03 — Family office operations, reporting, and technology

Administration & Back Office

The operational engine: consolidated reporting across every custodian, day-to-day administration, document and cybersecurity infrastructure, and the data plumbing that makes the rest of the operating system visible.

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What this covers

Five fronts we cover in every engagement.

Consolidated reporting platform: A single, multi-custodian, multi-entity, multi-currency reporting layer (built on a modern platform — Addepar, Maestro, or equivalent — selected for the family, not pre-decided) that reconciles to the underlying statements and survives an audit.
Accounting and bill-pay: Day-to-day cash management, supplier and household payments, intercompany accounting, and the controls around them — without becoming the family’s accountant.
Document infrastructure: An encrypted, version-controlled, role-permissioned vault for structure documents, statements, contracts, and correspondence — with retention policies that match each jurisdiction.
Cybersecurity and identity protection: Multi-factor authentication, hardware keys, password and secrets management, device hardening, encrypted email, and ongoing monitoring — designed for a private family, not a corporate network.
Workflow automation: Wherever a process is repetitive — capital calls, distributions, periodic reporting, KYC refreshes — we automate the boring parts so the family’s time is spent on judgment, not paperwork.

When families engage us on this

When it makes sense to begin.

The spreadsheet is the system

A growing portion of the family’s reporting is being kept alive by one or two heroic spreadsheets, and the people who maintain them.

A breach or near-miss

Phishing, SIM-swap, deepfake call, or a contractor with the wrong access — something happened that should never have happened. The defense needs to be designed properly.

Onboarding or rebuilding a single-family office

A new SFO is being set up, or an existing one is being modernized. The administrative and technology layer needs to be designed from the ground up.

How we work on this

The rhythm, in four phases.

01
Inventory

Every custodian, entity, advisor, system, document store, and access point — mapped, owned, and risk-rated.
02
Architect

Choose the platforms (reporting, document, identity, comms), define the data model, and design the controls. Keep the family in control of every credential.
03
Implement

Stand the systems up, migrate data, integrate feeds, retire the spreadsheets and the legacy access. Train the people who will use them.
04
Run

Operate the layer at the cadence the family needs — monthly reporting, quarterly reviews, annual audit prep, incident response on standby.

What we do — and what we don’t

The boundary of the engagement — written without ambiguity.

We coordinate, design, and modernize. We do not manage client assets, give regulated investment advice, provide tax or legal opinions, or act as your trustee, custodian, or accountant. Where those mandates are required, we identify, vet, and integrate the right specialists into your operating model.

We do

Designing and operating the family’s reporting, document, and cybersecurity infrastructure.
Selecting the technology platforms and integrating them with the family’s custodians and advisors.
Running day-to-day administration, bookkeeping, and bill-pay under the family’s controls.
Defining and rehearsing the security and incident response model.

We do not

We do not provide audited accounts; we coordinate the auditor and ensure the data is clean before they arrive.
We do not act as the family’s tax filer; we maintain the records the tax specialists rely on.
We do not sell or resell technology platforms; we recommend and implement them as independent integrators.
We do not retain credentials, signing rights, or access beyond what is strictly required to operate.

In more depth

The written version of the thinking.

This is the pillar that, when it is done right, becomes invisible — and when it is done wrong, becomes the reason every other pillar fails.

The cost of an invisible back office

You can have a brilliant investment policy and a perfectly designed structure, and still be operating blind if the back office is a stack of PDFs, four spreadsheets, two assistants’ inboxes, and a shared password file. We have seen families miss capital calls because no one knew which entity was supposed to pay; we have seen reporting cycles take six weeks because three custodians export data in incompatible formats; we have seen security breaches that traced back to a contractor whose access nobody had revoked when the engagement ended.

A modern back office is not glamorous. It is the difference between a family that knows what it owns, on what terms, in which currency, by Friday — and a family that has to ask.

Questions we hear often

Direct answers to the questions we hear most often.

Which reporting platform do you recommend?

The right one for the family. We have implemented Addepar, Maestro, Asseta, and a handful of smaller specialist tools, and we have replaced expensive deployments with simpler ones when that made more sense. The choice is driven by complexity, asset mix, and how much the family wants to operate themselves.

Can you take over from an internal team that is currently overwhelmed?

Yes. We frequently work alongside (or in place of) an internal administrator, family CFO, or part-time bookkeeper. We can either fully outsource the function or build the internal team’s capability up.

What about cybersecurity — isn’t our bank already handling that?

The bank protects its perimeter. It does not protect your inbox, your phone, your home network, your contractors, your assistant, or your children’s devices. UHNW families are targeted on the household level, not the institutional level. We design the defense at the level where the attack actually happens.

Will you hold our passwords or signing rights?

No. Credentials and signing rights remain with the family. Where operational access is required, we use scoped, auditable accounts owned by the family and revocable at any time.

Related capabilities

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