Beta testing of the Advisor Products Inc.'s (API) application for Online Reporting For PortfolioCenter has been a great success and we are now focused on improving web reporting for advisory firms using PortfolioCenter.
Beta testers gave API Online Reporting For PortfolioCenter rave reviews and some great suggestions for improving the application. Seven advisory firms participated in the beta test by uploading their client reports to our server, which successfully parsed client reports and deposited them into secure folders accessible to clients. 
A portfolio accounting service bureau also tested the application with multiple advisory firms that use PortfolioCcenter. The service bureau, Back Office Support Service (BOSS),which works with more than 100 firms using PortfolioCenter, is deploying the web reporting system with some of the largest RIA firms it serves.
Online Reporting for PortfolioCenter is less costly, better designed, and easier to use than previous solutions for providing PortfolioCenter reports to clients online. The application is integrated with Advisor Products’ new AdvisorVault 2.0, which is a secure, .NET application built on a Microsoft SharePoint platform. In addition to supporting batch uploads of PortfolioCenter, AdvisorVault 2.0 allows advisors and clients to drag and drop documents from their desktop to the virtual vault. It is hosted at a SAS 70-certified facility and mirrored for redundancy.
Other website vendors are charging $5,000 for the first year for less robust web-reporting solutions, and $9,000 to $12,000 in subsequent years. Advisor Products charges $3,600 a year, and our pricing is good for three years. In addition, since Advisor Products hosts sites for more than 1,200 advisory firms and provides newsletters, brochures, and other products to a total of more than 1,800 firms, we are able to invest in rapid development and improve our systems. Our development plans for 1Q09 include the following improvements to Online Reporting for PortfolioCenter:
- Advisor control of which performance reports are displayed
- Change the names and order of performance reports
- Change names of columns in performance reports
- Drag & drop columns in performance reports
- Match graphic elements in reports to advisory firm’s branding
- Incremental upload (changed data only) to reduce time/cost
- Automated uploads
- Enable printer-friendly reports
- Allow advisors and clients to permission others to view specified reports
- Additional reports
We cannot promise that every single one of these enhancements will be completed by the end of 1Q09. However, we do expect some of these features to be developed before the end of this year and our development team has been given a schedule that devotes resources to complete these and other improvements to Online Reporting for PortfolioCenter by March 30, 2009.
Video About Online Portfolio Reporting For PortfolioCenter.