Contents

Introduction

Exchange Files With Clients

File Sources and File Types

File Name Restrictions

Organize Shared Files Using Folders and Labels

Control What Clients See

Manage Document Characteristics

Confirm What Files Are Assigned to Clients or Households (Find Documents For)

Example Onboarding Workflow Using the Document Vault

Documents Dashboard View

 

Introduction

The document vault is a secure cloud-based file storage system available within Advisor View. You can use it to share, store, and organize files—both external documents and PDF reports generated within Advisor View—with clients, third parties, and within your firm. If you choose to enable add a document vault page and enable posting on the client portal, clients can see and share files with you, too.

In the document vault, you can complete a variety of actions, including:

For information on what types of files you can upload, see File Types Allowed in the Document Vault.

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Exchange Files With Clients

The document vault provides a system for securely, smoothly, and seamlessly sharing and viewing electronic files among your firm, your clients, and any third parties who should have access to files.

Example

During tax season, Advisor Kelly provides clients with custodian tax files as well as a firm-generated report on realized and unrealized gains and losses for each client's taxable accounts.

Kelly uses Post From FTP to upload the clients' tax files and adds them to the Taxes folder with the Tax Documents 2016 label. Then, within the document vault, Kelly uses multi-edit to grant specific clients access to the appropriate files and add Household-specific labels.

If you choose to enable the document vault for your client portals, clients will see a vault very similar to yours—but you can control whether they can upload files or see folders or labels.

Posting a file, whether by an advisor or a client, generates a variety of notifications that alert the recipient to new files as they arrive.

To learn more about advisor-side sharing files with clients, see:

To learn more about how your clients can share files with you, see Allow Clients to Upload Document Vault Files.

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File Sources and File Types

Documents you share in the document vault can come from reports generated within Advisor View or external sources. You can also add external files to PDF reports automatically using Document Assembly.

Within Advisor View, you can generate reports from the following sources:

Page Document Source Upload Location
Accounts Page Internal

Generate PDF Reports. Use this to post PDF reports generated within Advisor View to clients.
Households Internal

Generate PDF Reports. Use this to post PDF reports generated within Advisor View to clients in that Household.
Clients/Client Portals External

Post Document. Use this to post external files such as Word and PDF files to clients.
Documents External

Post From FTP to post external files in bulk to many clients using automated file matching.

 

Only the following file types are supported in the document vault:

Format Icon File Type Preview
Global

Files shared globally. This icon may appear in the corner of any file type. These files are shared to all clients using Post to All Future Clients.

 NA
Spreadsheet .csv, .xls, .xlsx, .xlm X
Image .jpg, .jpeg, .bmp, .png, .tif, .tiff X
Video .mov, .mp4, .mpeg4, .wmv, .mp2, .mpeg2, .avi, .mpg, .mpeg  
Audio .mp3, .mpeg3, .wav, .aiff, .aif, .aac, .wma  
Document .pdf X
Document .xps X
Presentation .ppt, .pptx, .pps X
Word Processing .doc, .docx, .docm .rtf X
Text .txt X
Other Other  

 

Note

For security, neither advisors nor clients are allowed to upload the following common file types, among others, to the document vault:

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File Name Restrictions

The following characters will cause an error if included in the Document Name or Description:

For more information, see Error When Saving Files In The Document Vault.

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Organize Shared Files Using Folders and Labels

In the document vault, you can organize files into folders and further sort using labels, facilitating effective filtering.

TIP

If you aren't seeing the document you're looking for, check to make sure all labels, folders, and searches are cleared. Clicking All Documents will not remove label or search filtering.

Category Folders Labels
 

Organization

  • High level organization

  • One folder per file

  • Detailed organization

  • Many labels per file
Arrangement

  • Arrange in your preferred order

  • Arranged alphabetically by default
Filtering

  • Click the folder to see only files stored in that folder.

  • Click multiple labels and can see either files with Any or All of the selected labels.

    • Choose Any to see all files that have at least one of the selected labels applied to them.

    • Choose All to see files that have all of the selected labels applied to them.
Client Portal

  • Control client access to folders

  • Client sees only folders containing files in their document vault

  • Control client access to labels

  • Client sees only labels applied to files in their document vault

 

Example

Advisor Kelly's document vault includes the a variety of different documents, which he organizes using folders and labels.

