Learn How an Enhanced Bill Pay Service Can Help You Create a Better Client Experience

Over the years, the term family office has come to represent a variety of organizations. The traditional line of thinking equates to a single family office, where one high-net-worth, often multi-generational, family carries the overhead costs of a dedicated accounting, investment and operations staff.

However, more recently, the term has expanded to include multi-family offices working with unrelated families and high-net-worth divisions of private banks that cater to the needs of wealthy families.

Regardless of how you define a family office, these firms tend to provide a core suite of services that may include investment strategy and measurement, management and client reporting, general bookkeeping, specialized accounting including partnership and trust accounting, tax preparation, and personal expense management.

While any of these services can be outsourced, we commonly see family offices seeking third-party support of one service in particular: personal expense management.

So, what is personal expense management?

Personal expense management traditionally encapsulates bill payment, bank account reconciliation, credit card analysis, vendor management and expense and cash flow reporting.

At this point, you might be wondering what the difference is between personal expense management and more commonly advertised bill payment services?

In general, personal expense management is a more comprehensive set of services that includes enhanced versions of traditional bill payment services alongside white glove concierge services and enriched financial reporting.

Lastly, why do family offices seek to outsource this particular function? For most, it’s a matter of capacity.

Personal expense management is a time-consuming set of operations, especially for family offices serving multiple generations and/or clients. Adding more households increases complexity and, subsequently, the amount of time spent paying bills, reconciling transactions and compiling reports.

Further compounding the situation, some family offices don’t have dedicated accounts payable staff. As a result, the workload is spread across the team or performed by accountants that could be completing more value-added tasks.

To help keep staff focused on nurturing client relationships and growing their business, these firms look to partner with a trusted service organization like Archway Family Office Services, where a dedicated team of operations and accounting professionals are able to absorb the operational intricacies of the family office’s bill payment and expense reporting processes.

But what about your end-clients? How does an outsourced personal expense management service add value for them?

High-Touch Client Service Professionals

Client service is a critical component to any business relationship, especially when your end-clients expect direct access to the individuals delivering the service. When outsourcing bill payment functions to a dedicated personal expense management team, your clients gain access to a group of service professionals operating as a direct extension of your own team.

More importantly, your clients will have the opportunity to interact with individuals who are exclusively focused on the nuances of their expense trends, bill payment requirements and reporting expectations, allowing your own internal teams to concentrate on the strategic, relationship-building discussions and action items.

Turnkey Digital Engagement Tools

Over-the-phone approvals and checks signed by hand are functional, but is there a more efficient alternative? We believe so.

At Archway Family Office Services we’ve built proprietary, cutting-edge technology that automates and digitizes historically manual accounts payable functions. As a result, our personal expense management service includes access to a customizable workflow tool that notifies you and your end-clients when a bill is pending approval, and allows you to quickly and easily submit digital approvals through a secure client portal with the click of a button.

This ultimately translates to a modern, technology-based client experience that doesn’t require technical resources on your end.

Secure, Trusted Operational Processes

As with any type of outsourced service, your third-party partner needs to be dependable and proven. This has become more relevant than ever in the wake of COVID-19 and the remote work environment that followed.

At Archway Family Office Services, we put oversight and security at the forefront of our solutions. Featuring dedicated P.O. boxes, trained staff and a time-tested technology infrastructure, your clients will benefit from decades of bank-grade security assessments, product development and process refinement, taking the onus off of your firm to check these boxes.

Bespoke Cash Flow and Expense Reporting

Most bill payment services can guarantee that your client’s bills will be paid correctly and on time. However, we recommend looking for service organizations that go beyond issuing payments and reconciling transactions—organizations that provide meaningful insights into your client’s bill payment and expense data.

Through our personal expense management service, Archway Family Office Services offers online interactive dashboards and easy-to-access reporting that depicts spending habits, credit card activity, cash flow, payment details and vendor records so that you and your clients have full transparency into the inflows and outflows of their accounts.

