A New Way to Synthesize, Visualize, and Analyze Family Office Data

With reporting at the center of nearly every family office software buying decision, the Archway Platform has offered a robust suite of reporting tools since its earliest days.

Launching with a raw database export capability, a handful of in-app performance visualizations, and roughly two dozen statement-style reports, the Archway Platform’s reporting foundation was set out of the gates.

Within the first five years of being on the market, the solution’s feature set quickly grew to include over 40 distinct reporting options.

By 2009, the Archway Platform featured more than 90 reports within its standard report library and users were first introduced to the concept of dynamic dashboards for quick, on-screen consumption of data. In 2012, the platform’s first standalone client portal application, dubbed FOIL, was released.

Over the course of the next decade, the standard report library ballooned to more than 200 parameter-driven reports, thousands of queries were built, dozens of dashboard inserts were rolled out, data grid customization was implemented throughout the application, and the Archway Client Portal was further enhanced to be an on-demand, mobile reporting tool for end-clients and family members.

Together, the Archway Platform’s standard report library, data queries, dashboards, custom data grids, and client portal served as a powerful, multi-faceted reporting engine.

But with an eye towards innovation, it was always clear that reporting is a function of our solution that can constantly be built upon: More metrics, more insights, more flexibility.

And so, in 2023, we introduced the Archway Platform’s report composer tool.

A unique, interactive reporting experience, the report composer functionality allows family offices to comprehensively analyze their enterprise data in a user-driven, self-service manner. Both elegant and powerful, the latest tool in the Archway Platform’s reporting suite grants nontechnical users the ability to create bespoke data views that deliver better insights and better reporting outputs for their needs.

Pulling from the Archway Platform’s vast database, family offices can assemble custom reports using raw data related to accounts payable, general ledger detail, investor activity, transactions, open positions, alternative assets, and other financial information.

But perhaps most important: The tool is inherently designed with versatility in mind. Featuring a drag-and-drop interface that enables users to build and edit custom reports in real-time, the report composer allows users to add, remove, and reorder data points—all without coding or custom development. And since the tool is embedded directly within the Archway Platform, users can dynamically group, sort, and filter their data based on their existing user-defined data classifications.

Using visualizations and charting tools like pie, bar, and line charts, users can further transform their data into meaningful analytics that help tell a story of trends, comparisons, and measurements.

Although a sophisticated reporting tool by nature, the Archway Platform’s report composer capability offers family offices yet another reporting mechanism built on the principle of simplexity: A simple interface that allows users to access and synthesize complex financial data on demand.

The report composer tool serves an important role in how family offices and advisors to high-net-worth families compile, communicate, and analyze their clients’ financial information, and seamlessly complements the existing suite of Archway Platform reporting capabilities.

Interested in seeing the report composer in action? Request a call with a member of the Archway Family Office Services team to schedule your live tour of the Archway Platform.

How Family Offices Use the Archway Platform℠ to Create Bespoke Client Reports

Every family office professional understands the necessity of balance sheets and income statements: They serve a fundamental purpose in understanding an individual’s financial position. And, fortunately, there are many family office software and service providers that can produce them.

But conventional financial statements rarely provide the level of insight needed to fully satisfy bespoke client requests.

As you’ve likely encountered, assembling non-traditional reports often requires unique attributes or classifications, custom data groupings, and client-specific data points. Moreover, if the request involves uncommon assets or personalized investment frameworks, compiling the data can require a heavy lift.

In our 20+ years working with family offices and advisors to high-net-worth families, we’ve received plenty of unique reporting requests, and we know how important it is to present complex—sometimes irregular—investment data in a simple, yet meaningful report.

Combining the robustness of the Archway Platform’s reporting engine with the flexibility of its user-defined data attributes and classifications, we’ve had the opportunity to help our clients harness the power of the platform to craft creative, tailored reporting outputs for their end-clients.

Whether you’re interested in building a report that compares household expenses across multiple properties, analyzes clean energy investments, or summarizes artwork valuations, the Archway Platform’s 200+ standard reports and multi-pronged reporting capabilities can help you quickly produce an easy-to-consume report.

Here are five unique reports, built using the Archway Platform, that break the boundaries of traditional family office reporting and deliver creative, tailored financial insights.

Inspiration #1. Paintings by historical era.

While it’s well known that artwork is a commonly held asset amongst family offices, the asset type tends to lack influence and inclusion in the development of family office technology and reporting standards. But given its prominence in high-net-worth investment portfolios, artwork—like any other asset—deserves specialized reporting.

Using the Archway Platform’s flexible, parameter-driven reporting templates, users can customize the view to see purchase price, change in market value, and unrealized gains / losses across the owner’s fine art collection. Perhaps more importantly, they can create custom attributes such as artist, historical era, region of origin, or art consultant—ultimately, allowing family offices to create a wholly unique way to consume artwork-related financial insights.

Inspiration #2. Profit comparison by horse.

Perhaps not as widely held as fine art, thoroughbred racing talent still requires an impressive amount of asset management. Leveraging the Archway Platform’s ability to create a fully customized general ledger, family offices can categorize and group expenses, measure their costs against equestrian-generated income, and compare profits across horses with simplicity and ease.

Inspiration #3. Primary residence expenses.

When you operate multiple households or properties, it can be difficult to compile the various expenses associated with each location. Spanning across utility and tax bills to insurance, property upkeep, and household staff payroll costs, it’s critical to know how much money is being spent on each property.

Using custom general ledger accounts and flexible reporting templates, family offices can succinctly compare property ownership costs across multi-level, user-defined expense categories.

