Caruso supports financial advisers across the full investment lifecycle: recording who they are, letting them sign up and place applications, capturing the fees they charge, deducting and withholding those fees, and paying them out to their licensee. This article gives a complete overview of how the adviser capability fits together, with links to the detailed guides for each area.
Important: The adviser capability is being rolled out progressively and is not yet available to all customers. If you are interested in using advisers and adviser fees, please contact the Caruso team.
The adviser model
The adviser structure has three levels:
Licensee: The licensed entity at the top of the hierarchy, such as an AFSL holder in Australia. The licensee holds the bank account details and is the entity Caruso pays adviser fees to. Individual advisers are never paid directly.
Adviser Firm: The advisory practice or firm. Every adviser firm belongs to exactly one licensee, and a firm cannot exist without one. A firm's licensee can be changed, but never removed.
Adviser Profile: A profile added to an account. The presence of an adviser profile is what marks an account as an adviser. An account can be both an investor and an adviser at the same time.
How advisers link to firms
An adviser is connected to a firm through a firm link. Each link records:
The adviser firm
An effective date (today or earlier; links cannot be future-dated)
One or more relationship types: Adviser, Paraplanner, Analyst, Practice Manager, Administrator, Principal or Director, Accountant, or Business Contact
An adviser's full link history is kept. The link with the most recent effective date is treated as the adviser's current firm, which is what determines the licensee their fees are paid to. When an adviser moves practice, add a new link with the new firm and effective date; the previous link remains in the history.
Note: Because fees flow adviser, to firm, to licensee, changing a firm's licensee or moving an adviser to a new firm changes where that adviser's future fee payments go. Check the receiving licensee has a valid bank account recorded before the next adviser payment run.
Part 1: Setting up advisers
Licensees and Adviser Firms are managed from the navigation pane. Individual advisers are managed through Accounts.
Create a licensee
In the navigation pane, select Licensees and click Create
Complete the Details section, including Name and Country (both required), License Number, Business Number, Code, and contact details
Add a single registered address and click Save
Note: Country drives the field labels on the detail page. For Australia, License Number displays as AFSL Number and Business Number displays as ABN.
The licensee record includes Adviser Firms, Documents, Notes, and Details tabs. The Details tab also holds the licensee's bank account, which adviser payment batches pay into, and the Documents tab holds the Recipient Created Tax Invoices (RCTIs) published when payment batches are confirmed.
Create an adviser firm
In the navigation pane, select Adviser Firms and click Create
Complete the details, including Name, Entity Type, and Licensee (required)
Click Save
Every adviser firm must be linked to a licensee. The firm's licensee can be changed later from the firm's Details tab.
Make an account an adviser
In the navigation pane, select Accounts and open the account
Click the three-dot menu (...), then select Assign as Adviser
Complete the adviser details, including Country (required), AFS Representative Number, and Adviser Code, then save
The account gains an Adviser Profile tab.
Link an adviser to a firm
On the account, open the Adviser Profile tab
In the firm links section, click Add adviser firm
Search for the firm, select one or more relationship types, and set the effective date
Save the link
The tab shows the adviser's full link history, including each firm, relationship, and effective date. Use the Edit action on a link to update its relationships or effective date.
Where each relationship is managed
Record | What you can do |
Account, Adviser Profile tab | Add firm links, edit a link's relationships and effective date, view full link history |
Adviser Firm, Advisers tab | View linked advisers and their relationships, edit a link |
Adviser Firm, Details tab | Change the firm's licensee |
Licensee, Adviser Firms tab | View linked firms (read-only; manage the link from the firm's side) |
All create, update, status and relationship changes are recorded in the audit log. Global search returns licensees and adviser firms, and the Accounts table has a filterable Adviser indicator.
Part 2: Adviser sign-up and applications
Adviser sign-up
Advisers can create their own account on the Investor Portal:
On the Create your account page, select I'm an adviser
Enter the standard details plus an AFS Representative Number
Submit
The account and adviser profile are created together, and a Verify Adviser Registration task is raised on the services team queue. The team checks the AFS Representative Number against the ASIC register, identifies the licensee and firm, and attaches them to the profile. The task completes automatically the first time a firm is linked. Advisers can confirm the details Caruso holds for them in the read-only Adviser Details section of their portal account settings.
