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Getting Started With Advisors Assistant

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About Advisors Assistant

Advisors Assistant is a very comprehensive Client Management System. It's an excellent prospecting system, and also offers you the tools you need to keep in touch with your current clients and keep them from straying to another advisor.

With Advisors Assistant you can:

•	Track any Type of name, from prospects to clients, organizations, referrals, 401k's and Groups, club members, mailing lists, and more.

•	Write unlimited Notes for every contact name in the database.

•	Track your Appointments and Tasks with the Advisors Assistant Calendar.

•	Synchronize your Advisors Assistant Calendar and Contacts with Outlook for use with PDA's.

•	Add Markets and Areas of Interest to group contact names into different categories, allowing you to search your database for those interests and giving you reasons to contact your clients throughout the year.

•	Link names together to track professional relationships and referrals.

•	Group names into Households or Groups (for organizations) for reporting purposes.

•	Search your database for new sales opportunities and print a variety of reports using the Advisors Assistant Selection Reports.

•	Track New Business Actions to see what action items are outstanding at any time.

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Scan documents and link them or any other file on your computer directly to the contact names within Advisors Assistant. You can also use Imaging Assistant, an optional module which automatically scans and associates documents with Advisors Assistant in addition to providing more security than simply storing documents on your network where other uses can edit them.

•	Send Messages to other Advisors Assistant Users.

•	Track any type of Policy from any insurance company, and print a variety of policy reports. Insurance Tracking is available as an optional module.

•	Track your clients' Securities, download daily transactions and values, calculate time and dollar weighted rates of return, and print a wide variety of investment reports including performance reports. Portfolio Tracking is available as an optional module.

What Should I Do First?

Once you install Advisors Assistant, you'll need to set up each person who will be using the database as a "User." Details about adding Users are available in the Add/Modify User Help. If you have purchased a MultiProducer or Enterprise Version of Advisors Assistant, we recommend also going through the Getting Started With Producer Rights Help.

Before you can start tracking any information in Advisors Assistant, you first need to add your names. Once you add a name to Advisors Assistant, you can add their addresses, phone numbers, and all of the other information listed above using the Advisors Assistant View Screens. For a quick tour of the Advisors Assistant View Screens please see the View Screen Tour Help.

There are a few ways you can add names to Advisors Assistant:

•	Manually type in the names. Instructions are below, and in the Add Names Help.

•	Import the names from another file/program using the List Import.

•	Import the names from Outlook using the Outlook Synchronization.

•	Convert the names from another database program. Contact Sales at (800) 799-4267 for information about the programs you can convert data from.

•	Name and address information, as well as accounts, are added during an initial Investment Download. The Investment Module and Investment Downloads are required for this process. Contact Sales at (800) 799-4267 for information about tracking investments with Advisors Assistant.

Once you have data entered into your Advisors Assistant, we recommend that you backup your database regularly. Please read the Backing Up Your Data Help for details about backing up.

To learn what's available with the Contact Management Module of Advisors Assistant quickly, check out the Contact Management Tutorials Help Topic.

How to add a Name to Advisors Assistant

Adding Names Tutorial (7:15)

There are two ways to add names to Advisors Assistant. You can very quickly and easily add a name at any time, but we recommend looking the name up first to make sure you're not adding a duplicate name to your database.

Looking Up and Adding a Name:

1.	From any View Screen in Advisors Assistant, either click on the Lookup Name Icon in the Sidebar or press Alt-Q on the keyboard to open the Name Lookup Screen.

2.	Enter the Last Name and First Name of the individual, or the Organization Name you are looking up.

3.	If the name is not in the database, click on the Add Button located at the bottom of the Name Lookup Screen.

4.	Enter the contact name's information. For details about adding a name and a description of each field, please refer to the Add/Modify Name Help.

5.	Click OK to save the name. You will immediately be able to enter the contact's address and phone number, or click Cancel on the Address Screen to just add the contact name. Once the name, address and phone number are added you can add additional addresses and phone numbers.

Adding a Name without looking it up first:

1.	From any View Client Screen in Advisors Assistant, click on the Plus Button () located to the right of the name you are currently viewing.

2.	Enter the contact name's information. For details about adding a name and a description of each field, please refer to the Add/Modify Name Help.

3.	Click OK to save the name. You will immediately be able to enter the contact's address and phone number, or click Cancel on the Address Screen to just add the contact name. Once the name, address and phone number are added you can add additional addresses and phone numbers.

Once you've added the name to the database you can begin to add additional information like Notes, Markets, and products. We recommend you go through the View Screen Tour for a quick look at what you can do with Advisors Assistant.