Confluence, provider of automated date management to the global investment management industry now offers automated expense budgeting and payment processes, which, for many fund administrators, is a completely manual process.
Confluence says the new offerings include:
Unity Budgeting, which allows for the automation of expense analyses and approvals. Unity Budgeting lets administrators create a predictable and repeatable forecasting model that uses historical payment information. This can help reduce NAV errors.
Unity Expense Payments, which automates the authorization, payment and tracking of fund expenses including labor-intensive processes such as asset-based fee calculations, invoice allocations and completion of annual 1099-MISC and 1096 Forms. The software also enables companies to replace existing expense payment systems that were not originally designed for managed investments.
Unity Expense Management, which provides an end-to-end system from expense payments through budgeting. It is a single source for the entire expense-management process, thereby reducing operating costs.
“Without automation, expense management is time consuming and open to error,” says Kirk Botula, executive vice president and COO of Confluence. “With these products, administrators have peace of mind knowing that calculations and allocations are based on accurate information. This decreases the risks of mistakes and rework. Furthermore, our products allow customers to choose at their own pace what and when they want to automate. They can either automate one function, adding other ones as their need grows, or they can deploy an end-to-end solution and automate the entire expense management process immediately.”
Expense management often involves multiple steps. On the expense payment side, for example, invoices for expenses must be allocated across appropriate funds on a daily basis and require approvals from many parties.
“Because data has typically been managed using numerous spreadsheets, expense payment budgeting and payment processes have historically been extremely manual and time consuming for fund companies,” says Greg Ramirez, managing director, Artisan Partners Limited Partnership (Artisan Partners). “With the Unity expense management solution, we expect to gain both the efficiencies of automation and the ability to leverage one centralized data repository for multiple back-office needs.” Artisan Partners participated in the development of Confluence’s Unity expense products, and it was the first company to purchase the expense management solution.
The new budgeting, expense payments, budgeting and expense management applications are available as extensions of Unity, Confluence’s fund administration platform, or on a stand-alone basis. Unity automates and integrates critical fund administration processes, including the collection, creation, confirmation and delivery of investment product data while maintaining control of the process. A key differentiator of Unity is that it is built on a single unified database, enabling fund administrators to verify data accuracy once, store the information, and then reuse it for multiple purposes. Investment management companies can select one or a few products to begin, and seamlessly add more.
As with all Confluence products, Unity Expense Payments, Unity Budgeting and Unity Expense Management are available to be installed as part of a company’s technology infrastructure or online for users who prefer a fully hosted option.