Having this level of detail accessible at their fingertips ultimately puts your clients in total control of their spending and empowers you to have well-informed conversations about their complete financial picture.

While outsourcing your firm’s bill payment and expense reporting operations provides a degree of continuity, some firms prefer to manage these processes in-house.

Today, hundreds of family offices, CPA firms and private banks are using family office accounting software solutions like the Archway Platform to deliver a superior personal expense management experience to their clients. Through the platform’s purpose-built tools, users are able to store digital invoices, track bills, reconcile bank accounts, manage workflow, cut checks and deliver comprehensive expense and cash flow reporting.

And for those who are somewhere in the middle, our flexible suite of accounts payable technology and outsourced services enable us to offer a hybrid model that allows clients to manage key functions of the bill payment process while leveraging Archway resources to manage time-consuming, repetitive tasks like collecting invoices and entering bills.

Regardless of your operational preferences, Archway Family Office Services can tailor a personal expense management offering that is unique to your firm, your processes and your clients.

Learn more about our award-winning Personal Expense Management service and how Archway Family Office Services can help you offer a world-class bill payment and cash flow reporting solution to your sophisticated high-net-worth clients.

Tools That Can Help You Create Consolidated Financial Reports for Your High-Net-Worth Clients

Wealth management professionals are hungry for a more efficient way to run financial reports.

A way that helps them control the narrative of their client’s financial story using reports that are unique, but intertwined. A way that lets them co-mingle accounting and investment detail, without pulling data from multiple systems. A way that minimizes the reliance on a single individual to prepare spreadsheet-based reporting, and opens the door to collaboration. A way that reduces manual touchpoints, which ultimately reduces errors.

That said, there’s a lot of information out there when it comes to client reporting for high-net-worth families and individuals. What types of reports to provide, client reporting best practices, even client reporting examples.

But the real question is how. How do you create recurring client reports in a way that doesn’t involve spreadsheets, institutional knowledge and dependency on manual processes?

Having spent time on the Archway Family Office Services Client Relations team and, more recently, as a Relationship Manager and de facto client training guru, I’ve done my fair share of reporting consultations and implementations for our family office clients. With those experiences top of mind, here’s a list of tools that exist within the Archway Platform that can help you automate your client reporting process.

Tools to Help You Automate Your Family Office Reporting

1. Report Library
2. Report Packaging and Branding Tool
3. Report Scheduling Tool
4. Report Delivery Tool

1. Report Library

If you work for or advise a wealthy family, chances are you know the pain of stitching together reports from multiple systems. A balance sheet from the accounting system, a performance report or two from the portfolio management tool, a private equity overview that you built in Excel and a collection of statements downloaded from various custodians and investment managers.

There’s no flow. Each report is formatted different than the next. The naming conventions and asset categories vary from source to source. And you’re tasked with compiling all of it together into some semblance of a cohesive report package every quarter.

Here’s the catch: your job doesn’t have to be this hard.

Archway’s family office software solution is built to provide a seamless reporting experience for your end-clients and internal stakeholders.

But to do that, we have to start with the database. Enter the Archway Platform’s core general ledger.

It’s important because this means that as the platform is receiving nightly financial data – think investment buy/sell activity, account balances and dividend/interest payments – from external data sources, the system is normalizing the data and automatically booking the journal entries to the general ledger.

Now extrapolate that out to the other wealth operations your firm performs: bill payment, invoicing, cash management, transferring and gifting of assets, trust accounting and other business functions. As each of these tasks is being performed, the system is filing away the accounting records for reporting purposes.

So, when it comes time to configure a report package, whether it be for an individual, a household or an internal employee, you’re able to leverage that complete set of accounting and investment data. This gives you the opportunity to build custom report packages that can span from traditional financials like balance sheets and income statements to allocation and exposure reports, performance analyses, alternative investment summaries, holdings snapshots and other financial reports.

