6 Tips to Relieve End-of-Year Stress with Orion
The article provides six detailed tips for using Orion software to reduce end-of-year stress by optimizing reporting, reviewing year-to-date performance, ensuring products have assigned asset classes, preparing billing with forecasting and cash funding tools, conducting thorough data reconciliation with monthly Asset Comparison Reports, and auditing tax lots to prevent cost basis errors.
Holiday bills, Covid, year-end work, and the repetition of holiday music can make the end of the year particularly stressful. To help alleviate some of this stress, here are six tips for using Orion to streamline your year-end processes:
1. Reporting
Create a test Report Batch with the report you’ll use for year-end statements. This helps identify any issues with the report or client households/accounts before running the actual statements. As long as you don’t change the Viewable Setting to Household in the batch, the reports will not be visible to clients.
Navigation: Reporting > Report Batches
2. Performance
Review year-to-date performance before the holiday break and again upon return. Run a sample performance batch to ensure everything is accurate and presentable.
3. Products and Prices
Ensure all products have an Asset Class assigned so allocations are correct on reports. Search for products missing Asset Classes to prevent issues later.
Navigation: Products & Prices > Maintenance > Missing Asset Classes
4. Billing
Run Forecast Bills and use the Cash Funding Tool to prepare for the new year and get ahead on quarterly processing. These tools help review calculations and ensure accounts have enough cash before running live bills. Utilize the Payout Dashboard to see how much is being paid to individual representatives.
5. Data Reconciliation
Run the Asset Comparison Report (ACR) monthly. The ACR lists accounts and assets with a value in Orion that have dropped off the custodial data feed and are no longer downloading. Also, review Accounts Not Downloading, Accounts Downloading on the Exclusion List, and Placeholder Transaction Audits within the Recon Status application.
6. Cost Basis
Review Tax Lot Audits to determine if any overrides are needed. Check each section to prevent errors in the future.
Navigation: Tax Center > Tax Lot Audits
These tips can help you use Orion more effectively and reduce year-end stress. For additional updates and resources, consider subscribing to Orion's blog.