Canoe has released the newest enhancement to our core Intelligence platform, the Activity Summary Email Alert. Now available to all Intelligence users, the Activity Summary Email alert provides a detailed summary of upcoming transactions over a forward-looking period, keeping our clients up to speed by delivering a regularly scheduled email digest.
This means, for example, you can start your day with an email detailing your capital calls or distributions due over the next seven days. Canoe ensures you can take action on time-sensitive documents while simultaneously notifying you of recently received documents. Instead of parsing through multiple locations, platforms, and logins, information about key documents is accessible via a single, consolidated email delivered to your inbox at the time of your choosing.
Your Activity Summary Email is divided into two key areas. The first is the Cash Flow Activity section, where we show details on upcoming capital calls, distributions, and similar documents due within the next week (or the preferred range selected in your settings). These documents are grouped by “Inflow” for distributions, and “Outflow” for capital calls, further streamlining your focus to the most actionable data.
Next, is the Documents Received section, which summarizes document types, sources, entities, investments, and upload dates of documents recently added to your Canoe tenant, allowing clients to quickly and proactively take action on uploaded documents.
Dylan Gilbert, Product Manager at Canoe, provides more color on the enhancement: “We’re always looking for opportunities to improve our clients’ workflow efficiency. In this case, we’re specifically alleviating a lot of the stress and anxiety associated with the complexity of alts document and data management. We equip our clients to avoid costly mistakes, not reacting as documents come due, but proactively planning ahead and meeting their financial commitments and legal obligations.”
The Activity Summary Email feature is highly customizable, allowing users to include information according to preference, whether by document type, source, or entity, and select the times at which they would like to receive their summary emails.
“I think the true value of the Activity Summary Email is in its capacity for customization,” reinforces Gilbert. “A consistent focus for Canoe is increasing our users’ ability to focus on the most important information and tasks. And, in building this email summary, we had that strategy in mind. For example, if you only care about tracking capital calls, you can hide all of the other sections so that your summary is tailor-made just for your workflow.”
The Canoe product team worked extensively with different client audiences including wealth managers, institutional investors, and family offices to validate the requirements and hone in on several use cases.
First, there are operations teams who are in charge of teeing up capital calls and distribution notices and therefore need the information so they can align and plan ahead. When a capital call comes in, operations teams perform many actions such as validating wire instructions, and booking accounting entries before the funds are sent out. They need to ensure that there is enough cash on hand to fulfill the upcoming due amounts. Similarly, when a distribution notice comes in, the team is also responsible for confirming that the correct amounts are being distributed to the right parties, all legal requirements are met, and that cash is reconciled.
The other user group who benefits from this summary are investment managers, who need all the information at their fingertips. These managers are often extremely busy, with a lot of money at stake, and very little time. For the typical CIO, Canoe’s Activity Summary Email is invaluable because it provides all of the information in a quick, digestible format so that they can then spend less time looking for it and more time thinking about their decisions.
As Gilbert continues to look for ways to improve this feature for the two primary user groups, he is excited to continue developing this feature and expects future releases to include even more robust capabilities for clients. “One thing to anticipate in the near future is the ability to add alerts for documents that are not marked with a ‘Complete’ status, meaning not fully processed or flagged to review. For example, if a capital call comes in, but is flagged for review, that document would not appear on the Summary Email. We are working towards the goal of including those documents so managers can proactively take action on that.”
With additional updates soon to come, Gilbert is ecstatic to share the official rollout of the Activity Summary Emails and hopes Canoe’s clients find it useful, concluding: “We’re constantly looking for ways to put time back into our clients’ hands and cut down the administrative burden. The Activity Summary Email fits perfectly into this mission because it’s thoughtfully designed so that our clients can do their work better, faster, and smarter.”
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