Announcements

What’s New Advisor Portal | Streamlined Client Info ChangesTo reduce clutter in client information change logs, advisors will now be shown changes only going back 14 days. As part of this update, advisors using CircleBlack’s Wealthbox integration will also see their client info changes synced for any linked clients.

What’s New Wealthbox | Added Events Capabilities within CircleBlack Advisor PortalCircleBlack users utilizing the Wealthbox integration can now add and view Events within the CircleBlack interface. For relationship-focused advisors, the ability to track and maintain key events is an important component of building a more meaningful relationship with your clients. When an Event is added via CircleBlack’s Wealthbox integration, the Event will be synced with Wealthbox in real-time.  Within Wealthbox and when Calendar Sync is enabled, Events will now synchronize with your email provider (e.g. Outlook).  More information can be found on Wealthbox's support page.

What’s New Mobile App | Visualization and Usability EnhancementsCircleBlack’s mobile app now achieves broad feature parity with CircleBlack’s web portal, introducing significant enhancements to the Document Vault and offering new features alongside a streamlined mobile workflow.  This set of enhancements is responsive to advisor and client expectations, adding in new delighters and ensuring privacy while accessing financial information on the go. New features within CircleBlack’s white-labeled wealth management mobile app include*: Document Vault Enhancements: Enhancements made to both the management of documents and advisors’ and their clients’ abilities to interact with them (read more about Document Vault Enhancements below).  Most consequentially, the CircleBlack Document Vault now supports multimedia on both mobile and web platforms.  This allows advisors to share their audio and video podcasts or other newsworthy rich media files with all or a specific individual or subset of clients. Streamlining Workflows with Efficient Navigation: The app has been designed to significantly reduce the number of taps required to drill down into desired endpoints, making navigation intuitive and efficient. User-Friendly Interface: Featuring a beautiful, non-intimidating, and easy-to-navigate UI/UX, the app allows users to quickly access charts, graphs, documents, and media with minimal effort while maintaining a high level of organization and reducing screen-loading times. Light Mode Implementation: A new light mode option provides a visually pleasing alternative to the dark mode. Experience a new aesthetic option preferred by many users. Advanced Data Visualization: Time-period preferences, i.e. 3 months or 2 years, are now saved within balance graphs, transactions view, and holdings view.  Previously, an advisor could set preferences to a default time-period within the portal settings and have this apply to all widgets.  Now, an advisor can select their preferred time-period view separately for different widgets, i.e. transactions can be viewed over 3 months while holdings are viewed over 2 years.  With each selection, that specific widget will maintain and reflect the time-period selection whenever the widget is revisited, until an advisor changes the preference. Clustered Balance Widgets: Balance-related drill-downs and widgets, such as exposure, risk, performance, and asset classes, are now clustered for easier access.  These rich content widgets allow for a deep-dive into each category for greater introspection by account and by widget. Toggle Big Number Visibility for Privacy Control: Users can hide or reveal their total portfolio value with a simple click. This feature is especially beneficial when concerns arise about the setting where the user is accessing the app, toggling visibility of their portfolio value whether they are in private or looking to check their performance discreetly in public settings. The visibility preference (toggled on or off) carries through to each page or view within the app, maintaining the user's most recent selection for a consistent and secure experience. Click here to read more about CircleBlack’s mobile app and document vault enhancements.Document Vault | Enhanced File Organization and Embedded Media Player Highlight Advanced Capabilities in Advisor-Client Document Vault UpdateCircleBlack has enhanced our Document Vault with a focus on improving and expanding the advisor-client relationship.  New capabilities in the Document Vault upgrade document management as well as document interactions. New Document Vault features for document management include: Enhanced Folder Organization: Advisors can categorize and organize document types with a new Document Vault user interface, making it easier to locate specific documents. Edit Document Detail Modal: Easily edit document names, types, and tags through a redesigned preview modal. Notification Icons: Enhanced notification icons ensure important updates are easily noticed.  Furthermore, clicking on a Notification Icon will direct the user to a preview of the document within the Document Vault. Improved Document Vault Navigation: Selecting a row also now opens the document’s preview modal, initiating an abridging of the document interaction process. New Document Vault features for document interactions include: Bidirectional Uploads and Downloads: Advisor Both advisors and their clients can easily upload and download documents bidirectionally, including rich media files like videos and podcasts. Document Sharing: Share multiple documents at once from the documents table, streamlining the sharing process.  In addition to bulk document sharing, documents can now be shared on and off the platform, regardless of the document owner, facilitating easier collaboration. Embedded Media Player in Document Vault: Advisors and clients can access an embedded media player in the Document Vault on both mobile and web platforms, facilitating the consumption of video and audio content directly within the app. Multimedia Sharing & Consumption on Mobile: Users can preview, scan, and upload various file types, including presentations, spreadsheets, text files, and images.  Wealthbox | SSO Access to Wealthbox for Firm AssistantsAssistants to Financial Advisors and Firm Managers can now access Wealthbox through CircleBlack’s integration simply by entering their Wealthbox credentials.  With this implementation, Assistants can log into Wealthbox with their own login when performing their duties, ensuring compliance by better tracking the actions they’re taking. *Please note that the ability for some users to access the newest version of the mobile app may be delayed slightly based on their mobile device’s app store. 

