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Modern Family Offices Don’t Run on Spreadsheets
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For decades, Excel has been the family office’s quiet workhorse. It’s flexible. It’s accessible. And for a long time, it’s been good enough. And although many family offices still rely on spreadsheets, wealth today doesn’t look like it did 20 years ago. The tools family offices use shouldn’t either.
The truth? Excel isn’t broken. It’s just no longer built for what family offices need.
“Masttro is very friendly platform. It’s very easy to set up, it’s very easy to access anytime. I can look at it on my cell, my laptop, and when clients ask questions I can answer immediately, so It makes my life a lot easier.” — Sergio Guerrero
Key Takeaways
Know when Excel isn’t enough – It breaks under complex, multi-entity wealth structures.
Use tools built for family offices – Platforms like Masttro offer real-time, secure, and scalable wealth management.
Automate the manual work – Ditch reconciliation and static reports for AI-driven data and dashboards.
Protect against risk – Role-based access and encrypted infrastructure reduce errors and key-person dependency.
The Turning Point: When Complexity Outgrows Simplicity
Spreadsheets work fine for a single portfolio or a handful of accounts. But once you’re managing across multiple banks, jurisdictions, private capital investments, trusts, entities, and generations, the cracks show:
- Formulas fail silently
- Security is handled by spreadsheet passwords
- Custom macros become irreplaceable, often IP dependent on one person
- Reconciliation becomes a full-time job for someone
- Reporting is manual, repetitive, and often out of sync
If your team is spending hours building reports only to deliver static PDFs, you’re not just behind, you’re exposed. And with Excel, the more you grow, the more fragile your system becomes.
What Makes Family Office Software Platforms Different?
The biggest difference isn’t the interface: it’s the foundation.
Wealth platforms like Masttro are built for data integrity, operational scale, and decision-making in motion, not after the fact. They offer a real-time, audit-ready view of total wealth across public and private markets, legal structures, and currencies.
Here’s how platforms outperform spreadsheets:
Pros of a Purpose-Built Platform like Masttro:
- Data Accuracy: Bank feeds. Fund data. Custodian integration. No more copy/paste. Data flows securely and accurately in real time.
- Real-Time Visibility: Instantly know how a market move or FX swing impacts your family’s liquidity.
- Goal Tracking and Performance Monitoring: Define performance targets. Model legacy scenarios. Monitor impact, all from one place.
- Dynamic Dashboards: See wealth visually. Filter by region, entity, asset class, or manager. Click into answers, not spreadsheets.
- Security by Design: Encrypted access. Role-based views. Zero screen scraping. With Masttro, not even we can access your private data.
- Smart Reporting: Move from PDFs to interactive dashboards via Secure Client Portal. Add AI-powered extraction and analysis of all forms of private investment documents.
Concerns Frequently Raised About Platforms:
- Cost: Excel is cheap - until you account for the hours lost, the missed reconciliations, and the compliance gaps. Masttro clients consistently report time savings and risk reduction that outweigh licensing fees.
- Complexity: Some platforms layer features for advisors, not families. Masttro is different: built by family offices, for family offices and with full support for advisors.
- Security Concerns: In practice, Excel is far more vulnerable. One mistyped cell. One misrouted email. Key person risk: someone leaves with years of embedded logic. Masttro’s client-owned encryption keys and private infrastructure offer enterprise-grade protection.
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Building a Successful Family Office Tech Stack
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How Does Masttro Compare With Other Platforms?
Other platforms offer real improvements over Excel, but they still fall short in areas that matter most to wealth owners with complex estates.
How Masttro goes beyond other platforms:
- Entity and Ownership Mapping: Masttro’s Global Wealth Map gives you clarity across trusts, pooled investments, joint ventures, and multi-generational structures. With ownership views down to the decimal.
- Alternative Investments: While other platforms offer helpful dividend tracking, Masttro’s Document AI module automates ingestion of capital calls, reconciles distributions, and aligns every cash flow with performance and risk metrics.
- Institutional Readiness: Masttro’s has direct data feeds with 600+ custodians, document vaults, customizable compliance modules, and scalable architecture. It’s trusted by leading SFOs, MFOs, and institutions globally.
- Mobile-First UX: Modern architecture-based mobile apps mirror the platform’s full capability, with real-time access for clients, principals, and advisors – anytime, anywhere.
Real Results: From Spreadsheets to Scalable Infrastructure
Jefferson River Capital transitioned from fragmented spreadsheets to full control over 200+ alternative investments in less than three months using Masttro. Futura Asset Advisors expanded from advisory to full MFO services with Masttro as their foundation.
Henco’s new family office built its structure around Masttro from day one, not just as software to track portfolio and handle reporting, but as an operating infrastructure.
You Don’t Need to Abandon Spreadsheets—You Need to Outgrow Them
This isn’t about demonizing Excel, it’s about recognizing its limits.
At Masttro, we don’t replace everything you know, we elevate it. For those that prefer it, our reporting tools can instantly convert dashboard views into PDF or Excel spreadsheets.
The platform respects the fidelity of source data, automates the boring stuff, and creates space for real insight. Because the goal isn’t just to “manage wealth.” It’s to master it.
You don’t need to switch overnight, but the longer you wait, the more complex your legacy Excel stack becomes, and the harder it will be to move when you need to.
If you’re already managing complexity, now is the moment to modernize.
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