Interface365 for Finance

A setup guide for independent finance practices — covering RIAs & wealth-management firms (HNW households, AUM-based recurring revenue), family offices (multi-generational stewardship), financial planners (project + retainer hybrids), and CPA / accounting practices (engagement-letter-based advisory, audit, tax). Trust-first relationship motion, KYC + custody-transfer compliance, NextGen expansion, and the recurring-revenue book economics that make finance distinct.

1. Component utility matrix

Decide fast: do you need everything Interface365 ships with for your kind of finance practice? The honest breakdown — what's critical for RIAs vs family offices vs CPA practices, what's nice-to-have, and what you can safely skip.

Sections 2–7 below explain RIA / wealth-management configuration. Section 8 covers family-office, financial-planner, and CPA-practice variants. Section 9 covers advisor + paraplanner compensation. Section 10 explains how Interface365 fits alongside your portfolio-management, custody, compliance, and accounting stack.

2. Overview

Wealth management has four structural realities other industries don't share:

• Trust precedes the transaction by months. Most HNW prospects need 3–6 conversations across a 60–120 day cycle before signing. The relationship arc — not the deal velocity — is the work. A CRM that pressures the deal forward kills HNW conversion.
• Won fires when AUM lands in custody, not when the engagement letter is signed. Engagement letters are signed days into the relationship; revenue accrual begins only when the first custody transfer arrives at the custodian. Every day in the gap is a day a competing RIA can poach the prospect. The CRM "Closed Won" trigger must be tied to first-custody receipt, not signature.
• Compliance is a constant constraint, not an afterthought. KYC / AML / FinCEN checks, source-of-funds documentation, ADV-2A + Form CRS delivery, suitability re-affirmation, IRS 706 estate-tax letters, ACAT account-transfer rejections — these are not "things to remember." They are the structural friction every HNW engagement must navigate. The right firms have a structured compliance war-room motion; the wrong firms lose 30–40% of HNW prospects in the gap.
• The household is the unit of relationship — and NextGen is where revenue lives. Adult children, surviving spouses, trustees, beneficiaries — the household is multi-contact by nature. NextGen expansion (consolidating an adult child's $1M Roth + 401k under the same family relationship) is the highest-margin work in wealth management because the relationship + onboarding cost is already paid. Modeling the household natively (not as comma-lists in a notes field) is non-negotiable.

3. Recommended pipeline (RIA / wealth-management — new client engagement)

For independent RIAs, wealth-management firms, and HNW-focused planners onboarding new households:

4. Recommended pipeline (active book stewardship)

Once a household is Closed Won, it moves to a separate stewardship pipeline that runs forever — until generational transition. Each phase triggers cadence-specific tasks + life-event watchers:

5. Custom fields cheatsheet

On the deal record (engagement-level)

On the contact record (individual-level)

6. Activity types

Wealth-management-specific activity types:

• Discovery call — initial fact-find, soft assessment
• Fact-find meeting — formal in-person or video session, full asset + goals capture
• IPS draft review — internal paraplanner + advisor review of the IPS draft
• Plan presentation — formal IPS walkthrough with prospect, fee schedule disclosed
• Engagement letter sent — formal engagement package delivered (ADV-2A, Form CRS, IPS, fee schedule)
• KYC / AML check — compliance gate
• ACAT submitted / ACAT rejected / Custody received — the custody-transfer event sequence
• Quarterly stewardship review — performance + drift + life-event check-in
• Annual planning review — comprehensive update, ADV-2A re-delivery, suitability re-affirmation
• Life-event call — death, divorce, retirement, business sale, inheritance — triggers plan revision
• NextGen meeting — adult-child engagement, family-meeting facilitation
• COI meeting — touchpoint with attorneys, CPAs, divorce attorneys, mortgage brokers
• Client event — appreciation events, educational seminars, family-day events

7. Lead statuses + tags

Lead statuses for early funnel:

• New — fresh inbound or COI referral
• Contacted — discovery scheduled or completed
• In Conversation — actively engaged in early discussions
• Plan Drafting — paraplanner working on IPS
• Future Opportunity — interesting but timing not right (life event pending)
• Cold — no engagement in 60+ days
• Disqualified — wrong fit (asset minimum, geography, complexity, conflict)

Recommended tags:

• HNW (gold) — High net worth, $5M+
• UHNW (purple) — Ultra HNW, $25M+ (different service-tier conversation)
• Estate-attorney-referred (purple) — highest-conversion source path
• COI (blue) — Center of Influence (attorney, CPA, mortgage broker)
• Active referrer (green) — sends new business regularly; needs reciprocity tracking
• Pre-retiree (teal) — within 5 years of retirement; financial-plan-revision likely
• Business Owner (purple) — exit / liquidity-event planning candidate
• Widowed-spouse-onboarding (amber) — surviving-spouse motion; high-friction custody transfer
• NextGen-prospect (gold) — adult-child of existing client; expansion candidate
• At-risk (red) — relationship strained, considering moving

8. End-to-end workflow + variants

A Tuesday at Meridian Wealth Partners — an 18-advisor independent RIA managing $2.4B AUM across 168 active households.

Variant — Family office (multi-generational stewardship)

Family offices serve a smaller number of UHNW households (often $50M+) with a deeply integrated motion: investment management + estate + tax + bill-pay + concierge + governance. The CRM motion looks different:

• Pipeline is shorter — most family-office relationships start with referral from a peer family or shared trusted advisor; no inbound funnel
• Custom fields shift: governance_structure (single-family / multi-family / private trust company), generations_served (G1, G2, G3+), concierge_scope, bill_pay_active, charitable_vehicles (DAF / private foundation / CRAT / CRUT)
• Won trigger is governance-document signed + first-custody received — typically takes 90–180 days
• Stewardship is far more frequent: monthly or bi-weekly check-ins, governance committee meetings, family-meeting facilitation
• Track generations_served on the household — drives NextGen + great-NextGen succession planning that family offices specifically own

Variant — Financial planner (project + retainer hybrid)

Hourly + flat-fee planners (XY Planning Network, Garrett Planning Network, NAPFA fee-only) serve a different motion: planning is the product, not AUM management. Recommended pipeline:

• Lead (5%) → Discovery (15%) → Engagement Quoted (40%) → Engagement Signed (75%) → Plan Delivered (Won, 100%) → ongoing retainer cycle for 50–80% of clients
• Custom fields shift: engagement_type (Hourly, Flat-fee plan, Annual retainer, Subscription), quoted_fee, plan_scope, retainer_active
• Won trigger is engagement letter signed + first invoice paid — much faster than RIA custody transfer
• Track retainer_active + last_review_date for the recurring-revenue base
• Use Projects for one-time planning engagements (estate plan, retirement plan, divorce plan); use Active Stewardship pipeline for retainer-based ongoing relationships

Variant — CPA / accounting practice (engagement-letter-driven)

Public accounting firms (audit, tax, advisory) have a fundamentally different motion: engagement-letter-per-engagement, often multiple engagements per client per year, fiscal-year-driven. Recommended pipeline:

• Lead (5%) → Client Acceptance Review (20%) → Independence Check (35%) → Engagement Quoted (55%) → Engagement Letter Sent (75%) → Engagement Signed + Retainer Paid (Won, 100%) → ongoing fiscal-cycle work
• Custom fields shift: engagement_type (Audit, Tax, Review, Compilation, Advisory, Bookkeeping), fiscal_year_end, independence_status, circular_230_disclosure, pcaob_relevant (audit only), retainer_amount, billable_rate
• Won trigger is engagement letter countersigned + initial retainer paid
• Multiple engagements per client per year are common (Q1 tax, Q2 audit, Q4 advisory) — track each as a separate Deal under the Account, with the Account-level relationship in the Active Stewardship pipeline
• Independence + conflict-check + Circular 230 + PCAOB compliance are non-negotiable gates — embed in the pipeline as required-fields-to-advance