What’s New Wealthbox | Real-Time Sync of Client Information UpdatesWhen an advisor with an established Wealthbox integration edits any client information field from the Household Dashboard or Client Details page in CircleBlack, that information is synced from CircleBlack to Wealthbox in real-time.  CircleBlack will also check for select populated fields in Wealthbox and update those client fields within CircleBlack. This allows advisors to more quickly and efficiently manage client updates while understanding that CircleBlack has ensured a single source of truth for client information. Click here to read more about CircleBlack’s Wealthbox integration. What’s Improved Rebalancing | Filter by Accounts Available for TradingFiltering within the Blaze Portfolio integration in CircleBlack will now enable advisors to view only the relevant accounts that are available for trading, making the trading and rebalancing function more efficient within CircleBlack. Learn more about CircleBlack’s Blaze Portfolio integration and Rebalancing capabilities in our Knowledge Base. eMoney | Improved Household Mapping Logic Enhanced the integration process so that households between eMoney and CircleBlack can be linked more easily, and managing those household accounts can begin more readily. Click here to read more about CircleBlack’s eMoney integration. Reporting | Updated Cover Page for V2 ReportsThe sub-header denoting Managed/Unmanaged accounts has been removed from the V2 Reports cover page, improving readability in CircleBlack’s most-popular reports. Click here to read more about CircleBlack’s Reporting capabilities.

What’s Improved Advisor Dashboard | Enhanced Client ProfileAdvisors can note and maintain greater client information through the addition of new Client Profile Fields, via both drop-down lists and open text fields, including client Job Title, Personal Interests, Anniversary Date, and ID documents (including Driver’s License, Passport, and Green Card numbers), in addition to financial-related fields like Investment Objectives and Time Horizon.  This enhancement enables client-focused advisors to better nurture their client relationships and foster deeper connections. Click here to read more about CircleBlack’s Advisor Dashboard.

What’s Improved Advisor Dashboard | Household Net Contribution EnhancementsCustomization enhancements have brought improvements to the Balance widget, which now gives Advisors the option to display a Household's Net Contribution within the Investor Portal.  By simply checking a box within the Household Preferences section, Advisors are in control of displaying Net Contribution as a trend line in the Balance widget, offering them greater at-a-glance insights for more nuanced conversations with their clients.  Advisors can also choose to select Net Contributions on for some Households and off for others. Click here to read more about enhancing your client management with CircleBlack’s Household Grouping feature.

What’s New Advisor Dashboard | View & Edit Clients within an Associated HouseholdA new table in the Advisor Dashboard now gives advisors the ability to easily view all clients associated with a Household grouping from the Household Dashboard, including the Client Name, Relationship, and Total Assets.  All of the columns are sortable.  This update also enables advisors to quickly edit information related to their clients. Click here to read more about this new feature. Click here for more details on using household preferences in performance reporting. What’s Improved Document Vault | Security Enhancements for Document Uploads The DocVault has been enhanced with added security for document uploads.  Upon a document being uploaded to the DocVault, CircleBlack has implemented a check to validate not just the file size and file extension to ensure the file is truly the file type it claims to be, but also a check to validate the content of the file to ensure there is nothing malicious contained therein.  If such a case is encountered, the user will be prevented from uploading the invalid document on the front end.  By enforcing proper file content validation, CircleBlack ensures the web application is unable to execute malicious code upon the upload of a supported file type. Click here for more information on the Document Vault Security Enhancement. What’s Fixed Advisor Dashboard & Reporting | Improved Logic for Nitrogen Risk ScoresImproved logic for Nitrogen Risk Scores alerts advisors when Actual and Target Risk Scores are not in alignment.  The improved logic will be reflected in Nitrogen Risk Scores appearing in the Advisor Dashboard and V2 Reports.Investor Portal | Displaying Cumulative Performance The user interface has been updated so that, when the Cumulative Returns option is selected as the Household’s preference, Cumulative Performance will be shown in the Investor Portal.  Indicators of this can be found within the Performance and Holdings widgets.

