The Harrow Group could not answer “what do we own” without three days of work. They kept their accountants’ ledger and their custodian statements, and we built the family’s picture on top of both. Live in eight months.
The Harrow Group is an example, not a client. The firm and the numbers are made up. The shape of the problem, the parts of the engine, and the way a build runs are real.
A family office does not fail loudly. It just quietly depends on one person who knows where everything is.
It is accurate on the day it is finished and slightly wrong every day after that. One person holds the whole structure together, and the family’s view of itself is only as current as their last free week.
Private holdings, three properties, art, a share of an operating business, and loans between family members. None of it arrives in a feed, so none of it was in any system.
Everyone sees everything or nobody sees anything. So the CFO answers questions by email, with numbers pasted into the body of the message.
“Nobody can tell me what we own without three days of work.”
Principal, first scoping sessionThe books belong to the accountants and the custodians. This build never tried to take them.
The accountants keep the general ledger for the operating companies, and the custodians produce the statements. Both are the record for tax and audit, and both are checked by people who are not us. We read them, and we reconcile to them. We are building the family’s view, not replacing anybody’s books.
Two sessions, a whiteboard, and the CFO’s spreadsheet, at our cost.
One property is owned by a holding company, the holding company is owned by a trust, and two branches of the family share the trust. No tool they had could hold that shape, so the CFO held it.
Family members want their own line through the structure. That is a look-through calculation across several layers, and it has to be right the first time or nobody trusts it again.
A valuation with no date, no source and nobody who approved it is not usable at tax time. We had to build valuations as a record of events, not a cell in a sheet.
The deed, the shareholder agreement and the loan note sat in a filing cabinet, disconnected from the asset they belong to. Half the three days was spent finding paper.
The structure, drawn. People, trusts, holding companies and partnerships, and what each one owns — including the assets that arrive on no statement. Ask what one family member owns and the system works down through the entities and answers. A liquidity calendar shows the capital calls and tax dates coming. Each document sits with the asset it belongs to, and each branch sees only its own side.
The gold path is one question, answered: what does Sarah own of the Riverside property, through the trust and the holdco.
Illustrative screen. Custodial values arrive daily; private assets carry a valuation with a date, a source and an approver.
The records, the documents and the permissions already existed. Harrow paid for the ownership maths.
People, relationships and the entities behind them — trusts, holdcos and partnerships, not just names.
Accounts, property, private holdings, loans and insurance, with owners and entities attached.
The family’s own reporting pack, and a place for the deed to live with the asset.
Branch-by-branch access, and a record of every change to a valuation or a structure.
Where family members look, instead of emailing the CFO.
The maths that answers “what do I own” through several layers of entities.
Valuations as a history: date, source, method and who approved it.
Capital calls, tax instalments and premiums against the cash that has to cover them.
Five of the eight pieces already existed. Three were built for Harrow.
The longest of the four builds, because the structure had to be right before anything else was worth doing.
Two sessions with the CFO and the family’s lawyer. We drew the structure on a whiteboard, then put it into the system to see what broke.
Their real entities, loaded from the CFO’s spreadsheet and drawn as a graph you can click through.
Entities and ownership. Then private assets and valuations. Then documents. Then the family portal and per-branch access.
The quarterly rebuild stopped. The CFO now reviews a balance sheet instead of building one.
The family noticed one thing first: they stopped waiting.
Illustrative figures for an example build.
A family office plans in decades. The platform has to be able to follow.
You choose the direction each month. Nothing about this build makes the next decision for you.
An RIA that wanted one place to work, without touching the system that runs performance and billing.
See the build Example build —A boutique manager whose investment process was good and whose paperwork was held together with spreadsheets.
See the build Example build —A dealer whose supervision work was fine, and whose evidence of it was an inbox.
See the buildTell us how yours runs and what you wish it did instead. Half an hour on a call. We'll tell you what's already built, what we'd have to make, roughly what it costs, and whether it's worth doing at all. Scoping after that is free.