9. Advisor + paraplanner compensation

RIA compensation is grid-based: each advisor has a payout percentage of revenue produced, typically 35–55% for senior advisors at small RIAs (rising with tenure / production). Paraplanners + junior advisors typically get a 1–2% production bump on engagements they materially supported, on top of a salaried base. House accounts (assigned to ops or junior advisors) pay 0% advisor grid + a small ops bonus. Some firms run a solicitor agreement — formal SEC-disclosed compensation flowing to the referrer (estate attorney, CPA) — but this requires written disclosure to the client and is uncommon in HNW relationship-driven referrals (the referrer usually values reciprocity tracking, not cash).

The five-field setup on Deal

Add these custom fields under Settings → Custom Fields → Deal:

Worked example — Hartwell Family from the walkthrough

• Expected AUM (full) = $8,500,000 ($4.2M Schwab + $1.8M trust + $2.5M held assets)
• Held assets (informational) = $2,500,000 (held — not under management)
• Year-1 fee schedule = 1.0% / 0.90% / 0.75% (tier breaks at $1M / $5M)
• Year-1 blended fee rate = 0.85% on $8.5M ($10K + $36K + $26.25K)
• Year-1 fee envelope = $72,250
• Quarterly fee at full AUM = $18,063
•  
• Commission unlock pro-rata at first-custody event:
•   Day 35 — $4.2M lands → Q1 partial fee accrual = $8,925 (0.85% × $4.2M / 4)
•   Day 84 — $1.8M lands → Q2+ full $6.0M custody fee accrual
•  
• lead_advisor = Elena Marsh, CFP
• paraplanner = Priya Iyer
• advisor_grid_pct = 45%
• paraplanner_bump_pct = 1.5%
• Year-1 advisor payout = $72,250 × 45% = $32,513 (Elena, accrues quarterly)
• Year-1 paraplanner bump = $72,250 × 1.5% = $1,084 (Priya)
• Total Year-1 comp expense = $33,597 (46.5% of fee revenue)
•  
• Cooper & Lutz LLP reciprocity = $0 cash + relationship credit ($12.4M household wealth referred YTD across 6 referrals) + quarterly thank-you dinner
• NextGen expansion (Oct 22) = +$960K AUM at top tier 0.75% · +$7,200 annual fee · +$3,240 advisor + $108 paraplanner bump
• 3-yr expected LTV (commission base) = ~$280K (assumes $9.46M held + market growth + minor expansion)

Three saved views every RIA needs

• "My commission run-rate this quarter" — saved view filtered to lead_advisor = me, status = won, custody_received_at >= quarter_start. Each advisor gets their own. Paraplanners get the parallel filter on paraplanner = me.
• "AUM in custody-transfer war-room" — owner-level saved view filtered to stage = Custody Transfer AND days_in_stage > 14. The known-at-risk window. Each row gets a war-room owner + escalation timeline. Historical data shows 30–40% of unrescued at-risk deals get poached by competing RIAs.
• "NextGen pipeline (active book)" — saved view on the active-stewardship pipeline filtered to nextgen_status = Active prospect OR Aware. Surfaces adult-child consolidation candidates so each advisor's annual review meeting agenda includes a NextGen conversation. Highest-margin growth path in wealth management.

For firms with solicitor agreements (formal SEC-disclosed compensation flowing to a referrer), add a solicitor_agreement_active custom field on the source-organization record + track solicitor_payout_pct on each deal sourced from that referrer. Reconcile quarterly with finance and ensure the SEC-required disclosure is delivered to the client at engagement.

10. Where Interface365 fits — alongside, not against, your finance stack

Wealth-management firms run a stack: portfolio-management system for positions / performance / billing; custodian for asset custody + trade execution; financial-planning software for plan + Monte Carlo + retirement modeling; compliance system for ADV / Form CRS / books-and-records / surveillance; CRM for the relationship + pipeline + stewardship cadence. The real question isn't "Interface365 OR Orion?" — those tools don't compete; they own different layers. The right question is: "where does Interface365 sit in my stack?"