What’s Improved Client Experience | Firm/Household Email Report DistributionEnhanced Advisor email logic to ensure specific Firms or Households who were previously impacted by a bug can now be added to weekly/monthly email report distributions. Learn more about Using Household Preferences to Enhance Client Personalization and Engagement in Performance Reporting in our Knowledge Base.

What’s Improved Reporting | Nitrogen Risk Scores Displaying “Actual” and “Target” Risk Scores in V2 ReportsCircleBlack solved for an issue where some Advisors were experiencing Nitrogen Risk Scores not displaying on V2 Reports.  For Advisors who had been experiencing this issue, they’ll once again see the “Actual” and “Target” Risk Scores included in V2 Reports. Nitrogen Risk Scores will appear unchanged for any users who were not previously experiencing issues with this integration functionality in their V2 Reports.  Learn more about the benefits and features of CircleBlack’s Nitrogen integration here. Client Experience | Updated Investor Layout Preferences dashboard to include WealthcareFirm Managers will now be able to set Wealthcare's Comfort Zone Score as part of their default view in the Investor Portal dashboard. Learn more about Wealthcare and Comfort Zone Scores here.

What’s New Reporting | Report TitlesThe character limit for creating report titles has been extended to accommodate up to 50 characters in v2 reports.  This should allow for a more robust naming schema and a more organized documentation structure. What’s Improved Reporting | Annualized vs. Cumulative ReturnsClarification language has been updated in report footers and in the Legal Disclaimers section of the report around Annualized / Cumulative Returns. Click here for more details.

What's Improved Reporting | Fixed Bug Which Prevented New Templates From Being UpdatedPreviously some newly created templates could not be updated immediately after being created. This issue has been resolved.Reporting | Multi-Period Performance showing Annualized PerformanceResolved issue with multi-period performance showing annualized performance for periods under 1 year

What's Improved Document Vault | Filter by Active & Inactive Households within DocVaultWhen viewing documents by Household, users can now filter by inactive or active households.

What’s New Client Experience | Investor Portal User workflow enhancementsWe enhanced the Add Investor Portal User workflow experience by creating a streamlined pop-up through which Investor Portal Users can be created and assigned to Associated Households. We also enhanced the Investor Portal User info page to more easy highlight key details and actions like editing user information and activating users. Click here for more details.Advisor Dashboard | Advisor column added to Firm Household PerformanceOn the Firm-level Dashboard’s Balance graph, we added a column to the Household Performance table that identifies the Advisors assigned to the Household.What’s Improved Reporting | Fixes to annualized & cumulative return selectionsWe fixed an issue that was causing reports to show annualized returns for time periods greater than 1 year when the cumulative preference was chosen. 

What's New Client Experience | Investor Portal User creation expanded to Branch Manager and Advisor usersPreviously, Firm Managers users were only able to create Investor Portal Users in order to provide additional login access for their firm’s clients.  Now, we have added the Investor Portal User tool for Firms with Branch Managers or Advisors. Branch Managers and Advisors can click on Manage → Investor Portal Users to step through the workflow of creating additional client logins. Click here for more details.Reporting | Export household performance data at Firm levelIn our last release, we added the ability for Firms to view a list of their households’ performance returns under the firm balance graph. Now, Firm Managers can export this household performance data into a consolidated report to quickly and easily review performance over a specified time period.  Click here for more details. Advisor Dashboard | Preference for cumulative or annualized returns on dashboardWe added an Advisor Preference that lets advisor users see either annualized or cumulative performance for returns greater than 1 year.  Previously, the dashboard only displayed annualized returns greater than 1 year and the preference was only available on Reports.What's Improved Reporting | Preview report color & improved report parameters groupingPreviously, Firm Managers have been able to set a custom theme color on PDF reports. In this release, we added functionality that allows Firm Managers to quickly preview the report in order to easily confirm or adjust the custom color. On the Report parameters page, we moved the Multi-Period Performance parameter from the General section to the Performance section. Additionally, asset class target parameters will now show under Asset Class Breakdown.Advisor Dashboard | Firm Managers can activate households of their Branches and AdvisorsIn a previous release, we added the ability for Firm Manager users to household on behalf of their Branches and Advisors.  This release gives Firm Managers the functionality to activate households of branches and advisors to the Investor portal. 

