# Using Otto > The product half of Otto Academy: a task-by-task guide to running a collections firm on Otto — sign-in and the home screen, users and roles, client rule sets, cases, the mailroom, Rights Radar, workflows, litigation, trust accounting, and the audit trail. Access requires a passphrase from your firm. - Source: https://ottoforfirms.com/academy/using-otto/ - Publisher: Otto — https://ottoforfirms.com - Updated: 2026-09-01 How a firm runs on Otto, from first sign-in onward — setting up users and clients, the daily work, litigation and the money, and where the audit file comes from. 13 lessons · about 140 minutes · passphrase required > **Passphrase required.** This section covers our software rather than the industry, so it is the only part of the Academy behind a passphrase. Everything about how collections works stays open. There is no account to create. ## Getting set up Signing in, adding your people, and configuring each client's rules — the work that happens before the first account is touched. - Sign in and learn the workspace — Sign in with Microsoft or an email, learn the sidebar that maps the whole product, open the ⌘K palette, and ask Otto your first question from Home. (10 min) - Add users and set roles — Invite a member in three fields, choose one of five roles, and see what a role changes at the moment of action — reveal, review, print, export. (10 min) - Configure a client's rule set — Open a client's record, read the rule table and its Source column, add a rule with its source attached, set the firm-wide floor, and preview the client's own Glass view. (11 min) ## The working day The queue, the case file, the mailroom, the screen that listens for consumer rights, and the automation that runs between them. - Start the day in My Work — Where tasks come from, what the engine removed before you saw anything, and how to open an account and disposition the call. (12 min) - Work a case — Read the pills, triage a batch in bulk, acknowledge the advisory, then use the Overview, Compliance, Money, and Files tabs — the controls live on the account, not in a manual. (14 min) - Process the mail — Classify a document with its consequence stated on screen, send uncertain matches to exceptions, and track outbound letters through to proof of mailing. (10 min) - Let Rights Radar listen — The screen that hears a dispute, a cease request, or an attorney's name in ordinary speech — and has the hold on the account before a person could. (8 min) - Create and run a workflow — Describe a procedure in a sentence and Otto drafts it; run it scoped to a case, and read the work plans and controls that run without you. (11 min) ## Rules, money, and the courtroom Enforcement at the moment of action, litigation behind the client's gate, and the trust discipline behind every dollar. - Rules before actions — What it means for a client rule to run before an action is taken rather than in next month's report — and where to watch one refuse. (12 min) - Take a matter through litigation — Run the week from the counters, clear the suit-filing gate, track service and e-filing, and keep judgment accounts moving. (12 min) - Run the money — Read the three balances and the three-way reconciliation, watch what NSF does on its own, and approve a remittance run a human has looked at. (11 min) ## Proving it The reports clients actually ask for, and the audit file the work leaves behind. - Deliver the reports — The library of what is owed to whom and when, generating one on demand, and a run history kept exactly as it was delivered. (9 min) - Answer an audit — Scope the append-only trail, export the package, and know what the firm holds and until when. (11 min) ## About Otto Otto publishes this reference and builds the software underneath it: case management for US creditor-side collections law firms, where a client's written rules run before an action is taken rather than in next month's report. - [Talk to us](https://ottoforfirms.com/contact/) - [See what it costs](https://ottoforfirms.com/pricing/) --- This is an informational reference, not legal advice, and using it creates no attorney-client relationship. Limitations periods turn on facts this page cannot know — which state's law governs, the contract type, when the claim accrued, and whether anything tolled or revived it. Confirm against the primary source and your own counsel before acting.