Somebody asks for a change to how they work. You say yes, or you say let me look into it, and then the week happens. Three weeks later nobody can say what was decided, when anyone last spoke to them, or whether the person in the next department who asked for the same thing got the same answer.
That gap is what this workbook closes. It is a 14-tab Excel and Google Sheets system for running and documenting the ADA interactive process — from the moment a request arrives to the review date that keeps it current — and it computes the two things a case is actually lost on, instead of just storing the dates you typed in.
Which of your open requests has gone quiet?
The accommodation trackers we compared store dates. This one subtracts them.
The Request Log reads the most recent dated entry for each request out of the Contact Log, works out how long ago that was, and says so in words: In contact, Watch, Silent, or No contact logged yet, color-coded to match. An open request nobody has written anything down on is the failure that is cheapest to fix today and hardest to explain a year later, and it is the one thing a shared inbox will never surface on its own.
Every threshold it flags against is a cell you set on the Setup tab, labeled as your own policy target. EEOC enforcement guidance sets no fixed private-sector clock for answering a reasonable accommodation request, so this workbook does not invent one — and nothing in it is hardcoded.
Did the same kind of request get opposite answers?
The Consistency and Parity Check is not typed. It counts approvals and denials by functional limitation area, and where the answers went both ways it names both decision-makers. Beside it, each person’s approval rate is set against everyone else’s, with their own decisions subtracted from the rate they are compared against — so the comparison is honest rather than circular. Below a minimum sample it says “Too few to compare” rather than reaching a verdict on one or two cases.
A difference is not a fault. An unexplained one is worth knowing about before somebody else finds it.
What a denial file needs, scored
An approval needs almost nothing on file beyond what you did. A denial is where the gaps show, and the one that is missing is never missing on purpose. The Decision Record scores each denial against five — essential job functions identified, alternatives explored with the employee, the basis actually recorded, the employee notified in writing and dated, and a reconsideration route explained — and writes out, in plain words, the ones that are not there.
It records the process, never the medical detail
The template you would get from a one-shot AI prompt typically puts a Diagnosis column in the main sheet. This one is built so that column cannot exist: there is no diagnosis field, no condition field, no provider-note field and nowhere to attach medical paperwork, anywhere in the 14 tabs or the 151 fillable fields.
That is a design choice, not an oversight. Medical information belongs in a separate confidential file, and this workbook is not that file — it says so on its face, the bundle ships a cover sheet and access log for the file that is, and the included letter to a treating provider asks about functional limitations and restrictions while telling them, in writing, not to send a diagnosis back.
None of which makes the workbook casual reading. What it does hold — who asked, for what, in which functional limitation area — is still confidential. Keep it on a need-to-know footing with the separate confidential file the included cover sheet sets up, rather than in the general personnel file.
The Anonymized Trends tab follows the same discipline in arithmetic rather than in good intentions: any group smaller than the threshold you set reads hidden, cell by cell, so a summary you hand to leadership cannot quietly re-identify one person.
The eight stages, dated
The Interactive Process Steps tab carries one row per request and one dated column per stage, so the process is a record rather than a recollection:
- Request recognized — the day somebody asked, however informally
- Interactive process begun — the day you opened the conversation
- Information requested (functional limits only) — what the person can and cannot do, never why
- Options explored and one chosen — what was considered, and what was picked
- Accommodation implemented — the day it was actually in place
- Effectiveness monitored — the day you checked whether it worked
- Confidentiality and file separation verified — the day you confirmed the medical paperwork is not in the personnel file
- Audit and review complete — the day the case was closed out and reviewed
One more column is a gate, not a date: it will not say a decision may be recorded until stages 2 and 4 are dated and the discussion participants are named.
The stages are taught in full in the second of the two 16-page guides in the bundle, Running the Interactive Process; the first, Start Here, walks the folder tab by tab.
Two clocks, both computed
An accommodation is not finished the day it goes in. The Review and Retention Register derives the next review date from the implementation date plus the interval you configured, surfaces the reviews that have quietly passed, and runs the records-retention clock alongside it — counted from the federal floor at 29 C.F.R. 1602.14 — with a switch on the Setup tab that puts every record on HOLD the day a charge or a complaint lands, and stops the retention clock until it is resolved.
Try it on one request, free
If you have one request open right now and want to see the shape of the record before you buy anything, the free Single Accommodation Request Log is one tab that documents one case end to end: the eight stages as dated rows, the contacts underneath them, the decision and what was actually provided, and a review date you type in. It opens on the same worked example this workbook ships with, it carries the same rule — no diagnosis field, no condition field, it is not the medical file — and it is a direct download with no email and no account.
What it deliberately does not do is compute across requests. One case does not need a silence flag, a parity check or a retention clock; twelve do. That is the whole difference between the free sheet and this workbook.
Own it, don’t rent it
The dedicated platforms in this category — Disclo, AbsenceSoft, Sedgwick ADALink, Reliance Matrix and HR Acuity — are all quote-only: when we checked in September 2026, not one of them published a price, and every one of them routes a 20-to-400-person employer through a sales call. Between a free blank form and a sales call, there was nothing in between. This is one file, bought once, used for every request you handle — no seats, no per-employee fee, nothing to renew.
