For financial advisers and wealth firms
Software for Melbourne wealth firms whose advisers do admin not advice.
For 10-30 adviser practices where Xplan, HUB24 and Netwealth each hold a piece of the client and SOA prep eats a week of adviser time per review. We build the database underneath the practice. A single source of truth the platforms read from, instead of three systems each holding a different version of the same client.
What we hear from principals and heads of operations
Most heads of operations describe the same five problems at every Melbourne wealth practice we sit down with. None of them are Xplan's fault, or HUB24's, or any one platform's in particular. They are what happens when each tool owns its own view of the client and nobody owns the view across them.
- Advisers are doing admin instead of advice. The whole reason you hired them was to sit in front of clients. Instead they spend half the week re-keying client details into Xplan after the platform sync drops a field, chasing an SOA template through three rounds of compliance edits, and reconciling holdings that should already match. Capacity per adviser drifts down quarter by quarter.
- Fee compression keeps squeezing the margin. The fee revenue per client is flat or falling. The cost to serve each client keeps going up because the admin load goes up. Capacity per adviser is the only lever left, and another admin hire makes the unit economics worse, not better. The strategic answer is doing more clients with the same adviser headcount, which means automating the admin layer the platforms never built.
- SOA, ROA and annual review prep take weeks. A statement of advice, a record of advice or an annual review should be a half-day job. In practice it is two weeks: pull holdings from HUB24, valuations from Netwealth, fee history from the platform statement, risk profile from FinaMetrica, last year's strategy from Xplan, then the compliance redraft cycle. The adviser sees the client; the back office goes quiet for a fortnight. Before you assume the data can simply be pulled, our note on what advisers can and cannot extract from Xplan is worth a read.
- Compliance evidence lives in seven places. SOA evidence in Xplan. Risk-profile records in FinaMetrica or Oxford Risk. FASEA-era adviser CPD points tracked in a separate LMS. File notes in Outlook. Fee-disclosure consents in a shared drive. ASIC and AFSL obligations sit on top of a stack that does not agree about who the client is, and the compliance officer reconstructs the picture by hand at every audit.
- Platform integrations are a nightmare. Xplan was sold as the integration hub. HUB24 was sold as the integration hub. Salesforce Financial Services Cloud was pitched the same line. None of them actually own the client record across all three. Roadmap promises arrive every quarter, the data still does not flow, and the practice writes another spreadsheet to bridge the gap. Read the Xplan and platform integration write-up.
None of these get fixed by switching planning software. They get fixed by deciding which system owns which field and putting a real database underneath that captures the truth across Xplan, HUB24, Netwealth and the rest. That is the work we do. See how we approach the integration side when the Xplan, HUB24 and Netwealth stack already exists, or browse our full custom-software services for the broader picture.
Tools we work with
Planning software
Xplan, Midwinter, AdviserLogic
The system the advisers actually open every day. We integrate it as the client and strategy spine without trying to replace it. SOA and ROA generation feeds from one consolidated data model rather than three exported spreadsheets, fact-find updates flow back without re-keying, and the bits Xplan or Midwinter does not natively show (capacity by adviser, review pipeline by quarter, compliance gaps before the audit) live in the database underneath.
Platforms
HUB24, Netwealth, Macquarie Wrap, BT Panorama
The platforms hold the holdings, valuations and fee data. Each one has its own API, its own quirks, its own outage pattern. We build the integration layer that pulls holdings from HUB24, cross-checks valuations against Netwealth, brings Macquarie Wrap and BT Panorama into the same data model, and keeps the planning software in sync without the adviser opening four browser tabs.
CRM
Xplan CRM, Salesforce Financial Services Cloud
Whichever CRM the practice runs, the database underneath captures the client record once and surfaces it everywhere. For Salesforce FSC practices, we build the integration layer so the platform feeds, the planning software and the CRM stop arguing about who owns the client. For Xplan-only practices, we extend the CRM with the fields the planning software does not natively model. Deciding whether to commit to a platform at all? Our note on <a href="/articles/custom-crm-vs-salesforce-30-person-firm/" class="link-brand">custom CRM versus Salesforce for a 30-person firm</a> covers where each one wins and the seat-licence maths to run first.
