If you don’t have a PortfolioCenter quarterly billing checklist, now — before your next billing cycle — is a good time to make one.
Checklists offer two important benefits.
1) They aid memory recall (especially in repeated tasks where it is easy to lose concentration).
2) They make explicit the expected steps in a complicated or long process, making it less likely that one step will be overlooked.
Taking a few minutes to review your billing before the quarter ends can save you hours of headache later. Having a checklist can ensure you don’t accidentally assume “nothing has changed.”
Assuming your billing is properly established and you have complete, reconciled, accurate data, here’s a generic quarterly billing checklist. Depending on your situation, you may have additional steps.
Before the quarter ends:
Check all your accounts, sets and groups in PortfolioCenter for items that may have changed since the previous quarter:
[list icon=”icon: check” icon_color=”#417bc5″]- Have any clients changed names through marriage or divorce or death?
- Any children come of age who now need a separate report and/or bill?
- Are all your addresses up to date (if you include them on the bill)?
- Are all new clients assigned the proper billing specification and billing form?
- Have all dropped client accounts been emptied and closed?
After the quarter ends
[list icon=”icon: check” icon_color=”#417bc5″]- Post and reconcile all data in all your interfaces.
- Make sure the billing price files are complete. Typically these are
- Update the dates and descriptions for all billing specifications.
- Run a first draft of your fees for review.
Tip: I find running a single PDF of the invoices is the most comprehensive way to proof. Unlike the Global Billing Summary, the actual invoices allow you to also check spellings, address, account values and strange allocations (like a fee of -$.01; which is a known bug).
- Make your changes and produce your final invoices.
- Export management fees to upload to your broker.
- Check that there is sufficient cash for fee deduction in the billing accounts.
- Upload your fees to your broker.
- Create an external management fee payment for clients who pay by check.
Photo taken by Ruth & Dave and used here under Flickr Creative Commons.