Congratulations on getting your investors and investment data loaded for your fund(s)! Your hard work will be appreciated by your investors 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 investors join after you have loaded transactions, so that they’ll be able to see records in their account when they first log in, unless no capital calls have been made yet.
- Plan for Onboarding - Most funds find it helpful to provide a Seraf overview session for Limited Partners to introduce them to the platform. We are very happy to provide a brief onboarding session along with you and your investors, 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 the fund’s holdings, as well as their position, and become familiar with Seraf’s features.
- Verify Accuracy - From verifying investor email addresses and investment account names to completing company, round, and transaction details along with adding investor commitments, calls, fees and distributions, if any, 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 the fund’s investments. They’ll see the Dashboard with fund metrics as well as their own investor metrics, Current Investments, Exits & Returns, Portfolio Analysis, and Transaction Register. Investors can view the companies and investment funds, along with all the associated content. Activated investors will also be able to see Documents with the proper visibility setting, KPIs, and Reports. 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 couple things investors can do within their own account other than view:
- Upload documents such as signature pages, fund-related notes or other materials, which will be saved as private to the investor and fund administrators
- Create their own Seraf email address to which they can forward documents
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. One thing to keep in mind is that once you activate an investor account in one fund, they are also automatically given access to all funds in which they are listed as an investor/LP.
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. If you have multiple funds, you’ll need to first choose a fund from the drop-down at the top of the page. 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.
Limited Partner upgrade opportunity
As a bonus to being part of your organization, your investors are entitled to 50% off Seraf's Professional account level, where they can track and record other investments they may have outside of your fund. Contact us to learn more or 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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