Our Q2 product release is just about here! Which means it’s time to read about everything that will make your life easier—and your clients love you even more.
Whether it’s our major reporting enhancements, new Batch Performance app, or improvements to our client presentation tool, we’re sure you’ll find something to rally behind in the notes below.
Advisor Experience
Patience is a virtue, but let’s face it, waiting is still a hassle. In this update, we’re giving you the ability to run your own performance batches—no assistance needed.
Highlights
- We created a brand new Batch Performance app, allowing you to run performance across your database for the groupings and time frames of your choosing.
How to Get There: Orion Connect > Batch Performance
- For advisors that upload tax documents to the Client Portal, we understand you’re uploading more than just 1099s. For that reason, Orion has renamed the “1099 Tax Reports” document bucket to “Tax Reports.”
How to Get There: Orion Connect > Client Portal > Documents > Tax Reports - We added the ability to assign multiple contacts to an Orion Support case to allow for message notifications to be received by multiple users.
How to Get There: Orion Connect > Orion Support > Any Case > Additional Contacts
Billing & Composites
On-time billing is critical for the health of your business, so we’re continuing to differentiate our offering with new features to complete tasks that formerly required some time-intensive workarounds.
Highlights
- In the Post Payment app, advisors can un-post a specific account fee without un-posting the entire batch. This functionality also works with a fee that was auto-posted.
How to Get There: Orion Connect > Post Payments > Actions > Undo Post Payments > Date Posted or Batch Number > Select Item To Un-Post
- Previously, the only way to add a dollar amount to a payout rate was to add a minimum fee. We’ve added the ability to allow advisors to create a payout rate for a flat dollar amount.
How to Get There: Orion Connect > Billing Audit > Payout Rates
Compliance
Getting the information you want, when you want, shouldn’t be an arduous process. We’ve made information gathering easier than ever with new filter options.
Highlights
- We added filter options to include RIA, Rep, Broker/Dealer, Sub-Advisor, Custodian, Management Style, Model, Client Category, Registration Type, and Business Line to assist with sorting.
How to Get There: Orion Connect > Compliance > Tool
Integrations
Highlights
- We’ve built a single-sign-on to MyRepChat. MyRepChat is an SMS texting platform for a BYOD environment. Features of the platform include:
- Text and group messaging
- Compliance features
- Message scheduling
- A digital assistant
- Ability to import contacts
- Auto-forwarding calls from a landline
And stay tuned — we’ll be building out additional integration features later this year.
How to Get There: Once the SSO has been made available to your user role by your firm’s User Admin, simply log into Orion Connect and click the MyRepChat icon.
- We’ve enhanced our integration with Asset-Map to include an Insight Tile, so advisors can seamlessly access and edit their clients’ asset-maps within the Insight dashboard.
How to Get There: Orion Connect > Insight > Add Tile (+) > Integrations > Asset-Map
Recon & Dashboards
Clients deserve engaging presentations during in-person meetings. We continue to improve our Insight dashboard so you can knock their socks off.
Highlights
- We’ve made an enhancement to Insight, our client presentation tool. Advisors now have the ability to display household and account-level target allocations inside of the Target Allocation tile.
How to Get There: Orion Connect > New Dashboard > Add Tile - The unrealized and realized gain/loss tiles inside of Insight have been revamped. Advisors can now have more tax-driven data at their fingertips for client presentations.
How to Get There: Orion Connect > New Dashboard > Add Tile > Unrealized Gain Loss
- We added product as a grouping option with our Performance, Holdings Detail, and Holdings Summary tiles in the Insight app. This enhancement allows you to drill down further and view performance at the product level within Insight.
How to Get There: Orion Connect > Insight > Select Dashboard > Holdings Detail Tile > Settings > Grouping - We created a new estimated income tile inside of Insight. This now allows advisors to communicate with clients about the estimated annual income and yield.
How to Get There: Orion Connect > Insight > New Dashboard > Add Tile - Morningstar classifications across Orion Connect will automatically update, providing advisors with the most up-to-date information. No action is necessary.
Additional Reconciliation Updates
- We created Audited Date and Audited By columns for asset classes and asset categories to provide clearer and more actionable information in the Products and Prices App.
How to Get There: Orion Connect > Products & Prices > Asset Classes/Categories Section - We added the following new columns to the Tax Center App: Account Created Date, Custodian, and Qualified.
How to Get There: Orion Connect > Tax Center > Audit Pages - We added the ability to mark records as “Reviewed” or “Not Reviewed” for users to see which tax lot audits they have already previously reviewed.
How to Get There: Orion Connect > Tax Lot Audits > Custodian Realized > Status Column, Tax Lot Audits > Custodian Unrealized > Status Column - We now give advisors the ability to “opt-in” to the local income override only if they want that override turned on.
How to Get There: Orion Connect > Products & Prices > Income Override Setting > Local On/Off Toggle Setting
- We added a realized and unrealized cost basis feed for Gemini. This allows Orion to report accurate cost basis information for Gemini accounts.