And while the Archway Platform’s report library offers hundreds of reporting options, we also give you the ability to include third-party documents like market research, commentary and disclosure statements – all of which can be cleanly packaged together alongside system-generated reports.

2. Report Packaging and Branding Tool

To really automate the report preparation process, you need a report packaging tool, which is to say a tool that lets you pre-configure a collection of reports, divide them into user-defined sections, put them into a specific order, apply your own branding and then save all of these selections to use on a recurring basis.

In the Archway Platform, you can set up as many report packages as needed.

As an example, you could create a unique set of financial reports for each generation:

• Gen 1 – A report package for the family office principal that provides a holistic view of the family’s finances and delivers insights into investment strategies, manager performance and net worth
• Gen 2 – A report package that is distributed to his children representing their pro-rata share of the family’s assets alongside their personal household expenses and portfolio performance
• Gen 3 – A report package that is distributed to his grandchildren representing their trusts and personal assets

As an extension of these packages, we oftentimes see clients create a “client-facing version” and an “internal QA version.” This allows family offices to create a polished, professional report package for the end-client and a detailed, line-by-line report package for their internal reporting analysts. In turn, the family office can make sure that the visual, client-friendly reports are an accurate representation of the underlying detail.

Plus, by housing your report operations inside of a centralized tool, you minimize the impact of employee turnover and loss of institutional knowledge. If someone takes a leave of absence or departs entirely, you can still access the report packages within the Archway Platform, which means your quarterly reporting can continue to roll out uninterrupted.

3. Report Scheduling Tool

If you have access to an extensive library of reports and you’ve gone through the process of creating pre-defined report packages, you certainly don’t want to have to manually kick off each report package when quarter-end rolls around.

The Archway Platform’s report scheduling tool eliminates those extra clicks, thus creating more efficiency for you and your team. Specifically, the tool can be used to create recurring report schedules based on dates and rolling calendar periods.

As a result, you can produce multiple report packages at a frequency of your choosing through a one-time setup.

4. Report Delivery Tool

The obvious benefit of a report delivery tool is that it electronically sends the reports for you.

The less obvious benefit is that report delivery tools aren’t limited to the physical distribution of reports. In fact, report delivery can be broadened to include digital reporting tools and online document portals.

The Archway Client Portal can be used for all of the above. Whether you’re simply seeking a secure way to share reporting documents or an interactive reporting experience, the Archway Client Portal can be tailored to meet the needs of your firm and your clients.

Additionally, the Archway Platform’s report delivery tool can help automate the report review process.

Using integrated workflow capabilities, the Archway Platform can be configured such that once reporting has been run and passed through a preliminary review, a notification can be sent via text or email to a designated user for final approval. Once approved, reports can be made available to clients in the client portal or sent electronically.

It’s also worth noting that the same report delivery tool can be used to deliver operational reports directly to an internal server so that extended teams within your organization can access system-generated files and reports.

For example, if your family office oversees multiple households, each with their own executive assistant that is responsible for managing their respective household’s budget, you could set up a budgeting report to populate out into a shared folder.

In making the report available via an internal server, you don’t necessarily need to give ancillary employees access to the Archway Platform, but you can still enable them to leverage the data, make changes and resubmit to an authorized system user for upload back into the system.

The benefits of report automation aren’t limited to client reporting.

Using the same tools that automate the client reporting process, you can also automate internal management reporting on a daily, weekly or monthly schedule. Here are a few examples of what that might look like:

• Daily Reporting: This can be as simple as cash balance and cash activity queries delivered into your team’s inboxes each morning that depict the prior day’s inflows and outflows.
• Weekly Reporting: This frequency of reporting tends to include more traditional management-style reports, like reconciliation audit reports that help you confirm reconciliation tasks have been completed or AP/AR reports that help you quickly identify what bills or invoices are outstanding.
• Monthly Reporting: On a monthly basis, many clients leverage the Archway Platform’s automated reporting tools to proactively identify latent prices and performance outliers to isolate and address any errors prior to the end of the quarter.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Archway Platform’s reporting automation tools, schedule a call with a member of our team or take a tour of the Archway Platform.

