Noticing that a custodian data file never arrived
Portfolio accounting runs on files delivered overnight. Positions, transactions, balances, cost basis and prices arrive as separate deliveries, and the basis file often lands later than the share file and covers only some registrations. When one delivery is short or missing, the system reconciles what it did receive and reports a clean night. No error fires, because a file that never came is not a break. The tell is a position count that did not move and a transaction file with no rows on a trading day.
The account application comes back not in good order because of a missing initial, and the whole signature cycle runs again.
The custodian holds the assets and is the record. The advisory firm runs a relationship system alongside it, plus a portfolio and reporting system, plus a planning tool, and the same client identity is entered into each because there is no shared key between them.
- Orion
- Addepar
- Google Sheets
When this is the wrong thing to build
Pick something else if one custodian feeds one reporting system and somebody opens the reconciliation queue every morning regardless. Watching for absence earns its place when deliveries are many and the morning check happens after reports have already gone out.
The constraint that shapes it
Books and records rules require preservation of communications relating to advice and recommendations, and to the movement of funds, in an accessible place, for a defined period with the earliest portion held locally. More on how this sector works.
No alarm goes off when a thing simply stops arriving. Read what this shape is, or start from one of these.
- Noticing that an agent licence has quietly lapsed
- Watching an MLS feed for the day it goes quiet
- Catching a lapse date nobody put on a calendar
- Closing the registration window before it closes you
- Scheduling the visits a membership already promised
- Closing the permit that never got its final inspection
- How do I tell if a custodian data file failed to download overnight?
- Why does reconciliation look clean when no transactions were imported?
- Does the cost basis file arrive later than the position file?
- How do I monitor nightly custodian downloads across two custodians?
- What happens when a custodian delivers a short data file?
Back to wealth management, or see how this is priced and scoped.