- We added needed defaults to new products in order to improve the user experience for creating products in Account Composer.
How to Get There: Orion Connect > Account Composer > Products > Actions > + New Product **Fill in all of the required fields for a new product, but leave the subtype blank
Reporting
Advisors spend a lot of time creating reports, so we’re on a mission to make reporting fun again. We’ve added new filtering capabilities and grouping options to get you jazzed about our uber-customizable and time-efficient reporting engine.
Highlights
- Reports generated from Report Builder will now be included in the Archive tool of our compliance tool.
How to Get There: Orion Connect > Compliance > Archive
- We added the ability to group by time on tables. Once selected, the frequency can be set to select the interval for time.
How to Get There: Orion Connect > Reporting > Report Builder (New) > New Report > Tables > Grouping Table > Right Click > Grouping > Time
- We added the ability to filter data on tables and charts. Single or multiple filters can be added to narrow the scope of the data returned on a report.
How to Get There: Orion Connect > Reporting > Report Builder (New) > New Report > Table or Chart > Click on Element > Filters
- Advisors can now select alternate line shading on specific elements. When using a Static or Grouping table, the line shading can be enabled or disabled within the setting tab. This will cause the element to operate independent of the theme.
How to Get There: Orion Connect > Reporting > Report Builder (New) > New Report > Tables > Static or Grouping > Click on Element > Settings Tab > Use Alternate Line Shading
Additional Reporting Updates
- We added @tags for notes. The tags for Household Notes, Account Notes, and Trade Instructions can now be used on reports and cover pages.
How to Get There: Orion Connect > Reporting > Report Builder (New) > New Report > Tables > Grouping Table > Search @ and Tag Name - We added a control for Unknown Cost Basis. This setting dictates how unknown cost is displayed on a report. Unchecking the option will omit any unknown cost—and show as “N/A.”
How to Get There: Reporting > Report Builder (New) > New Report > Settings > Cost Basis > Edit > Include Unknown Cost Basis - Advisors can now use a grouping table within a cover page.
How to Get There: Orion Connect > Reporting > Report Builder (New) > Cover Pages > New Cover Page > Tables - We added the ability to suppress additional pages when using an Advance Grouping. If only one entity exists under the grouping, selecting this option will suppress the data for the Advanced Wrapper.
How to Get There: Orion Connect > Reporting > Report Builder (New) > New Report > Layout > Advance Grouping > Click on Element > Hide If Only One Group - We added a “Yield on Cost” @tag, allowing you to show the annual dividend rate of security, divided by its average cost basis.
How to Get There: Orion Connect > Reporting > Report Builder (New) > New Report > Tables > Grouping Table > Search @Yield on Cost - We added the ability to select how the Inception Date Range option looks at data. This control exists on any inception date range and selecting the option looks to the holding period—rather than just to the inception date.
How to Get There: Orion Connect >Reporting > Report Builder (New) > New Report > Settings > Date Range > Edit > Select Inception > Start Date Method > Inception or Holding Period - We added the ability to use custom fields. Custom fields created at the Representative, Household, Registration, Account, and Product levels can now be used within reports.
How to Get There: Orion Connect > Reporting > Report Builder (New) > New Report > Tables > Grouping Table > Search Custom Field - Advisors can now group by tax status. Each option can be selected within a table and are as follows: Qualified, Product Taxability, and State/Federal Taxability. Qualified will look at the Account Type, whereas Product and State/Federal will look at the product level setting to determine the tax status.
How to Get There: Orion Connect > Reporting > Report Builder (New) > New Report > Tables > Grouping > Right Click > Grouping > Qualified, Product Taxability, or State/Federal Taxability - We added a “Growth of” @tag. These tags can display performance for both the benchmark and the entity selected for growths of $1, $100, or $1,000.
How to Get There: Orion Connect >Reporting > Report Builder (New) > New Report > Tables > Groping Table > Search @Growth - We added an “Expense Ratio” @tag on a product and asset level, in addition to higher levels like account, household, model, etc.
How to Get There: Orion Connect > Reporting > Report Builder (New) > New Report > Tables > Grouping Table > Search @Expense Ratio - Advisors can now group by Tax ID in a grouping table.
How to Get There: Orion Connect > Reporting > Report Builder (New) > New Report > Tables > Grouping Table > Right Click > Grouping > Tax ID
- We added a State grouping for bonds. This value pulls for the state listed at the product level for each bond.
How to Get There: Orion Connect > Reporting > Report Builder (New) > New Report > Tables or Charts > Select Element > Grouping > Bond State - We added a spacer element. Say you’d like to have two elements side-by-side with a 1/2″ space between them, now you can do so.
How to Get There: Orion Connect > Reporting > Report Builder (New) > New Report > Layout Dropdown > Spacer
READY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ORION’S LATEST ENHANCEMENTS?
All of the improvements you’ve read about in today’s article, plus many more will be coming to you when the Orion software update rolls out on May 18th.
To learn more about how to scale your firm with these new enhancements, sign up for our upcoming product release webinar on May 29th.
0474-OAS-5/14/2019