Congratulations on getting your investors and investment data loaded for your organization! Your hard work will be appreciated by your members once you roll out Seraf to them. Here are some tips and best practices for making the process as smooth as possible.
Why you should activate investor accounts
Learn about some of the benefits of activating investor accounts, including transparency, professionalism, and investor engagement.
What to consider prior to activating investor accounts
- Determine Timing - Decide on the time frame for when you’d like to activate investor accounts. Keep in mind that it is best to have members join after you have loaded investor transactions, so that they’ll be able to see records in their account when they first log in, unless no investments have been made yet.
- Plan for Onboarding - Most groups find it helpful to provide a Seraf overview session for members to introduce them to the platform. We are very happy to provide a brief onboarding session along with you and your members, so please contact us to coordinate a time and indicate which areas of your account you’d like to highlight. It is best to have an onboarding session just prior to or right after activating investor accounts, so investors can navigate through their own account to see their holdings and become familiar with Seraf’s features.
- Verify Accuracy - From verifying investor email addresses and investment account names to completing company and round details along with adding individual transactions, you’ll want to review this list of what you should do prior to activating investor accounts.
- Assign Administrative Roles - You can assign specific administrative roles to your investors to give them access to the overall account, should they be a full administrator, or assign specific deal flow roles, should you subscribe to Seraf’s Deal Flow management and want them to be able to observe or advise on prospects.
- Add a Seraf Link - To make it easy for investors to access their account information, add a link to Seraf on your website and in your investor communications. The easier it is for them to access their account, the more likely they’ll use it and engage with you and the content.
- Set Expectations - Establish your plan for managing your investors’ expectations so you are clear on who will be managing the account and/or making entries, what you’ll be adding, when, and what you expect of your investors.
- Communicate with Investors - Give your investors advanced notice explaining that you plan to roll out Seraf, and when they should expect to receive an activation email to gain access to their account through your organization. You can easily export a list of investor names and email addresses from Investor Management to use for the distribution list in your own email client. You may want to note that the activation email will be sent from Seraf-Investor.com <no-reply@seraf-investor.com> with a default subject, Your new login for [organization name] at Seraf. (The name of your organization is shown on the top right of your account and also in Account Settings.)
What investors will be able to see and do
With an activated account, investors will be able to log in to see their own investments. They’ll see their own Dashboard, Current Investments, Exits & Returns, Portfolio Analysis, and Transaction Register. Investors can view the companies and investment funds, along with all the associated content, for those under which there is a transaction recorded in their name. They can not see the full value of the organization or any other investor information. Activated investors will also be able to see Documents with the proper visibility setting, KPIs, Reports and Important Dates for those companies. And if you subscribe to Seraf’s Deal Flow Management and assign deal flow roles, those investors will also be able to access your Deal Flow.
Here are a few things investors can do within their own account:
- Upload documents such as signature pages, due diligence notes or other materials, which will be saved as private to the investor and group administrators
- Create their own Seraf email address to which they can forward documents
- Set important date reminders for dates that are added by administrators, such as note maturity dates and warrant or option expiration dates
- Turn on email notifications for important dates for which they’ve set reminders so they can be notified of upcoming events and plan for any necessary action
- Add notes about companies, investment funds and prospects (if given access to Deal Flow) for their own reference and to share with administrators
How to activate investor accounts
You can activate investor accounts individually or multiple at once from Investor Management. Note that you can customize the activation email itself or just use the default wording. The system does not save a copy of the activation email sent, so you may want to keep a record of your message, date sent and to whom, especially if you’d like to send the same message again in the future. Included in the default text is a link to a User Guide for Investors of Enterprise Accounts, so that they can get up to speed on how to use Seraf and its features.
How to monitor logins to investor accounts
Once you’ve sent activation emails to investors, you can see if your investors have activated their accounts and view their last login date. In Investor Management, via the Seraf Access column you will be able to tell which investor accounts are:
- Not yet activated - the button will say “Customize activation email”
- Activated, but not yet logged in - the button will say “Re-send activation email”
- Active - you’ll see a date of last login
You'll also be able to tell which users of your account have administrative privileges, marked with an icon next to their account information. Administrative users have an icon with a person and a + symbol to indicate that they have full add/edit privileges. Deal Flow Advisors have an icon with a funnel symbol to indicate that they can assist with your deal flow funnel, while Deal Flow Observers have an icon with an eye to symbolize that they are view only.
Group member upgrade opportunity
As a bonus to being part of your organization, your investors are entitled to 50% off an upgrade to Seraf's Professional level. This upgrade will allow them to view their group investments as well as add their own personal investments in companies and funds to their Seraf account to have all investments consolidated in one spot. Don't worry, this will not impact your group account. What your members enter will be entirely private to them. Contact us to request your own promo code to share with your investors.
Let us know if you have any questions about onboarding investors. And certainly let us know if you have any of your own best practices you’d like to share or further suggestions about how to streamline or improve the process.
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