Every statement,
in its household

You advise a household, not a custodian, so the household should be the top folder. A client with a joint account at one firm, an IRA at another and a 401(k) at a third then has one place to open, instead of three portals’ worth of downloads.

Inside each household, group by year and then keep statements together by account. Whoever prepares the review can see every account at a glance and notice when one is thinner than the rest.

Start with the period end date in year, month, day order, then the custodian, the account type and the last four digits of the account number. Files then sort by time, and two accounts at the same firm never collide.

Use the period the statement covers, not the day it was downloaded. Custodians post monthly and quarterly statements on different days, and the download date tells you nothing about what the document shows.

Open one account across the year and read down the dates. Four quarter ends for a quarterly account, twelve month ends for a monthly one. A gap is a statement you never received, or one that was filed somewhere else.

Then compare the accounts in the household. If a client had three accounts last quarter and two this quarter, ask whether the third was closed, moved or simply not sent. Checking this a week early means the answer is ready by the meeting.

Many practices lean on what the custodian platforms and their planning software already offer: portal downloads into the client record, a shared drive with a household template, or a service assistant who files each statement on Friday. These work when statements are few and arrive predictably.

They strain when clients forward their own PDFs and scans and a household spreads across several firms. You can describe your household, account and period rule to Filex in plain words, and it reads and files each statement for you. Check a few results the first week.

It files statements. It does not check or reconcile balances, compare performance, or give investment or planning advice, and it does not log into custodian portals or fetch statements for you. You still upload them.

It needs the account holder, custodian or account ending to be readable on the page, so a blurry scan may need a quick look from you. It files statements from the day you turn it on, and cleaning up older years is a separate job.