Why on earth are we blogging about wearable technology?

Recently we began wearing a Fitbit, a piece of wearable technology you wear around your wrist, which tracks the steps you've taken throughout the day, distance travelled, sleep patterns, and more. All this data is synced automatically to an app on your phone and your laptop. If you've been to our Sydney office, you can imagine the many trips back and forth across the Pyrmont Bridge. The steps add up satisfyingly. Call it the Sharesight healthy living initiative.

Coincidentally there was a piece in The Economist about wearable technology and the impact it could have on the doctor patient relationship in health care. Ultimately, with people all around the world gaining immediate and cheap access to their health data, how will the (for profit) health industry respond given their revenue relies on paid for procedures and doctor visits? This dynamic reminded us of similar shift amongst investors, accountants, and financial advisers.

Sharesight has downstream benefits (reporting, tax, Xero connection, etc.), but many of our clients use it as a utility for hoovering up and organising their investment holdings. Tracking down this data and storing it in one place is a definite benefit. There's undoubtedly a huge penalty paid by investors who leave funds in sub-par investments simply because switching is tossed into the "all too hard" bucket.

Because Sharesight does most of the portfolio admin work within minutes (or seconds with our Trade Confirmation Emails feature) how do the professionals fill up those newly freed billable hours? How do they react when a client sits down in their office with all their historical trades and dividends already organised?

The forward-looking accountants and advisers (our clients!) are using this time to have forward-looking strategic discussions with their clients. A tax planning chat is a lot more pleasant than a tax penalty chat. Furthermore, we've found that many Sharesight Pro clients were in fact taking write downs on portfolio admin tasks/hours. We're also hearing about professional practices discovering new lines of revenue. Once they've used Sharesight on a few client portfolios, they've gained the confidence to go out and market themselves as investment accountants. With DIY super (SMSFs) dominating the industry press, this can be a game changer.

Once a client portfolio is setup in Sharesight, the admin work is done. Sharesight hums along in the background, updating performance daily, whilst "listening" for client trades and dividends.

Technology is evolving at a more rapid clip every day. The lines between old school professional "guilds" and their clients have blurred. Chances are that because you're reading our blog, you've already worked out how to embrace this.