Automate custodian paperwork first, then meeting notes, then fee billing, then annual reviews, then compliance attestations, then account transfers. That order is by hours returned. Paperwork is first because it is the highest volume repetitive work in the firm and it is what stands between a signed client and a funded account. Everything after it compounds across the whole book rather than one household at a time.
What happens in the video
- 0:00The six workflows, in order
- 0:41One: custodian paperwork
- 0:59Two: meeting notes
- 1:17Three: fee billing
- 1:34Four: annual reviews
- 1:45Five: compliance attestations
- 1:56Six: account transfers
- 2:06Start with the forms
Systems on screen
WealthboxAdobe AcrobatDocuSignZoomGmailTamaracSchwabQuickBookseMoneyAddepar
The belief worth checking
The back office scales with the book. Everyone in this industry has said it, and the org charts agree: at some household count you hire another operations person, and at some multiple of that you hire a second.
It is true of the way the work is currently done, because the way it is currently done is a person retyping facts the firm already holds into a system that does not talk to the one holding them. Volume goes up, so typing goes up. The relationship is real.
What is not true is that the work itself requires it. Look at the six jobs and they are all the same shape: bounded, repetitive, and defined by where each fact comes from. That is the shape you can show once.
The six, in order
1. Custodian paperwork
The same eleven facts, filled into every form, from the CRM. New accounts, transfers, beneficiary changes, address updates. Highest volume, most obviously mechanical, and the one that visibly delays new money.
Watch two Schwab forms filled from Wealthbox, sent through DocuSign, and logged back, including the field the agent refuses to guess. The form families themselves are catalogued in the forms directory.
2. Meeting notes
The record written during the meeting, not after it. Notes in the firm's format, follow-ups as dated tasks, and the recommendation logged as a recommendation with its reasoning.
Watch a 40 minute review become the record, with the follow-up email drafted and left unsent.
3. Fee billing
Quarterly fees calculated from the portfolio system, reconciled to the custodian, and posted to the books. The exceptions come out as a list rather than as a spreadsheet somebody rebuilds every quarter and then checks by eye at the end of the month it was due.
4. Annual reviews
The packet assembled from planning, performance, and the CRM, the week before the meeting rather than the night before. This is the job that quietly decides whether review meetings happen on schedule, because a meeting that needs four hours of preparation gets moved.
5. Compliance attestations
Code of ethics, outside business activities, personal trading. Sent, chased, filed. The work is not the attestation, it is the chasing, and the chasing is the part nobody wants to own.
6. Account transfers
Every ACAT tracked at the custodian, and the client told where it stands before they ask. Last on the list because the volume is lower, but it is the one clients feel most directly while it is in flight.
None of this needed a new ops hire
It needed someone to show the software once. That is the actual finding across all six: the reason these jobs were never automated is not that they are complicated, it is that they were never written down. They live in the head of the person who has been doing them since 2019.
Which is also why they are fragile. The firm does not have a process, it has an employee, and the difference shows up the first week that employee is out.
Start with the forms
Everyone starts with the forms, and they should. It is the fastest thing to show, the easiest to check, and the one where a week of saved keystrokes is visible on a Friday.
For the strategic version of this argument, see workflow automation for financial advisors and the operations challenges RIAs actually hit. For the tooling underneath it, the CRM comparison.
The rest of the series
Six films, each one a real run in the tools the work already lives in. Nothing sped past what you can read.
More for advisory firms
- How to auto-fill custodian forms from your CRM (2:39). Two forms, forty-two fields, eleven facts already in the CRM. One field left empty on purpose.
- How to turn a client meeting into CRM notes (2:21). A forty minute review becomes a note in the firm's format, four dated tasks, a logged recommendation, and a draft the advisor sends herself.
The law firm track
- Legal automation: what to automate first (2:27). The six jobs every law firm back office runs, in the order each one pays back, with two of them shown end to end.
- How to run a conflict check automatically (2:23). Clio contacts and matters across every spelling, then full text search inside iManage documents, then the memo and the hold.
- How to automate pre-bill review (2:47). Forty-one entries read against fourteen pages of outside counsel guidelines. Three fixed, one flagged, nobody reading line by line.
Start with the forms
Everyone starts with the forms
Fill one while Caddi watches, and say where each field comes from. It fills the rest of the household's paperwork from the same sources.
Frequently asked questions
What should an RIA automate first?
Custodian paperwork. It is the highest volume repetitive work in the firm, it blocks new money from being funded, and every fact on the forms is already in the CRM. After that: meeting notes, fee billing, annual reviews, compliance attestations, and account transfers.
Does the back office have to scale with the book?
It does the way most firms run it, because the work is done by people typing the same facts into different systems. The work itself is the same six things in every firm, and each of them is bounded enough to be shown once and then repeated. The next operations hire is a choice, not an arithmetic certainty.
Do we need to change custodians, CRM or portfolio system?
No. Each run in this series happens inside the tools the firm already uses, because that is where the work and the records already are. The agent is shown the job in your screens and does it in your screens.
How does compliance documentation fit in?
It comes out of the work rather than being added to it. In the meeting-notes run the recommendation is logged as a recommendation with its reasoning at the time it is made, which is the record an examiner asks for later. Nothing in the series decides whether a recommendation was suitable.
What does setup actually involve?
Doing the job once, on screen, narrating what you are doing and where each fact comes from. Usually fifteen minutes to an hour. Both how-to films in this series include that step in full rather than cutting to the finished result.