Getting Started With Investments
Contents
Advisors Assistant has comprehensive Portfolio Management available through the Investment Module.
Before you can begin downloading or tracking Investments, you will need to purchase and activate the modules. Additional help is available for Module Activation, which can only be performed by a Database Administrator.
With the Advisors Assistant Investment Module you can:
| • | Track any type of unit based investment, including Stocks, Bonds, Mutual Funds, Variable Annuities, and more |
| • | Calculate both time and dollar weighted rates of return for any period of time for individual investments, investment accounts, and your client's entire portfolio |
| • | Calculate annualized rates of return, with or without expenses |
| • | Maintain investment valuation histories |
| • | Group different investors on the same report - family members or retirement plan participants can be summarized on one report |
| • | Update Prices and Indexes automatically from Sungard (Optional Module Available) |
| • | Download your client's investments and transactions daily from many clearing firms (Optional Modules Available) |
| • | Include investment data in letters |
| • | Print great looking consolidated reports, including performance reports and blotters, for any time period and multiple time periods. Include Index data on performance reports. Customize footers to provide required disclosure information |
| • | Export investment portfolios to AdvisoryWorld's ICE, Money Tree, and Morningstar |
| • | Link to Laser App and Quik! Forms to automatically fill in and print applications |
Most offices take advantage of the Advisors Assistant Investment Downloads to download daily transactions and closing prices for their clients' accounts. But you can also manually enter and update your clients' accounts using the Advisors Assistant Investment Module.
Portfolio Management Overview (9:50)
Investment Downloads
If you're downloading your clients' investments, you'll need to make sure you've purchased the appropriate investment download programs and contacted the clearing firm from which you'll be downloading data to find out how to get the data. Some clearing firms provide a program to download your client data so that Advisors Assistant can process the data, and some firms have you download the files from their website.
Once you're set up to begin downloading your data, you can contact Technical Support and set up a First Download Appointment. They'll be happy to walk you through the download process and get you started with your first download. You can also reference the Investment Downloads Overview to help you get started downloading your investments.
Manual Entry of Investments
If you're going to be tracking your clients' investments manually, you need to enter the information in a specific order.
1. Enter the Investment Security.
Add/Modify Securities (9:00)
2. Add the Account to the clients' name record.
Add/Modify Accounts (5:15)
3. Add the Investments that are within the account.
Add/Modify Investments (7:30)
4. Add the Transactions (Activity) for each investment, or utilize the Investment Initialization Screen.
Add/Modify Transactions (6:44)
Initializing Investments (10:07)
If you are manually tracking investments, you may want to take advantage of the Sungard Download Service to update security prices.