the referral by hand later.
Why it sometimes stays silent
The prompt is deliberately quiet. It only appears when the wording says something already happened, and it steps back whenever there is a risk of logging something false. It will not offer anything when:
the note has no referral or signpost wording in it;
the wording is about a referral coming in — reason for referral, thank you for your referral, referred to us;
the referral was not made — declined the referral, did not want a referral;
the wording is historical — previously referred, previous referral;
the wording is a plan rather than an event — refer her to X next week is an instruction, not something done;
the note contains a link. A pasted link usually means quoted or forwarded text, so the whole note is left alone;
a structured referral or signpost for the same service already exists within 14 days either side — it assumes you have already logged it;
the same thing was offered somewhere else in the last 24 hours;
you have already been prompted three times in the last 30 minutes. Writing up a busy clinic will not turn into a stream of dialogs.
Because of all that, treat the prompt as a helpful catch, not a guarantee. If you referred someone and no prompt appeared, log it yourself.
Logging one by hand instead
Open the client's Services tab and add the referral or signpost there — see How to log a referral that already happened and How to log a signpost that already happened. It produces exactly the same record the prompt would have created.