SOA and ROA production
The advice document engine
The single biggest adviser-time drain we see. We build SOA and ROA generation off one consolidated client record so the document writes itself from the data instead of being assembled by hand from screenshots and exports. Compliance redraft cycles drop because the numbers and the client facts come from the same source every time.
Reporting
Power BI, the principal dashboard, the client-facing report
Practice metrics that principals will actually open: capacity per adviser, review pipeline by month, revenue per client by service tier, compliance-readiness score by adviser. Built into the leadership meeting agenda so the conversation runs on numbers, not memory. Plus the client-facing report that demonstrates value at the annual review, instead of leaving the client looking at the fee line on its own.
The plumbing
The custom layer
Most of the value sits in what your practice has always done in advisers' heads, in fact-find templates, or in workflows the senior adviser invented and never wrote down. Strategy logic, fee-setting rules, the review cadence, the partner-of-record handoff. We model that explicitly in the database so the practice runs the same way on the day a senior adviser takes leave.
Recent work / Melbourne wealth practice (10-15 advisers)
80% less manual data entry. Meaningful hours back to advisers every week.
A Melbourne wealth practice came to us with client data trapped in an Access database built years earlier by a former employee. Manual processes everywhere. One person in the firm understood the system, and if that person left the operational knowledge went with them. Salesforce Financial Services Cloud had been evaluated and rejected as too heavy for their size. Zapier had patched the gaps for a while before the automations started breaking weekly.
We rebuilt it on a normalised PostgreSQL database that preserved the business logic encoded in the Access queries and replaced 80% of manual data entry. The single point of failure became a documented system the whole firm could pick up. Capacity per adviser went up without another admin hire. Read the wealth practice CRM case study for the longer write-up. Our accounting firms and law firms pages apply the same database-first approach to a different stack.
Read the wealth practice CRM case study Browse all case studies
What we hear
Staff hate sending an email and then going into the CRM, opening the CRM and updating notes. They feel the sending of the email is the completion of the task.
The engagement path
Discovery call
30 minutes with Marty (founder, doing this since 2007). You describe the practice, the platforms, the bits that actually hurt. We tell you honestly whether what you are describing sounds like an integration job, a custom-software job, or a sharper Xplan setup that would solve more for less. If your dealer group runs an approved-vendor list, tell us upfront and we will work alongside an approved integrator or apply through your licensee. No pitch.
Systems diagnostic
A fixed-price piece of work. Most heads of operations we meet have been burned by an IT project that stalled in the compliance review, so the diagnostic exists to put a real number and the data-handling story on the table together. We map where each piece of client data lives, who edits it, where it is hosted, who has access, and which fields actually matter for SOA production, annual reviews and the audit trail. You finish with a written diagnostic you can forward to your compliance officer or AFSL holder, a prioritised list of fixes and a scoped estimate.
Integration or custom build
Most wealth practices need both. The integration layer puts Xplan, HUB24, Netwealth and the platform feeds on speaking terms via a real database. The custom build models the work that does not fit any of those tools: SOA and ROA production from one data model, annual review prep, compliance evidence trails, the principal dashboard. We build them in stages so the practice sees value inside the first quarter, and advisers see something that gives them client time back.
Ongoing support
We do not build and walk away. Vendors change APIs, platforms change, ASIC guidance changes, your firm grows. We stay on as a small ongoing engagement, usually a few hours a month, so the system gets fixed when it breaks and grows when the practice grows. The same person who built it picks up the phone.
We have been running this engagement model since 2007. See how we work.
Not sure if your practice needs custom software or a sharper Xplan setup?
Start with a 30-minute discovery call. We will tell you honestly. Most Melbourne wealth practices we talk to are one good integration away from giving advisers their client time back. And if the diagnostic finds nothing worth fixing, you walk away with a clean bill of health for your systems.