AdvicePay Financial Advisor Blog

As the retainer model for financial planning services is still a relatively new player in the market, it can be challenging to know how to set your fees in a manner that is both reasonable and profitable. You want to ensure that you add serious value to your client at a rate that they feel comfortable, while ensuring that you feel compensated for the expertise you provide. To add further complexity to an already difficult task, the monthly retainer model is often hybridized with other models — in particular AUM — that require a different pricing structure. Before we delve into add-ons, however, let’s first focus on setting a reasonable financial planning fee in the retainer model. To do so, we are going to focus on three key areas — your niche, your time, and your expertise.

Writing a financial planning business model that adheres to the trends of a changing market can be a daunting task, primarily because the industry is in the midst of a paradigm shift. In the Assets Under Management (AUM) model that previously dominated the terrain of personal finances, the finance professional’s services were far easier to quantify.

So, you’ve decided to scale your financial planning business in the direction of a younger market. You have understood the worth of including Gen X and Y’ers in your client scope. With this expansion comes the need to reconfigure your fee structure from an AUM (Assets Under Management) model, based on commission earned off financial growth you have generated for your client, to a fee structure more appropriate to a demographic that does not have a large asset base. You might have realized that the retainer model is the most appropriate for a younger market, as they have monthly cash flow but do not necessarily have assets of their own for you to play with. The next step in your process is to know how to justify the value you bring.

• All New Business Dashboard
• Invite Clients & Request Payments in One Step
• Client & Advisor IDs

• Invoices Display as Past Due
• Easily Update Admin Permissions
• Initial API Build
• Removed an unnecessary comma (it’s the little things!)
• Added a Disabled Refund Button
• Status on Paused Subscriptions
• Business Dashboard Data Fixes
• Fee Calculation Updates
• Re-Enabled Submit Button Fix
• Sorting of Data Tables Fix

• Export Data Reports with a Date Range 
• Automatically Email Data Reports to Recipients
• Refund a Partial Payment
• Set a Maximum Invoice Amount on Enterprise Accounts

• Enterprise Approval of Invoices
• Business Dashboard for Enterprise Firm Manager
• TD Ameritrade Single Sign On
• Orion

All New Business Dashboard

May Release Notes Summary:

• $10/Month Basic AdvicePay Account
• Ability to sign up directly for Basic, Professional, or Enterprise
• Read-only Advisor on Enterprise
• Can send/resend Invite email to Unregistered clients
• Subscription descriptions now visible
• Refunding clients within your AdvicePay dashboard
• Marking invoices as Paid when paid elsewhere
• Custom invoice disclosures
• Advanced Payments: ability to request payment on semi-annual basis 

• Advanced Payments: ability to set an end-date to subscriptions

• Removed the ******* on the set password screen
• Enterprise: Set Maximum Payment Periods for all firm advisors
• Enterprise: Change an Advisor’s Access type

• Editing an unpaid invoice

• Invoice displays billing date range on subscriptions
• Delete invoices

• Request multiple one-time payments at once 

• Business dashboard
• Add a new client while requesting a payment
• Overdue unpaid invoices will display a ‘Past Due’ status
• Add an optional unique ID to clients and Enterprise advisors
• Orion integration
• TD Ameritrade integration

Everyone knows trust must be at the core of every good relationship, and this is even more true when money is involved. As a general rule, nobody likes to worry about money, but it remains a top concern in our highly technological world due to the ever-present risks of credit card fraud, phishing, spyware, and identity theft.

The financial advisory industry is currently going through tremendous changes. Getting paid as an advisor used to be easy. Advisors simply either got paid a commission or charged an asset management fee.   

Lately we’ve noticed a trend of more and more advisors moving to a fee-for-service model, and often once they try it out, they find it is the best solution for their business. Removing the monthly time investment required to process invoices and payments can be a huge advantage with this type of service. That is why companies choose to utilize a platform like AdvicePay that can be leveraged to accept and manage payments easily and seamlessly, while still remaining compliant. With more time freed up, you can focus on getting more work done for your clients.

There are many payment processor options out there, and when evaluating the best solution for your business, the differences aren’t always immediately apparent. As you compare AdvicePay with other systems, you may notice that some have lower monthly fees or transaction costs. However, while they all functionally can move money from point A to point B, there are distinct differences to consider.

One of the major advantages of AdvicePay is subscription payment functionality. Once you have set up a subscription payment for a client — whether it be monthly or quarterly — the client will approve that payment and those payments will then be made automatically moving forward. Clients are notified seven days before the money is deducted in order to meet various state regulations and the SEC's rule on annual disclosures of fees to avoid inadvertent custody. This happens automatically with each payment instead of once a year, but it will allow you to meet the requirements.