In order to track your customer's progress in building financial security and achieving their goals, it's important to gather baseline data as a starting point. Baseline is the first "complete" picture of a customer's situation. It marks the starting point of outcome analysis.
Baseline data will include Assets, Debts, Income, Expenses, Credit Scores, Taxes, and Surveys that captures the Customer's own sense of financial security. It is also helpful to collect this information from the customer early on to better understand where they are, as well as, to kickstart goal setting and action planning.
To enter financial baseline information that you want to track for a customer:
- Create New Contact or open an existing Contact record.
- Choose a financial information tab to enter and baseline your Customer's information:
- Assets/Debt: Enter your customer's Assets and Debts.
- Spending Plan: Enter your customer's Income and Expenses.
- Credit: Enter your customer's Credit Score information.
- Taxes: Enter any Tax refund information.
- Surveys: Fill out any available Surveys to assess your Customer's financial security.
- Choose a Date Month in which to enter their information.
- In each Tab, click the Baseline on [MONTH]? button to use this data as a baseline for your Customer's financial security journey.
Example: Let’s add an Asset baseline for a sample customer in any month. Navigate to the Assets/Debt Tab. It defaults to the present month. If you have the first complete picture of the customer’s assets in the present month, fill out the assets for November’s information. Begin by clicking on the + button to add in an Asset. Fill out the appropriate fields. Add another asset. After adding all the assets for this section, be sure to click on “Baseline on [selected month]?” button. Once clicked, it should change to now say “Remove Baseline.”
Important Note: We understand that your customer might not have all their information ready in your meetings. As such, we allow you to baseline the following sections separately: Assets, Debt, Income, Expenses, Credit whenever the information becomes available. For example, you can baseline Assets in September, but you can wait till a later month to baseline another section. For instance, you’ve baselined Assets for September 2020, but Debt information becomes available in the next meeting, in October. Follow the steps above but for the Debt section. Fill out the fields and remember to Baseline for the October month. Manual baselining is needed!