What’s New Client/Investor Experience | MoneyGuide TileCircleBlack’s MoneyGuide integration now provides a UI tile in the client/investor portal that can display the client/investor’s Probability of Success score and/or gives SSO access into MoneyGuide depending on the configuration, increasing engagement and customer satisfaction.Reports | Bulk DownloadsIn addition to the existing ways of downloading and sharing reports, we’ve added the ability to download multiple reports at a time, saving advisors time. What’s Improved Advisor Experience | Add New Advisor, Firm-Level Performance, and Holdings TableWhen adding a New Advisor or Assistant, we’ve enhanced the loading icon to make sure it’s more visible, making it clear the system is working, reducing confusion and the creation of duplicates caused by advisors accidentally reloading the page and/or resubmitting requests.  To ensure Firm Managers have quick access to the information they need, household performance can now be viewed from the balance widget on the firm dashboard. To make it easier to intuit creating households, when the householding table is empty we’ve added a shortcut to “Add Clients” so Advisors can start building households right away.Integrations | BlazeWe’ve separated the steps of assigning Models to accounts and generating trade proposals to bring the account in line with the model, making it easier for advisors to see the potential impact of a model and receive drift alert notifications without making changes to any assets. Advisors can now view and access the Models page without turning on the rebalancing features, making it more straightforward for advisors to find the functionality they need without adding menu items they don’t need/want. 

What's Improved Investor Experience | Unrealized Gain/LossInvestors can view unrealized gains/losses in the in the Holdings table and drill into the position to see the associated open lots as well as total YTD realized gains/losses in the Accounts table.Advisor Experience | Client Creation and Net ContributionAdded "required" indicators to form fields and reorganized the user interface. Users can display net contributions on the account, household, and group dashboards.Reports | Previously Run Reports and Asset Class GroupingsUsers will now be able to view report details by clicking the row of the report. The preview icon has been moved into the document name column. Grouping by asset class, subtype, and type will aggregate all assets across accounts into one row rather than show a row for every account holding the asset.Blaze Integration | Streamline Model AssignmentThe model assignment process now requires one fewer step.

What's Improved Advisor Experience | Managing HouseholdsAdded 'Select All' functionality to the Manage Household pages. Note: only 40 households can be activated at once.Click Here for more information on managing households. 

What's Improved DocVault | Upload & ShareThe document upload workflow now allows advisors to share document(s) directly with one or many specified household(s) during the document upload process, eliminating a step in sharing documents. More details here.Reports | Expanded Template Parameters and Net Contribution Toggle All Report templates offer all report parameters as options for a report, giving advisors even more ways to configure reports exactly as they want them. Users can toggle Net Contributions on and off via the parameter selection stage. Click here for more information on configuration parameters. Knowledge Bot | Support LinkWe’ve added a link for our “contact support” page to the Knowledge bot - don’t hesitate to reach out if you need anything! What's Fixed Reports | DisclaimersFixed a bug that caused the incorrect performance methodology to be shown in the disclaimer.Advisor Dashboard | Time PeriodsFixed an issue where the incorrect max date was displayed on dashboards.