File Types Folder Filed In Labels Applied Which Clients Get Access
Onboarding documents Onboarding Onboarding and Forms All new clients
Firm-wide quarterly reports Reporting Quarterly Report All current clients
Performance reports unique to the Household Reporting Unique label of the client's last name. For example, Alvarez Family, Jones Family, etc.

Only clients in the unique Household
Client meeting reports and meeting-related files Client Meetings Unique label of the client's last name. For example, Alvarez Family, Jones Family, etc. Only clients involved in the meeting

 

The entire advisory team can quickly find any document using the appropriate combination of folders and labels. For example, they can find the following:

To learn more about how to create, edit, organize, and delete folders and labels, see Manage Folders and Manage Labels.

Control What Clients See

You can control whether clients see folders or labels at all. Folder and label visibility in the client portal is controlled on Client Views. If you do enable viewing folders or labels in the client portal, clients will only see folders and labels applied to files in their document vault.

If a client is not given permission to see folders, no folders will be displayed on the client portal document vault regardless of whether the individual documents are sorted into folders in the firm's document vault.

Example

The document vault for Georgia Abbey's client portal has permission to see folders and labels. Advisor Kelly adds files the Client Meeting folder and adds the Abbey Family label. The Client Meeting folder also contains files with labels for other families—for example, the Taylor Family. When Georgia Abbey logs in to her document vault, she sees only the Client Meeting folder and, under labels, only Abbey Family.

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Manage Document Characteristics

Once you've uploaded a file to the document vault, you can perform the following actions:

For more information on the different actions you can take on files in the document vault, see Use the Document Vault.

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Confirm What Files Are Assigned to Clients or Households (Find Documents For)

It's important to confirm that the right file went to the right client or Household. To give you a quick window into what documents are assigned to whom, Advisor View includes the Find Document For list, which filters your document vault to display only files visible to the selected record.

For more information on behavior and features of the Find Documents For list, see Use the Find Documents For List.

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Example Onboarding Workflow Using the Document Vault

Let's take a look at an example of how the document vault's features integrate into a firm's onboarding procedures.

Example

When new clients come on board at Cherry Street Financial, the firm collects a number of financial statements from them to build the initial financial picture. Advisors at Cherry Street also provide a number of firm documents and forms, some standardized and some unique to the client.

Cherry Street Financial uses the document vault to facilitate these digital file exchanges through the following workflow:

1. Firm Posts Files to Clients Via the Document Vault

  • For generic firm-related files, Cherry Street Financial uses Post to all future clients to provide all new clients with the ADV Part 2, welcome kit, contact sheet, etc. Those files are stored in the Onboarding document vault folder.

  • For client-specific files such as the Investment Advisory Agreement, the Cherry Street Financial CSA uses Post Documents on the Clients/Client Portals page to post directly to the individual new client. Those documents are filed in the Onboarding folder and labeled with the client's Household name, for example, Taylor Family.

  • For large numbers of external files, such as a batch of custodian tax documents, Cherry Street Financial uses Post From FTP to automatically match large batches of files with the appropriate client portals.
2. Client Notified of New Files

  • When files are posted, the advisor chooses to have a notification email sent to the client. When this automatic email is used, only one email is sent per batch of files shared.

  • When the client logs in to the portal, a red badge on the Documents tab on indicates new files are available. Clicking the Documents tab, the client sees the new files marked in bold.
3. Client Downloads Firm Files

4. Client Uploads Personal Financial Statements

  • Cherry Street Financial enables uploading for all client portals to allow clients to securely share sensitive financial statements with their financial advisory teams.

  • The client uploads financial statements in one batch using the client portal Post Document.
5. Firm Downloads Client's Files

  • When the client uploads files, the team who manages that Household is alerted with the New Document Posted by Client email notification. They also see new items in the announcements list.

  • The Cherry Street team member responsible uses the Find Documents For list to sort the document vault by Posted By to find files uploaded by the client. She selects all the files, applies the Household's unique label to them to facilitate finding the files in the future, and downloads the all the files at once to the firm's servers.

 

For more information on specifics of uploading, downloading, editing, deleting, sharing, and more document vault actions, see Use the Document Vault.

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Documents Dashboard View

You can use dashboard views to see an at-a-glance summary of recent documents within your clients' accounts on your dashboard using the Documents module.

With the Documents dashboard view, you can do the following: 

To learn more about creating and managing dashboard views in general, see Create and Share Dashboard Views.

For more information on customizing your dashboard, visit Working With Dashboard Modules.

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