Interface365 is positioned as the relationship + pipeline + stewardship layer — prospecting, fact-find, IPS authoring, engagement, custody-transfer war-room, NextGen expansion, life-event watch, annual reviews. It is NOT a portfolio-management system, a custodian, a financial-planning engine, or a compliance system. Positions, trades, performance, fee billing, ADV-2A archive, books-and-records all live in those purpose-built systems and are referenced by account ID only.

The "alongside" pattern (most independent RIAs)

This is exactly what walkthrough Step 12 demonstrates — first-custody fires webhooks to Slack + Orion (billing) + Salesforce-FSC (compliance mirror). The tools don't fight; they each do what they're best at.

When Interface365 alone is enough

• Solo / 2-5 advisor RIAs ($50M–$500M AUM) — Interface365 + a basic portfolio-management system (Orion essentials tier or Tamarac Lite) + a custodian + DocuSign is the entire prospect-to-AUM-funded stack. Marketing automation can wait until you scale past 100 active households.
• Hourly + flat-fee planners (XY Planning Network, Garrett Planning Network) — Interface365 + financial-planning software + accounting tool covers the full motion. No portfolio-management system needed since planning is the product, not AUM.
• Small CPA + tax practices (under 200 clients) — Interface365 + tax-prep software (Lacerte, ProSystem fx, UltraTax) + practice-management (CCH Axcess, Karbon) covers the engagement-letter-driven motion. PCAOB-registered audit firms have heavier compliance overlay needs.
• Single-family offices (one household) — Interface365 is overkill for the relationship layer (one household, no pipeline) but useful for the trusted-advisor + governance + COI tracking. Most SFOs use a lighter setup or build something custom.

When to pick something else outright

• Large super-regional RIAs (200+ advisors, $25B+ AUM) — typically standardized on Salesforce Financial Services Cloud (FSC) with deep custom-builds for compliance + audit + multi-state regulatory overlay. Interface365 is sized for $50M–$10B AUM independents, not super-regional aggregators.
• Wirehouses / broker-dealer captive practices (Morgan Stanley, Merrill, UBS) — captive advisors use the firm's proprietary CRM stack (Salesforce-FSC variants, Aladdin Wealth, custom builds). Interface365 doesn't compete with wirehouse-proprietary systems.
• Insurance-led financial advisory (Northwestern Mutual, NY Life captive, MassMutual) — these practices live in carrier-proprietary CRM (Northwestern's Riskalyze + custom, NY Life's NYLIC360). Interface365 isn't designed for the variable-life / annuity-led motion.
• Bank-trust departments / private banks — bank-trust departments operate inside the parent bank's enterprise CRM (Salesforce-FSC bank-tier or custom mainframe-linked). Interface365 isn't sized for the bank-IT integration overhead.
• Pure broker-dealers (transaction-driven, not advisory) — broker-dealers run on the carrier's proprietary CRM since the motion is transactional (per-trade commission), not relationship-driven. Interface365's relationship-pipeline pattern doesn't fit the per-trade transactional motion.

Bottom line: think of Interface365 as the relationship + pipeline + stewardship layer, sitting cleanly above your portfolio-management + custodian + compliance stack and below your e-signature + financial-planning tools. The boundary is "anything client-facing or pipeline-related" lives here; "anything position-or-trade-related or books-and-records-related" stays in the purpose-built finance stack.

11. Next steps

Ready to set this up? Start your free trial. Most independent RIAs have both pipelines (new client + active stewardship), the IPS template library, the household relationship map, and the Orion + custodian webhook integration configured within a week.

Specialty practice (family office, multi-family office, retirement-plan advisory, ERISA fiduciary, divorce financial planning, business-exit advisory, CPA + tax-resolution practice)? Email hello@interface365.ai — we'll send a tailored configuration plan with industry-specific pipelines, custom fields, and the appropriate compliance overlay for your registration / charter.