What's New DocVault | Bulk UploadsLast release we brought you bulk downloads, this week we’re releasing the complimentary bulk uploads. Advisors and Firm Managers will find the Add Documents workflow now supports bulk uploads, making adding multiple documents at once significantly easier and faster.  Click here for more details.Bulk uploads are limited to 20 files at a time. This feature supports the following file types; jpg, jiff, png, svg, csv, doc, rtf, pdf, ppt, txt, and xls.   Advisor Experience | Knowledge BotTo help make sure users have the right information at their fingertips when using the system, we’ve implemented a Knowledge Bot within the UI.Users will find a small blue icon in the lower right Clicking this icon will give access to key information, such as Knowledge Base content, Guides, and Release Notes.What's Improved Billing | Household BillingAdvisors will be able to select all managed accounts for billing from the Household billing page. Updated Household billing details page to include Managed/Unmanaged indicatorReports | Page Order, Search, & Asset Class LabelsFixed bug which caused the "Performance by Asset Class" page to display in the wrong order. Advisors searching for Reports can now search with a chosen time period. (1 year is set as the default period shown) Added descriptive labels for the donut charts on the Asset Class Analysis page.Integrations | BlazeUsers will now be able to SSO directly into Blaze Portfolio from the Advisor experience. What's Fixed Advisor Dashboard | Tax LotsIf your custodian is Schwab, FMR, or Pershing, you will now see Tax Lot data in the Advisor dashboards.

What's New DocVault | Bulk DownloadsDocVault provides bulk downloads for advisors to quickly download multiple documents at once. Click here for more details. Bulk downloads are limited to 20 files at a time. Automatically produces a file called "downloads.zip." The table of documents in the Advisor UI has been updated to make the "Preview Document" icon easier to find and for the document details to appear when the row is clicked. What's Improved Reports | Custom TemplatesWe've added the ability to edit the name and delete user-created Report Templates from the Report Landing page. Reports | Income & Expense Report The income & expense report has been updated to sort transactions in ascending date order. (Previously, transactions were sorted by size.) What's Fixed Reports | Cost and GainsWe've fixed a bug that caused Cost and Gains columns to show up for reports not including Cost and Gains data, resulting in empty columns.   

What's New Advisor & Investor Experience | Light ModeLight mode is here! We heard your feedback - you asked and we delivered.Users, both Advisors-side and Client-side, can now toggle between light mode and dark mode for their experience. The option is in the top-left of the Advisor/Client preferences page. For more information, click here for Advisor Light Mode and click here for Client Light Mode. (Note: Advisors previewing the Client experience will preview the Client UI in the mode the Client has selected. For example, an Advisor who has the dark theme view for themselves previews a Client using the light theme - the Advisor will see the Client UI in the light theme.) Reports | New "My Reports" SectionWe're continuing to add functionality to the new(ish) report building suite. Thanks for all the great feedback; keep it coming. Users will now find a "My Reports" section on the Reports landing page, which contains all the custom templates the user has created. Click here for more information. What's Improved DocVault | Sharing NotificationsAdvisors, Clients, and Firm Managers will now receive a notification whenever a document is immediately shared, indicated by a yellow circle on the bell icon in the top right of the UI. Click here for more information. When an Advisor shares a document with a Client, the Firm Manager will get a notification they have an approval to make. When the Firm Manager approves the sharing then the Client will get a notification in their UI that a document has been shared.  What's Fixed Reports | Income and ExpenseFixed a bug that was incorrectly calculating net income and expenses.  

What's Improved Advisor Experience | Simplified Client ActivationTo help save Advisors time and ensure Advisors can deliver exceptional client experiences, we’ve streamlined the process for adding and activating client users.We've added an "Activate" button at the end of the “Add Investor User” workflow, so that after a client is added to the system the Advisor can go directly to the activation page. (Previously, Advisors would add a user, save the user, and then navigate to the Activate page and activate the newly created user from there.)Advisor Dashboard | Custom Global Time Periods  In the last few releases, we've given Advisors the ability to configure and save the global time period for all their widgets in the Dashboard. We're extending those capabilities by adding custom time periods to the global options. With the right data in the right format at your fingertips, you can deliver more value to your clients. Advisors can select and set a “Custom” timeframe from the Global selector, and on the Holdings and Transactions widget. (Previously, the “Custom” option was available in only the Balance and Performance widgets.) What's Fixed Reporting | Scheduled Reports not being deliveredFixed a bug that prevented Weekly/Monthly Email Reports from being sent to Investor users.DocVault | Billfin folder appearing for non-Billfin usersFixed an issue that caused the Billfin folder within Docvault to display for non-Billfin users. 

