What are the top 5 essential features of family office software?

The technology that helps family offices manage complex wealth has really moved forward over the last 20 years. Innovations in multi-asset, multi-currency accounting, portfolio management, and investment reporting systems have been ground-breaking, but they can also make choosing the right software very daunting.  

This post will outline the top 5 essential features of family office software.

So, what are they? Read on to find out! 

Portfolio Management: The ability to track and manage investments is crucial for a family office. A good family office software should have features for portfolio tracking, performance analysis, and risk management. More recent requirements for family office software also require the need to manage new asset classes.

The diversification in asset classes is important as it allows family offices to diversify investments and potentially generate higher returns. Diversification can help mitigate risk and volatility in investment portfolios, and adding new asset classes can provide opportunities for growth and income. Family office software provides tools and features that allow family office staff to track and manage various asset classes, including traditional assets such as stocks and bonds as well as alternative assets such as real estate, private equity, and hedge funds.  

Financial Planning and Budgeting: A family office is responsible for managing the financial affairs of the family, which includes planning and budgeting for expenses and investments. For those family offices that have not yet invested in a specialised software, these tasks are often managed by Excel spreadsheets, which can be time-consuming to keep updated and open to error.

A great family office software should have tools for financial planning, budgeting, and forecasting. The automation of this information can have many benefits, the largest of which is ensuring everyone in the family office is working from a single source of truth, eliminating the silos between accounting and investment management, better enabling you to make data-driven decisions. 

Personalised and fast reporting: Family office software must include features for tracking and reporting on financial performance, risk, and other key metrics.

Being able to quickly and easily tailor these reports for the needs of each family member helps increase transparency and accountability within the family office, and allows family members to make informed decisions about their wealth and investments. 

Collaboration and Communication: Family office activities often involve multiple family members, advisors, and other stakeholders. A great family office software should have tools for communication and collaboration, such as document sharing, task management, and project management.

Certain software will even offer personalised dashboards based on your login details, meaning you are shown what you need to know, without cluttering and complicating the user experience with unnecessary information.  

Security: Security is important in family office software because it helps protect sensitive financial and personal information from unauthorized access, misuse, or disclosure. This is especially important for family offices, which often handle a wide range of financial and personal assets. There are several measures that can be taken to ensure the security of family office software, including implementing strong passwords, using secure authentication methods, and using encryption to protect data while it is transmitted or stored.

It is also important to regularly update and patch the software to fix any known vulnerabilities and to conduct regular security audits to identify and address any potential risks or issues. 

Family office software is an important tool for family offices because it helps them to manage their wealth and financial affairs more efficiently and effectively, and enables them to make informed decisions about their financial future. Overall, a great family office software should include a combination of these 5 features, to help the family office manage their wealth and financial affairs efficiently and effectively.

If you want to find out more about what Elysys family office software can offer you, contact us for a no-obligation demonstration.