Why Client Service is a Differentiator among Family Office Software Solutions

When assessing financial technology solutions, it’s easy to focus solely on functionality. After all, a thorough technology evaluation involves several rounds of system-specific questions and detailed technology proofs-of-concept, making it easy for the ongoing service function to drift out of focus.

But when you exclusively assess features and capabilities, you miss the opportunity to evaluate the long-term service component of your relationship with your new fintech partner.

Even if you were to find the ideal family office software solution, if the client service doesn’t match the quality of the technology platform, the long-term viability of the solution becomes murky.

So, ask yourself, when the software is implemented, and you’re off and running on your own, who will support you? Can you rely on them to help you work through complex financial scenarios using the technology? To respond quickly to your important questions? To be knowledgeable on both the software and your unique usage of the system?

To help you avoid a preventable client service mishap down the road, we recommend evaluating the competency and reliability of the client services teams with as much vigor as you use to evaluate the solution’s capabilities.

As a firm that has built an elite client service team to support hundreds of family offices and high-net-worth families, we’ve identified five starter questions to help you navigate the client service evaluation and set the stage for a more detailed assessment.

How is your customer support organization structured?

Your client service team should be able to do more than just reset your password. They should be able to problem solve on the fly and lead you through nuanced scenarios – like entering data or running a report – as well as less common scenarios – like how to perform equity transfers or validate performance calculations using the technology.

The composition and experience of your support team are important factors as you evaluate the client service team.

Is customer support performed in-house or does the technology firm outsource this business function? Will you have a dedicated support staff or will you be funneled into a large-scale call center? What are the client service specialists’ qualifications? Are they accounting and finance professionals? Do they have a background in service operations? Is there a manager or team lead that is responsible for inquiries that require escalation? Are there designated subject matter experts (SMEs) for specific topics or functions within the technology?

Digging into these questions helps you assess the value your technology firm places on client service, and can create an image of how you might interact with the customer service team as a client.

Where are the client service operations located?

Although not necessarily a deal breaker, geographic location can affect the quality of your service. Depending on where your family office is located and where your technology vendor houses its client service operations, you may experience impacts to availability and turnaround time for support cases and client service inquiries due to differences in time zones.

Furthermore, if the client service operations are based offshore, you may need to review your risk compliance policies and perform additional due diligence related to data security to confirm that your data can be accessed from other countries.

What communication channels and tools are available for customer support?

A good client service organization will utilize an omni-channel service model that allows clients to engage with the client service team in multiple ways. In a best case scenario, you should be able to reach a client service representative via phone, email, or online client support portal depending on the urgency of your request.

It’s worth noting that some technology providers use a tiered support system, so it’s important to understand what type of support is available at each level. For example, certain channels like phone or direct email may only be available to customers paying for the top tier of support.

We also recommend asking about the technology provider’s support case system. Is it automated and easy to use? Does it offer templates or pre-defined issues to expedite the ticket submission process? Does the system log your inquiry directly to a client service representative? What happens if your case requires involvement from additional teams like product development? What is the typical turnaround time for requests submitted through the system?

Internally, you should consider the volume of anticipated requests, the size of your organization and the amount of product knowledge your team possesses to help you determine whether or not the available communication channels will be suitable for your family office.

Do you offer ongoing training?

Family office fintech providers regularly introduce new versions of their products and services. Finding a technology firm that offers educational resources, online training courses and live user conferences helps your family office stay in-tune with updates to the solution.

Simply put, ongoing training is core to excellent client service and is crucial for family offices that want to make the most out of their technology investment.

Do you facilitate user groups or peer networks?

Your client service experience isn’t limited to the interactions between you and the technology provider. In fact, there are some questions that can be better answered by those who are in the daily throes of the system: other platform users. A technology firm that recognizes this opportunity and facilitates secure client exchanges clearly has their clients’ success at the top of the list.

