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Client Background
A leading Chicago-based accounting firm had built a strong reputation serving HNW and UHNW families. To meet growing needs beyond compliance, it set up a dedicated Family Office practice, led by a director and a team of nine professionals. This practice managed financial coordination and reporting across complex structures involving multiple custodians, trusts, LLCs, private investments, and estate entities.
As the client base expanded, QuickBooks and Excel could no longer keep pace. Consolidating data across custodians took days, performance reporting relied on manual conversions, and errors risked undermining client trust. The patchwork approach slowed the team, strained operations, and made scaling impossible without adding significant staff and costs. The firm needed an integrated platform to grow with confidence.
The Challenge
Disconnected Systems and Manual Conversions: The Family Office team relied on QuickBooks for accounting and Excel for performance reporting. As the two systems did not connect, data had to be exported, reformatted, and checked manually. Every conversion increased the risk of errors, and small mistakes could compromise reporting accuracy. Hours that should have gone into analysis were spent fixing spreadsheets and reconciling figures.
Multi-Custodian Complexity: Clients often held accounts across multiple custodians, each with different reporting formats and cycles. Reconciling balances, transactions, and fees across these custodians took days, stretching the team thin. With no single audit trail, tracing numbers back during reviews became slow, stressful, and prone to gaps.
Growth Bottlenecks: The firm was dependant on a handful of experts managing spreadsheets. As the client base grew, accuracy was harder to sustain, timelines slipped, and service quality was at risk. Scaling further would have required adding more staff and costs without fixing the core problem.
The Solution
To achieve the goal of scaling confidently, the firm needed more than just a tool. What was required was a partner that could deliver an integrated platform, provide hands-on onboarding, extend white-glove service, and do so at a cost aligned with the firm’s model. Here’s how it worked:
An integrated platform replaced fragmented tools: Asset Vantage combined data aggregation, general ledger accounting, and performance reporting in one place. By eliminating the split between QuickBooks and Excel, the team gained a single source of truth for every client.
Custodian data was centralized and cleaned: Automated aggregation and structured entity mapping created clear audit trails. During implementation, the firm reconciled only the most recent year, avoiding inconsistencies of older records and ensuring a clean, reliable starting point.
Onboarding was designed to build internal capability: AV’s implementation team trained staff to manage new client setups independently. White-glove service ensured hands-on guidance, rapid resolution of issues, and reassurance that the transition was actively managed every step of the way.
The Result
- Reporting cycles are faster, smoother, and more dependable: Consolidating data across custodians, converting between QuickBooks and Excel, and checking for errors—tasks that once took days or even weeks—are now completed in hours with one integrated platform.
- The firm has gained independence and confidence in scaling: No longer reliant on a handful of spreadsheet experts, two internal employees now lead onboarding and monthly workflows, enabling the firm to manage growth internally.
- Families receive accurate, consolidated, and timely reports: What was once slow, fragmented, and error-prone is now dependable, providing families with a clear picture of their wealth and strengthening trust in the firm’s advisory role.
- Growth is scalable without proportional cost increases: The firm no longer needs to add staff for each new client; with AV’s scalable pricing and automated systems, workflows run smoothly, ensuring consistent service quality as the firm expands.
- AV delivers white-glove service and a true partnership: Every issue raised has been promptly addressed, reinforcing the firm’s confidence in being supported by a team invested in its long-term success rather than just a vendor.
What This Customer Has to Say
“AV wasn’t just the right product, it was the right partner: scalable, cost-effective, and easy to use. The sandbox trial gave us confidence to choose them, and their team trained our staff to manage onboarding and monthly workflows. They delivered smooth implementation within 8–10 weeks and backed it all with their white-glove service that built our trust in them.”
-Family Office Services Director, Accounting firm, Chicago, USA
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