Invoicing clients for financial advice and portfolio management should be simple, seamless, and painless. If you have the right integrated client management and reporting software platform, it can be. With the technology solutions available today, it’s hard to believe that some advisors still rely on outdated manual ways of invoicing their clients.
In today’s volatile market environment and with the added stress on their practices from COVID-19, these outdated processes are costing advisors money at a time when maximizing profitability is vital.
Your firm’s client billing process should be automated, transparent, and comply with all regulations. Moreover, the client billing process needs to be fully automated and integrated as part of a comprehensive portfolio monitoring and reporting software platform like AssetBook’s Pulse. We have compiled a list of critical features to consider when looking to upgrade your client billing software.
Clarity and transparency
There is no reason why client billing and invoicing should be a separate and manual process. The days of using a spreadsheet and generating an invoice by hand are long gone, or at least they should be. Your client’s invoices should flow through your portfolio management system and should tie into the performance reporting that you generate for them. This transparency decreases questions from your clients and frankly is another way to make your firm stand out in their eyes.
Efficiency
Modern-day advisors offer several types of client service arrangements, making the billing process complicated and inefficient. Unless your software seamlessly allows for variations in billing arrangements and frequency. When all the information resides in the same software platform, variations in client billing arrangements cease to be an issue.
Maximize revenue
The traditional quarterly billing model may be the best billing cycle for some firms, but many others are moving to alternative arrangements, including monthly billing on an average. We estimate that some firms may have experienced a 30% revenue decline in their billing for the first quarter of 2020 due to the precipitous market drop in the wake of COVID-19.
A flexible, fully integrated billing system allows for client billing on multiple cycles, such as quarterly and monthly. And when you bill on an average, money in and out of the account is captured as well. These features can help ensure that you maximize your firm’s revenue on each invoice while remaining fair to your clients.
Without a precise and fully integrated portfolio management and reporting platform, your clients may question their invoices, delaying payments, and disrupting your firm’s cash flow.
Let AssetBook show you how Pulse can help your firm increase efficiency and improve cash flow. As your firm grows, a scalable and integrated portfolio management system means fewer billing headaches, leaving you more time to assist your clients and grow your practice.