By posing questions to other users, you have the benefit of learning from system power users who have likely dealt with similar situations in the past.

These peer-to-peer interactions help you brainstorm creative solutions for complex problems, establish best practices for common family office accounting and reporting scenarios, hear different perspectives on the effects of industry trends and regulations, and develop a sense of community among other family offices – all of which should be equally important factors when selecting a technology vendor.

Interested in learning about Archway’s customer-first approach to client service?

Download our mini ebook Our Commitment to Exceptional Client Service to find out how Archway Family Office Services has devised an approach to customer support that is valued and trusted by hundreds of family offices and financial institutions.

Why Family Offices and Financial Institutions are Partnering with Outsourced Bill Pay Providers

For a high-net-worth family, managing expenses is not always black and white. In many cases, families pay taxes on an array of domestic and international properties. They use local contractors and vendors to maintain these homes and they engage various accountants, attorneys, financial advisors and administrative staff to support them – all of which requires a sophisticated expense management process to track and pay for these complex expenses.

For financial institutions tasked with handling these activities on behalf of high-net-worth families and individuals, the process can be even more complex, the list of merchants can be exceedingly long and the amount of transactions can be overwhelming.

As a result, these institutions are looking to outsource parts – if not the entirety – of the bill payment process.

Why Outsource Bill Payment?

Outsourced bill pay providers typically offer a variety of bespoke products and services that oftentimes don’t exist inside of financial institutions today.

Ranging from invoice collection and electronic document storage to high-tech accounting software, mobile client portals and comprehensive expense reporting, these products and services allow private banks to enhance their suite of concierge services and deliver a bill payment offering that helps their clients better manage their expenses. Here are five ways outsourced bill pay providers add value to your HNW service offering.

#1 - Streamlined Automation

To facilitate the bill payment process, many outsourced bill pay providers leverage sophisticated technology specifically designed for wealthy families. The most sophisticated providers are able to offer electronic payment approvals, automated payment initiation and on-demand mobile expense reporting. This degree of automation eliminates the need to seek verbal or written approvals from your clients resulting in a quicker, more secure bill payment process.

#2 - Broadened Accessibility

Through advanced client portal technology, advisors and their clients can securely access their electronic accounts payable information and documents anytime, anywhere. Acting as a central repository for their aggregated bill payment details and important billing documents, end-clients gain a quicker view of their consolidated spending behavior.

#3 - Extended Scalability

Reputable outsourced bill payment providers employ teams of highly-trained accounting professionals. Ideally, wealth advisors get access to a dedicated team of subject matter experts that operate as a seamless extension of your organization. By allowing a team of industry professionals to manage the end-to-end bill payment process for you, you can put time back in your day to focus on your clients.

#4 - Improved Consolidation

Trying to manage and track all of your client’s expenses across bank and credit card accounts can be difficult. Through purpose-built tools and electronic data feeds, outsourced bill providers not only collect expense and payment information from an array of sources, but they aggregate and reconcile the expense activity to ultimately deliver clear, insightful reporting.

#5 - Enhanced Analysis and Reporting

Given the inherently complex expenses of wealthy families, it’s important to stay in tune with the frequency and magnitude of your client’s spending. After all, preserving their wealth is one of your primary responsibilities. Outsourced bill pay providers maintain a sole focus on measuring and reporting on cash inflows and outflows, which ultimately gives you the tools to perform sophisticated cash analysis and gain insight into your end-client’s spending behavior.

Outsourcing bill payment gives financial institutions the opportunity to differentiate their service offering to their HNW clients through purpose-built technology and a dedicated team of accounting professionals. More importantly, it helps financial advisors deliver clear, meaningful insight into their client’s spending behaviors and provide better cash management advice.

Are you ready to build a customized bill payment solution with an experienced service provider?

Find out how our outsourced bill pay service can help you and your financial institution streamline your bill payment process so that you can refocus efforts on what really matters: servicing your clients.