One of the first steps in Trail to start the Information Gathering process with your client using Trail, is to send your client a Fact Find invitation!

This allows your client to access Trail's online Client Portal about their situation and needs in order for you to give mortgage, insurance, kiwisaver or other financial advice.

This goes straight into their client Profile in Trail which saves you from double-entering information and it means you can see and access this as soon as they have completed the Fact Find! We will also go through how to manually complete a Fact Find.

A Fact Find invitation is an email containing a login link that you would send to your client to fill out their information for you.

The Fact Find email in Trail, when sent to the client, will look something like this:

This can be for a mortgage, insurance or a kiwisaver advice opportunity.

This is to streamline the information gathering process for giving advice and prevent double data entry. Your client would click this link, fill in their details securely online which would directly be available for you to view and edit within the client's Profile in Trail.

Trail lets you edit the Fact Find email template in your Personal Settings (default email templates). You can add attachments (PDFs, compliance documents) or personal comments. Once saved, Trail will use your changes whenever you send Fact Find emails!

There are two types of system email templates to represent Fact Find emails:

This is the template for new clients.

Trail identifies these as contacts who have never logged into the client portal before.

The link (highlighted above) generated in this Email Template is unique for your client (the Key Contact) who clicks it and invites your client to set up a password for their login to the Client Portal and access their Fact Find. See below for what the client would see once they click the link in their email:

This is the template for existing / returning clients.

Trail identifies these as contacts who have logged in before and already have a password associated with them as a contact.

The link (highlighted above) generated in this Email Template is unique for your client (the Key Contact) as per the New Client invitation, but it SKIPS the password setup because the contact would have already had one set up. It only prefills their email address.

See below for what the client would see once they click:

The online Fact Find connects to your client's Profile - Statement of Position page, and also flows actively into any open Advice Opportunity's Fact Find portion. This means once your client fills out information in the Fact Find you will be able to view this immediately from their Profile.

There are two options of when to send the online Fact Find - whether you do this straight away after creating a new Opportunity on your Pipeline or you can wait until after you've created the Opportunity to come back to the Profile to send it.

As soon as you create a new Opportunity, you'll be asked if you would like to send a link to your client to the online fact find process.

Click 'Send Fact Find Link' and this will bring up the Fact Find email template:

If you needed to add some further information to the client's newly created Profile before sending the Fact Find, or come back to their Profile at a later date to send the Fact Find.

1. After creating the Opportunity, you may choose to "View Client's Profile"

Once you are ready to send the Fact Find:

2. Go to the Client's Profile - to the Opportunities box on the left-hand side of the screen in the client's Profile.

3. Click on the name of the Opportunity, then the Opportunity Sidebar will open on the right hand side:

4. Click 'Send Invitation link'. This will bring up the Fact Find email template appropriate for your client.

Just above this button, there is a line of text that should tell you whether you have sent an invitation link yet, and when was the last time you did (if you have).