We wanted to provide an update on our post-TD/Schwab conversion efforts at CircleBlack as of Thursday, September 7, 2023:Over Labor Day weekend, we successfully updated TD accounts and rep codes to be Schwab accounts and masters. Yesterday, Wednesday, Sept. 6, we successfully ingested the newly converted Schwab files for September 5 close-of-market data. Our Data and Operations teams carefully stepped through our planned quality assurances processes to link new Schwab positions with the existing position data across all our firms and environments. There may be minor data issues as a result of some of the differences in how TD and Schwab handle cash and cash-related securities but we are continuing work through those issues. Accounts were updated with 9/5 market values late last night. Today and over the next several days, Advisors should expect Schwab accounts to be updated by mid-day Eastern time given the delayed file delivery from Schwab and our continued to data quality assurance checks. Note that performance calculations will be available for Household and Accounts. Holding or position-level performance calculations will be caught up over the next few days. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out at help@circleblack.com.

 What's New In-App Notifications | Release NotesContinuing our efforts to provide RIAs with the best possible user experience, we’re implementing guides and notifications in the CircleBlack platform user experience. In the future, you’ll be able to get task-specific instructions and in-app training for features and functions, saving you time and helping you get more value from CircleBlack. For now, we’re starting with notifications!The first time Advisors, Firm Managers, and other non-Investor users log into CircleBlack after a release they will see a one-time pop-up with a brief description of the changes and a link to the full release notes.  Reports v2 | New Reports Landing Page We're excited to release new functionality for Reports v2, which is already getting excellent customer feedback due to the ease of generating reports and the options for customization. Keep the feedback coming!We've released a new Reports Landing Page with bright, informative thumbnails illustrating the report type. Reports v2 can be found under the top section of the reports landing page under Client Portfolio Reports. Click here for more information. We've added an option to the custom color theme controls, released two weeks ago, to reset a Frim's report theme color to the default CircleBlack Blue. What's Improved Advisor UI | Household activation & Default Time PeriodsThe Household activation interface has been tweaked to ensure that when Advisors are activating Households in bulk, they can only select those Households they are assigned, preventing errors in the activation workflow. In the last release, we introduced global time periods to make it easy to update all time-bound widgets at once. Now, we're adding the ability for Advisors to save their preferred time periods as a default, ensuring that their preferred view will be retained when they return. Click here for more information.

We wanted to share a message that Schwab published earlier this week to all their vendor partners regarding the delivery of Schwab files following their Labor Day Weekend TD conversion. On Wednesday, September 6 -- the first day that Schwab will deliver both their newly converted TD files along with existing Schwab files for September 5 market close -- Schwab expects a 3-4 hour delay in the delivery of their files given the greatly increased volume in files.Given the delayed file delivery from Schwab and an extra quality assurance process CircleBlack is implementing to handle the new files on the morning of September 6, we do not expect updated Schwab data to be available in CircleBlack until the evening of September 6.Schwab also shared that for the following days after Wednesday, September 6 to expect at least a 2 hour delay in the delivery of their files. CircleBlack has added computing and process capacity to handle the increased file volume but we wanted to set expectations given these forthcoming delays from Schwab.Given the expected delays next week, we advise that if you need to run a client report, we suggest generating the report with an “As of” date of September 1 or earlier. We will continue to communicate how CircleBlack is handling the TD-Schwab conversion and advise of any changes or updates to our plan. We appreciate your patience and partnership through this transition.Below is Schwab’s message delivered to all vendor partners earlier this week:Due to the millions of additional TD Ameritrade Institutional accounts converting to Schwab over Labor Day weekend, we anticipate the following impact to delivery times:For September 5 data files: Due to one-time conversion-related processing, we expect the core broker-dealer and cost basis files to be available 3-4 hours later than usual. For September 6 data files and for the foreseeable future: We expect the core broker-dealer and cost basis files to be available to you approximately 2 hours later than usual.Please keep in mind that these timeframes are estimates and actual file availability could vary.While the files will be available by the time of our Service Level Agreement of 8:30 am ET, we realize that this is later than you are accustomed to receiving them. We will monitor delivery of files post conversion and continue to do everything we can to process and deliver the files as fast as possible. We hope these changes do not cause any inconvenience to your current processing schedule. Please reach out to us with any questions or concerns at IntegrationSolutions@schwab.com.Thank you for working with us through this transition.The Schwab Integration Team