Addepar, PWS, Maastro, FundCount, SEI
Archway, Tamarac...AGH!!!
Most family offices I know use Addepar.
The reason? It has the prettiest interface and spits out the slickest reports.
But is that what people are really LOOKING FOR in an insititutional grade asset reporting solution? Beauty? That is a skin-deep desire, and not one that feels like it solves the actual problems facing a family office.
A family office needs a home base. A place where we can all refocus our energy to quickly review all of the family members, entities, assets and their performance from a gross, net, risk and tax adjusted standpoint.
We need to see what happened and what needs to be done next.
But I need to use my home base for more than just seeing pretty visualizations of my assets.
Such essential functions as:
Asset ownership, which can be multi-level and complex
Tax ramifications of buying, selling or moving an asset
Cash flows. Past, current, near term, and projections
Capital call projections, near term and projections
Personal net worth statements with various details revealed or hidden
Financial statements from an accounting standpoint, if I want to run my family office like a business
Tax document warehousing - must be searchable
Easy bookeeping of all of my assets - because this is where they live
Automated or semi-automated data entry of basic documents like invoices, cap calls, etc.
Bill pay centralization, with automation and 2-factor verification on paid bills
Deal pipeline, including calendar of closing dates
Someone to enter all of my data
So, I see that Addepar, which is an excellent visualization tool, is not able to accomplish most of these goals. Not that it should. It doesn't promise to.
However, at such a steep price point, I believe that it's customers sometimes mistakenly think that it does or should, because they are pouring so much money into a tool that holds all of their investment and estate data.
The other problem is that any other application that has worse visuals than Addepar usually do not cover all of the rest of those 12 points. They cover some. And none come with #12 - a person to run the operation for you.
The best solutions that I have seen involve an accounting firm or MFO taking ownership of one or multiple of these platforms and dedicating a team to it. This creates expertise in the tool - no learning curve for the family. Plus dedicated data entry.
This is a tall order to actually deliver on, so I hesitate to recommend anyone here. However I do like the promises of the two platforms that I have seen in this regard:
Aquilance , formerly MyAccountant, has a tool based on FundCount, which onboards and manages the reporting of your entire estate. FundCount also incorporates a general ledger, so it is really accounting software, similar to SEI Archway.
Aquilance as a firm offers billpay done by actual human beings, as well as partnership accounting, so this firm may be a good solution for many people.
There is a lot of power and promise here, however the FundCount interface looked clunky when I demo'd it over a year ago.
I like the product that RSM is releasing. It is a custom version of Maastro, which has a general ledger and includes data entry as well.
RSM is also offering automated data entry via Canoe, plus automated billpay via Bill.com which goes right into the GL, which is very cool. Also, they can create capital call and distribution schedules, so it can be the home base for cash flow as well.
The demo interface I saw recently was slick, but since it was web-based, it was on the laggier side. The MD promised that it was just his internet connection, but I have yet to test that claim.
I think that, if they can execute, this will be a winning product.
I will keep you posted as I explore more.
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