A Guide is the main deliverable you create and share with clients in Kerdora. It's a customizable page that pulls together everything about a client's financial life — their net worth, goals progress, investment breakdown, insurance analysis, changes to be made, and more — into one clean, branded document. This walkthrough covers how to build your first Guide and what tools are available to make it yours.
You build Guides under the Guides section inside any client. To get started, open a client and click Guides in the left sidebar.
How Guides Work
A Guide is made up of components — building blocks that each display a different piece of the client's financial picture. You add, arrange, and customize components to create a Guide that's tailored to each client. Nothing is included unless you add it, so every Guide can be different.
Kerdora has 48 embeddable components you can add to a Guide, including:
Net Worth Summary — A snapshot of the client's total assets and liabilities
Balance Sheet — Detailed breakdown of what the client owns and owes
Goals Progress — Visual progress bars showing how the client is tracking toward each goal
Investment Breakdown — Where the client's money is invested (asset class, allocation, etc.)
Insurance Overview — Coverage summary across life, disability, homeowners, and liability
Estate Overview — Document completeness checklist for estate planning
Cash Flow — Income, spending, savings, and debt payment summary
Savings and Debt — Focused views on savings progress and debt payoff
Changes to Be Made — The client's action items and recommendations
Tasks — Assigned tasks for the client to complete
Custom Text — Your own written commentary, notes, or explanations
Custom Image — Upload charts, diagrams, or any visual you want to include
...and more. The full list covers every major area of a client's financial plan.
Building Your Guide
Opening the Editor
On the Guides page, pick the guide you want to work on from the dropdown at the top, then click the pencil icon next to it. The editor opens with your guide layout in the middle and a component sidebar on the left listing everything you can add, grouped by category.
Adding Components
Drag a component from the left sidebar into the layout. Components sit in rows — drop one next to an existing component to place them side by side, or use the + Add row affordance to start a new row. You can add as many components as you want.
Reordering
Drag components around the grid to rearrange them. Most advisors put a high-level summary or welcome message at the top, followed by the areas most relevant to the client.
Customizing
Click a component to open its settings. Depending on the type, you may be able to:
Show or hide specific data points
Add notes or commentary for the client
Choose which accounts, goals, or categories to highlight
Filter by status (e.g., show only incomplete changes)
The goal is to make every Guide feel personal — not like a generic report.
Removing
If a component isn't relevant for a particular client, remove it from the layout. Removing it doesn't delete any underlying data — it just hides that component from the Guide view.
Saving
The toolbar gives you two ways to save, and the difference matters:
Save for this client only — makes a personal copy of the guide for this client. You'll be asked to name the client guide, and it appears in the guide dropdown under Created for client. Later edits to the original template won't touch this copy — it's frozen to what you saved.
Save as New Template — saves the layout as a reusable firm template so you can use it for other clients too.
If you're editing a guide that already belongs to this client (one you saved for them earlier, or one Dora built), the button simply says Save guide.
Previewing Your Guide
As you build, the Guide updates in real time with the client's live data. What you see in Guides is what your client will see when they access their Guide through the Client Portal. This makes it easy to tweak and polish before sharing.
Sharing the Guide
Once your Guide looks good, share it with your client by inviting them to the Client Portal. When a client logs into their portal, the Guide is the main thing they see. They can view all the components you've included, review their financial picture, and check off their Changes to Be Made.
To invite a client, click Profile in the left sidebar, then Household, click Invite on the person's Portal Access row, and click Copy Invite Link — then send the link to your client.
Guide Templates
If you find yourself building similar Guides for multiple clients, you can save significant time with Guide Templates — a layout you build once and reuse across clients.
Where Templates Live
Your templates live on the Templates page, reached from your profile icon in the top-right corner → Templates → the Guides sub-tab. This is firm-wide, not inside a specific client. From there you can create, edit, duplicate, reorder, and delete templates, and control which clients see each one.
Every account also comes with ten built-in Kerdora Templates — Overview, Changes to be Made, Annual Review, Retirement Check-In, Liquidity Plan, Prospect Meeting, Insurance Review, Investments, Cash Flow Summary, and Estate Plan. Click one to preview it against any of your households, and click Edit a copy to fork your own editable version. That's usually the fastest way to get started.
Build with Dora
When you create a new template, you can Build with Dora instead of starting from a blank layout. Give Dora a short brief — the guide type, how detailed you want it, and the topics to cover — and it drafts the template for you. From there you can keep chatting with Dora to refine the layout, or adjust components by hand. It's especially useful when you're getting started and want to see what a well-structured Guide looks like.
You can also ask Dora to build a guide from inside the client (the Dora sidebar item). Guides built that way belong to that client and show up in the guide dropdown under Created for client.
Tips for a Great First Guide
Start simple. You don't need to include every component for every client. Focus on the areas that matter most for this client's situation.
Lead with the big picture. Put summary components near the top so the client immediately sees the most important information.
Include Changes to Be Made. This is where clients see their action items — what they should do next. It's often the most valuable part of the Guide.
Use custom text to add your voice. A short note explaining what you found and what you recommend makes the Guide feel personal rather than automated.
Review before sharing. Click through the Guide as if you were the client. Make sure everything makes sense and the flow feels natural.
What Clients See
When a client opens their portal, the Guide is front and center. They see exactly the components you've included, formatted cleanly and branded with your firm's logo and colors. Clients can't edit the Guide — they can only view it. If you need to make changes, update the Guide on your side and the client will see the updated version next time they log in.