I’m a CPA. I launched my firm in 2010. I always wanted to add financial planning and wealth management when the timing was right. We’ve expanded tremendously since then. We started out with about $4 million in AUM in 2016. We now manage about $130 million. Hopefully, we can keep that trajectory.
CRM / Reporting / Portfolio Management / Trading / Rebalancing: Advyzon
We use Advyzon for CRM, portfolio management, rebalancing and other applications. We’ve found it to be an extraordinarily helpful application, which has greatly improved our efficiency and productivity.
It’s not quite an all-in-one like you would get from Envestnet, Orion or Morningstar, but it does have various uses.
We’ve been with them for nearly a year. I’m not sugarcoating how positively the software has impacted our operations. We mean it sincerely. I’m feeling the benefit of it and have been for a while.
The rebalancing goes hand-in-hand with the trading. The rebalancing component of the software will generate trade files that you can easily upload to the custodian. We’ve found that to be a massive timesaver.
Portfolio Analytics: Kwanti
Advyzon interfaces with an investment analysis tool, Kwanti, which we’ve used for about five years. It’s efficient and good for productivity. It’s easy to use and understand. You can create reports for clients in a relatively simple manner. I don’t spend a ton of time on it other than reviewing what my team has compiled.
Financial Planning: eMoney / Envestnet | MoneyGuidePro
Financial planning is the center of our practice and the core of our work. Wealth management is not just managing investments. It’s overseeing a client’s entire net worth and entire basket of assets and liabilities. That’s financial planning.
We use two programs simply because specific clients are more appropriate for one software or another. We find particular clients are better suited to Envestnet | MoneyGuidePro, and we find eMoney better serves other clients. We’re trained on both. Neither software is terribly complicated. Both are easy to use and understand. Both integrate well with the rest of the stack and with many other applications.
Document Management: Microsoft Dynamics 365 / ShareFile by Citrix Systems
Our email and documentation are through Microsoft Dynamics 365. We use ShareFile by Citrix Systems as a portal.
Estate Planning: FP Alpha
We’ve gotten to the point where we’re using FP Alpha for the last two months of the year. We’re running an income analysis. We use it as a tool to determine when it’s appropriate to start claiming Social Security. One of the other primary uses is determining if and how much to do with annual Roth conversions. The trick is that you don’t want to report too much income where a client suddenly must pay more for Medicare supplements, be moved into a different tax bracket, or what have you. FP Alpha is perfect for those applications. My tax director is now directly involved with using that software for that purpose. It integrates well with the rest of the stack. I’m not going to put on a whole ad for FP Alpha, but suffice it to say we have a niche use for it, and we find it exceptional for that purpose.
As told to reporter Rob Burgess and edited for length and clarity. The views and opinions are not representative of the views of WealthManagement.com.
Want to tell us what’s in your wealthstack? Contact Rob Burgess at [email protected].
