Kerdora has a dedicated setup flow that walks you through building out a new client step by step. Instead of jumping between sidebar sections and entering data piecemeal, it guides you through everything in order, from document intake to reviewing the data and prepping the client's Guide.
When you create a new client from the Clients page (click Add new client, enter a household name, and click Create), you land directly in Plan Setup. You can also reach it any time from Office › Plan Setup in the left sidebar.
How Plan Setup Is Organized
Plan Setup runs in a focused, full-screen mode and is broken into four phases you move through with Back and Next:
Document intake — Hand your documents to Dora, Kerdora's AI assistant, and she extracts the facts.
Client profile — Review and confirm Household, Assets, Liabilities, Income, Expenses, and Insurance.
Planning setup — Confirm Goals, goal assignments, target portfolios, insurance planning, and observations.
Review & output — Review proposed Changes, Tasks, and the client-facing Guide.
You don't have to complete every step. You can skip ahead or come back later, but working through the phases in order gives you the most complete client file.
Phase 1: Document Intake
This is where Dora comes in. Drop or attach any documents you already have for the client: statements, tax returns, exports, screenshots, Word docs, or even pasted text from a client call. You can also add instructions for Dora in the same box.
Click Extract with Dora and she reads through everything, pulls out accounts, balances, income, and policies, and drafts updates to the client's profile. While she works, the screen shows your uploaded documents on one side and Dora's thread on the other so you can reply and guide her.
If you don't have documents to upload, you can skip this step and confirm everything by hand in the phases that follow.
Starting with documents saves you the most time. Dora can pull out household members, accounts, income, insurance details, and more, so the profile steps will already have data filled in for you to review.
Phase 2: Client Profile
Walk through each profile step and confirm what Dora extracted (or enter it yourself):
Household — the people and entities tied to this client: adults, children, businesses, and trusts. The household matters because other parts of Kerdora, like Goals, Insurance calculators, and the tax scenario builder, pull from these entries.
Assets — investment accounts, retirement accounts, real estate, savings accounts, and any other assets. For each asset, you can add details like the current balance, account type, and owner.
The Owner dropdown filters itself based on the subtype you pick. Taxable accounts, property, and standard bank accounts accept an adult, a joint owner, a business, or a trust. Retirement and tax-advantaged subtypes (IRA, Roth, 401(k), HSA, 529, UTMA, and so on) are individual-only — the dropdown hides joint, business, and trust options. If the subtype is Trust, the dropdown only offers Trust entities. So if a dropdown looks short, check the subtype first.
Liabilities — mortgages, student loans, car loans, credit cards, and anything else. You'll capture the balance, interest rate, and payment details. For mortgages, you can also capture rate type (Fixed or Adjustable), the ARM reset date if it's an ARM, the maturity date, and whether the client is still paying PMI.
Income — salary, self-employment income, Social Security, rental income, pensions, and any other recurring income. Each income source is tied to a household member.
Expenses — capture the household's spending assumptions that feed the Goals calculators, particularly the Retirement and Liquidity goals.
Insurance policies — life, disability, homeowners/renters, liability, long-term care, health, and auto. The data you enter here flows into the Insurance planning module and its calculators.
Phase 3: Planning Setup
Confirm what the plan is solving for: Goals, goal assignments (mapping accounts to goals), target portfolios for investment drift, insurance planning needs, and the Observations the rules surfaced.
Phase 4: Review & Output
Review the proposed planning Changes, confirm advisor and client Tasks, and prep the client-facing Guide before delivery.
Inviting the Client to Onboard Themselves
You can also have the client do their own onboarding through the Client Portal. When you generate a client invite link from the client's Profile › Household step, the client walks through a guided wizard where they can upload documents, link their bank and investment accounts through Account Aggregation, and add household members, assets, liabilities, income, expenses, and insurance.
If you want the client to upload documents as part of this, you choose how those files are handled:
Upload Only — The client can upload documents during onboarding, but no AI extraction happens. Their files are stored under Documents for you to review and extract from later.
Upload & Extract — The client uploads documents and Dora runs automatically, pulling data from their files into the client profile. This gives you a head start before you even open their file.
The mode you choose affects what happens when the client uploads through the portal, not what you see on your end. You can change the mode from the client's Profile › Household step where the invite link is managed.
Document extraction is included in your Kerdora subscription at no additional cost.
After Setup
Once you've worked through Plan Setup, all of the data you entered lives under the client's Profile in the left sidebar. You can edit anything at any time by clicking Profile and selecting the relevant item (Accounts, Cash Flow, Insurance, or Household).
The data also flows into the Planning modules (Goals, Investments, Insurance calculators, Taxes, and Estate) so you can start analyzing the client's financial picture right away.
Plan Setup is the recommended way to set up every new client. It walks you through capturing all the key data in one pass, especially when you start with document intake in Phase 1.