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While summer is just beginning, and teams are still preparing for 6/15 tax payments and Q2 reviews ahead, July and August will be here before we know it. Accompanying the late-summer slowdown is a rare window of operational breathing room - so you should start planning now for how to use that time, so you don’t waste it. When the pace of external requests slows, experienced teams know this is more than just a time to catch up - it’s the best opportunity to retool.

Maintaining a standard of excellence for your clients requires ongoing refinement of your internal systems. Inboxes and data stores need to be cleaned up. Complicated processes need to be streamlined.  And reporting practices need to be revisited and renewed before year-end chaos hits.

Having spent years in the UHNW and family office space, I know how hard it can be to dedicate time to these improvements. But summer offers a unique window for change - and there are a few high-leverage areas of focus that can make a real difference in your day-to-day operations. Below are three to consider, plus how your firm can leverage Atomic Insights to help you build a better foundation.

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1. Clean Up (& Centralize) Your Operational Data

RIAs use a wide array of tools to manage client data: inboxes, shared drives, Salesforce, Addepar, and more. Yet, the most common pain point is almost always the same: inconsistent data and version control.

Information lives in too many places. Important documents are duplicated, renamed, or inadvertently lost. Salesforce cases fall through the cracks. Addepar’s tagging and view schema grow messy and duplicative. Continued small data issues can snowball, eroding teams’ understanding of their clients’ balance sheets and fact patterns, and ultimately their trust.

To tackle it:

• Create a firm-wide naming and tagging schema, using meaningful identifiers that are consistent across systems.
• Get critical information and documents out of inboxes and shared drives - your CRM should house the most important client context.
• Establish a reliable source of truth for investment and payments activity.

Utilizing Atomic’s centralized dashboard, your team can view aggregate account and transaction data, the current state of payments, entity-level activity, and supporting documentation - all in one place. With clean, consistent records, your team can spend less time digging and more time servicing your clients’ needs.

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2. Rethink The Workflows That Drain Your Team

When client request volume is high, teams default to what’s fast, even if it’s fragile. Shared folders, saved and re-saved PDFs, clunky spreadsheets, and multi-thread approvals work, until they don’t.

This summer, take the time to:

• Identify your most repeated workflows (capital calls, recurring bill-pay, tax payments, etc)
• Document your current process: who does what and when
• Identify pain points and areas of confusion

Workflows should reduce complexity, not add to it. Atomic Insights partners with your team to assess current processes, highlight friction points, and co-design scalable workflows that eliminate guesswork. With Atomic, your team can send wires, ACH, checks, and journals in-platform; attach documents directly to payment requests; customize approval processes as needed; and track payment status - all without needing to toggle between folders or chase down email threads.

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3. Build Reporting Habits Now - Not in Crisis Mode

Your team wants to be prepared to answer when the client questions come:

• "When did we last pay that vendor?”
• "Where’s the wire confirmation for that capital call?”
• "What’s left in cash after those tax payments?”

Without good reporting habits, answering these becomes a scavenger hunt through custodial feeds, Addepar, inboxes, and Excel. Instead, lay the groundwork now:

• Decide what information needs to be reported on at a regular cadence - investment activity, cash movement, account balances
• Track and categorize transactions as they occur, not retroactively
• Flag risks early - low cash balances, missing SLOAs, duplicate or unsent payments

Atomic Insights offers your team a head start. Each new payment request is automatically checked against available cash, existing SLOAs, and repeated transactions. Audit logs track your team’s workflow as it is completed. Vendor and account details are remembered and auto-filled. Transactions are categorized and tracked, giving teams clear cash flow reporting with minimal lift. No more digging, just answers.

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Final Thoughts: Your Summer Strategy Is Your End-Of-Year Advantage

Before you know it, Labor Day passes, clients return, and the year-end crush looms. What you build during the quiet months determines how prepared your teams are to tackle the chaos ahead.

At Atomic Insights, we believe RIA teams deserve the same level of operational excellence they deliver to their clients. If you’re ready to level up how you manage data, track payments, or handle reporting, we’re here to help - with tools designed specifically for RIAs and the people behind them.

For more information on what we are building, check us out here: https://www.atomicinsights.io/about-us