Six Manual Tasks That Are Slowing Down Your Firm’s Growth

Growing a financial advisory firm means balancing people, processes and performance. Most teams want to spend more time with clients and focus on strategy but instead find themselves buried in tasks that feel small yet somehow dominate the day. A recent survey by J.D. Power found that nearly one-third of advisors report not having enough time to spend with clients because of time-consuming administrative tasks.

Manual work is more than a time sink. It leads to missed follow-ups, disjointed handoffs and inconsistent client experiences. Over time it slows down service, frustrates staff and limits growth. The most successful firms recognize that scaling requires more than hard work. It requires smart systems that replace guesswork with visibility and turn ad hoc tasks into predictable, repeatable workflows.

Here are six places where your firm may be leaking time and capacity and how automation can help you get it back.

Collecting Client Information

Onboarding a new client should feel seamless. Instead it often begins with scattered emails, unclear instructions and repeated requests for basic details. Without a consistent intake process clients are left wondering what to send and your team wastes time piecing together incomplete profiles.

The fix starts with clarity. Every firm should define what needs to be collected to say a client has been fully onboarded. Legal names, Social Security numbers, account statements and beneficiary information are all table stakes. This should not vary by advisor or be left up to memory.

With a structured onboarding workflow in Hubly your team can assign tasks to the right person at the right time and clearly see what is complete. Clients receive a consistent experience and staff know exactly what still needs to be done. Even better you can use workflow reports to identify slowdowns and remove friction so prospects move forward faster.

Managing and Nurturing Leads

Without the right process in place great leads go cold. Follow-ups are missed, notes disappear into personal CRMs and prospects sit idle in the pipeline. Many firms rely on reminders or individual effort to move leads along which is rarely sustainable.

Automated workflows create consistency. A prospect fills out a form, schedules a consultation or downloads a resource and that action triggers the next step. Your team receives the right task at the right time with no one guessing what comes next.

Through Hubly’s Zapier integration these actions can kick off entire workflows automatically. You can assign a new lead to a qualification workflow, notify the advisor and set up the first follow-up without touching a spreadsheet or sending a Slack message. That means less time organizing and more time converting.

Organizing Daily Operations

Firms with function-based roles like paraplanning, account opening and client service often struggle with visibility. When tasks are assigned informally or tracked in private lists it becomes hard to know who owns what or what still needs to be done.

This creates internal bottlenecks. A team member goes out of office and no one knows what was on their plate. A client calls in and no one can confidently say where they are in the process. Operations stall and service slips.

Hubly solves this by making every workflow visible. Tasks are assigned by role, not by name, so your team can step in when needed. Everyone knows who is doing what and when it is due. That kind of structure builds confidence and keeps the client experience consistent even during staff absences.

Staying Compliant and Audit Ready

Compliance cannot live in someone’s head. When firms rely on memory to confirm what was sent, signed or disclosed they create risk. If documentation is spread across platforms or manually tracked it is easy to miss something important. When working manually, employees spend an average of two hours per day looking for documents or information they or others need to do their jobs.

With automated workflows compliance becomes part of the process. Each required step, whether it is sending a disclosure, collecting a signature or uploading documentation, can be assigned and tracked. You know what has been completed and what still needs action.

This helps your team stay audit ready without rushing at the last minute or relying on checklists that may be out of date. Everyone knows where things stand and clients get a consistent experience that builds trust.

Preparing for Client Meetings

Advisors often spend hours preparing for meetings. They review notes, track down documents and try to remember what changed since the last check-in. Afterward they are left managing follow-ups and updating systems manually.

Clients do not live in a vacuum. Their goals and financial situation evolve and your advice needs to reflect that. But without a workflow to capture those changes you risk showing up to the meeting unprepared.

With Hubly internally you can assign prep tasks to the team so nothing is missed. After the meeting Hubly can automatically assign follow-ups to ensure next steps are completed. That way every meeting is strategic and every deliverable gets done.

Scaling Without Hiring

Firms hit a breaking point where growth becomes harder. They think the next step is hiring but that only works if the team is already operating efficiently. More people without better systems just means more chaos.

Automation allows you to increase capacity without increasing headcount. By removing repetitive steps and reducing communication friction you get more done with the team you already have. This frees up time for strategic work like improving service, training staff and deepening client relationships.

With Hubly you gain insights into workflow performance so you can continuously improve. Whether it is spotting bottlenecks or refining onboarding steps you are not guessing—you are managing with real data.

Hubly is Your Team’s Operational Backbone

Hubly gives advisory firms a shared workspace that turns chaos into clarity. You can build workflows tailored to your firm, assign tasks by role and keep every client on track with real-time visibility into every stage of service.

With easy automation, drag and drop workflows and powerful integrations like Zapier, Hubly connects your team, simplifies operations and protects your client experience at scale.

Try Hubly free for 30 days and see how effortless running your firm can feel.