Inspiration #4. Rental property income.

Like personal properties, many family offices hold a variety of rental properties. As a result, from time to time, you may be asked how much rental income is being generated—and which property is earning the most.

Using a combination of customized general ledger accounts and property-based portfolios, the Archway Platform’s reporting suite allows users to quickly produce a consolidated net income report that displays revenue and general operating expenses by individual rental property.

Inspiration #5. Impact report.

New investment frameworks—whether generally accepted or internally developed—are routinely popping up in the family office arena. Having the flexibility to infinitely tag assets with unique attributes gives family office professionals the opportunity to slice-and-dice data in line with the overarching investment strategy.

Using the Archway Platform’s multi-level grouping mechanisms, you can take multiple frameworks, such as foreign investment allocation laid over the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, to present a unique view of investment impact across regions, areas of development, and environmental, social, and governance initiatives.

To learn more about how the Archway Platform’s powerful reporting engine can help your family office deliver tailored financial insights, check out a demo or schedule a call with a member of the Archway Family Office Services team.

What to Look for When Selecting Client Portal Technology for Your Family Office

Client portals have taken many shapes throughout the years. With nearly every modern financial institution offering clients some form of digital access to their financial information, online portal technology is a far cry from its infancy.

The same can be said for family office client portals.

To paint the picture, let's take a look at the evolution of the Archway Platform^SM and its portal technology.

Originally introduced in the early 2000s, our initial portal concept was referred to simply as Investor Login. Limited to a handful of configuration options, the Archway Platform's Investor Login served as an online access point for individual users to view performance returns, capital activity, fees, and a select number of reports.

Since those early days, we have rolled out several iterations of the portal using a combination of client requests, internal feedback, and a healthy dose of innovative thinking.

Which brings us to today, where the Archway Client Portal gives end-clients on-demand access to an interactive, mobile financial reporting tool.

Based on our experience developing and enhancing our own family office software and client portal, here are several key financial insights you should consider looking for when selecting client portal technology for your family office or financial institution.

1. Consolidated net worth

This seemingly simple request can actually be one of the most difficult to questions to answer, especially when it comes to high-net-worth (HNW) individuals.

Your family office’s client portal should be able to—at a minimum—tell your end-client exactly how much they are worth, inclusive of cash, investments, property, and indirect exposure to additional holdings, at the click of a button.

We recommend looking for family office portal technology that can:

• Consolidate net worth across entities, portfolios, and assets
• Compute net worth based on direct and indirect holdings
• Show net worth changes over time based on investment performance, purchases, sales, contributions, withdrawals, accruals, and other types of activity

2. Aggregated holdings

Having the means to answer the question “How much am I worth?” is powerful, but being able to show the assets that make up your client’s net worth can have an even greater appeal.

A standard family office client portal should allow your end-clients to view individual holdings. An elite family office client portal should allow your end-clients to consolidate, group, filter, and categorize their holdings in ways that are meaningful to their understanding.

We recommend looking for family office portal technology that can:

• Aggregate holdings data across all types of assets such as equities, bonds, cash, real estate, personal assets, and alternative investments like private equity, hedge funds, and cryptocurrency
• Assess changes in market values over time
• Maintain user-defined asset categories or groupings

3. Investment performance

Being able to analyze investment performance falls into family office reporting 101—and serves as a key capability of any financial reporting tool. But to really hit the mark, a family office client portal should feature the ability to attribute performance to factors like asset type, portfolio manager, strategy, or region.

We recommend looking for family office portal technology that can:

• Render performance data in both graphic and tabular formats
• Compare performance against benchmarks
• Measure performance over time, across multiple periods
• Use multiple performance calculations such as time-weighted and money-weighted returns

4. Cash balances

Understanding how much cash is available at any point in time is vital to a client’s financial health, particularly amongst individuals that have high transaction volumes or large purchase amounts.

Even for clients whose bills are paid by family office staff or an outsourced bill payment service, it’s always helpful to know how much money is available for day-to-day expenses.

We recommend looking for family office portal technology that can:

• Pull in daily cash activity from banks, custodians, and brokerage firms
• Provide on-demand cash balances as of a point in time
• Display cash flows and changes in cash balances over time

5. Expense and spending detail

Speaking of expenses, it can be easy for a family office or HNW advisor to focus their client portal search on tools that primarily show investment-related detail. But there can be tremendous value in being able to share accounting and investment data within a single portal.

By selecting a tool that can summarize expenses, identify spending habits, and even compare outflow detail against budgets and cash inflows, end-clients are able to be more in control of their recurring cash flow.

We recommend looking for family office portal technology that can:

• Categorize expenses based on user-defined expense categories
• Display summary-level expense data as well as underlying detail such as vendors, payment terms, and invoices

Beyond financial analytics and insights, we recommend assessing for other features as well, including things like bill payment approval functionality, document management, and customizable reporting dashboards.

To find tips, tricks, and best practices for adopting a client portal in your family office, check out Best Practices to Transition Your Family Office into the Age of Digital Reporting.

A family office client portal featuring valuable financial insights can introduce a new approach to traditional family office reporting.

Better yet, when offered as an interactive, user-controlled reporting experience, family offices can engage end-clients in ways that far surpass anything paper reports provide to create contemporary, meaningful connections with current and future wealth owners.

But if you’re still debating the merits of a client portal for your family office, start by checking out the Archway Client Portal’s flexible reporting dashboards, comprehensive financial insights, and easy-to-use tools. Operating as a seamless extension of the Archway Platform, our client portal can serve as the link you need between your family office staff and the family members they serve.