Applications
On an offer page, an adviser sees two options on the Investment Application card:
Start Application: the standard single application flow, run against any investing entity linked to the adviser's account.
Start Multiple Applications: adviser-only. The adviser selects multiple linked investing entities, keys an amount (and any adviser fees) per entity, accepts the offer terms once, and submits the whole batch against one capital raise. Either every application is created or none are.
Investors applying directly can also nominate that they are advised and provide their adviser's representative number, which surfaces on the application in the Admin App for the services team to act on.
Note: Advisers can only apply for investing entities linked to their account. A new adviser starts with none until a fund administrator links them.
Part 3: Adviser fees
The two fee types
Initial Advice Fee: A one-off, up-front fee, entered as a percentage or dollar amount. It is deducted from the investment amount when units are issued, so the investor receives units on the net amount.
Ongoing Adviser Service Fee (OASF): An annual fee, entered as a percentage per annum or a dollar amount per annum of the contributed capital. It is withheld from each distribution paid to the holding.
The two fees are configured independently and can be used together or on their own.
Capital raise settings
Adviser fees are controlled per capital raise, from the capital raise settings:
Initial Advice Fee and Ongoing Adviser Service Fee are two independent settings
A fund admin can enable either fee, or both, per raise
Once a fee is enabled on the raise, it can be captured on applications and managed through the relevant batches: initial fees are deducted through issuance batches, ongoing fees are withheld through distribution batches, and both are paid out through adviser payment batches. Each setting also controls whether its fee section appears on application forms and whether its column appears on the raise's Committed tab.
Note: With both settings disabled, no adviser fee fields appear anywhere on applications for that raise.
Capture fees on an application
Investor Portal (adviser-placed): when a fee setting is on, the application includes an Adviser Fees section where the adviser enters the value type (percentage or dollar) and value for each enabled fee, with an optional note. In the multiple application flow, an Initial Advice Fee is keyed per investor alongside each amount. Direct investor applications never show the section.
Admin App: admins can add or edit the fees on an application, assigning the adviser by searching for an account with an adviser profile. The fee can be edited while the application is Requested; once Approved, it locks. All changes are audit-logged with before and after values.
Captured fees are visible on the allocation detail page (including the Placed By account) and in the Initial Advice Fee, Ongoing Fee, and Placed By columns on the raise's Committed tab. The investor's confirmation shows the Initial Advice Fee and the net invested amount, and the application emails include a fee row when a fee is present.
Initial fee deduction at issuance
The Initial Advice Fee is applied through the issuance batch:
The batch draft preview shows, per application, the Initial Adviser Fee deducted and the post-fee amount used to calculate units
Units are issued on the post-fee amount, so fewer units are issued than the full amount would produce. Unit-denominated applications deduct a unit-equivalent at the issuance price.
The batch summary shows the total Initial Advice Fees deducted
On confirmation, the deducted amount is recorded against the issuance and becomes payable to the adviser's licensee
Example: a $25,000 application with a 1.00% Initial Advice Fee deducts $250 and issues units on $24,750. A 0.60% p.a. ongoing fee attaches to the resulting issuance and is withheld from each future distribution.
Partially funded applications (batches calculated on capital contributed)
Where an issuance batch is calculated on the capital contributed rather than the full investment amount, a percentage-based Initial Advice Fee is calculated on the capital contributed in that batch only, not on the full investment amount.
For example, on a $100,000 application with a 10% initial advice fee where only $5,000 has been contributed at the time of the first batch, the batch withholds $500 (10% of the $5,000 contributed), not the full $10,000.
When this happens, the batch draft shows a warning, Initial advice fees that exceed capital contributed, telling you the percentage fee has been calculated on the capital contributed in the batch rather than the full investment amount, and that the remaining fee will not be withheld from later batches. The warning appears only for percentage-based fees on capital-contributed batches where the fee is apportioned; it does not block the batch from being confirmed.
Important: The remaining fee is not carried forward to later batches. Subsequent batches for the same application withhold no further initial advice fee, so a second batch issuing against the remaining $95,000 contributed withholds $0. Until Caruso supports withholding the remainder across subsequent batches, review any partially funded application that carries a percentage-based initial advice fee and manage the fee shortfall manually.
Ongoing fee withholding on distributions
Ongoing fee configurations live on unit issuances and are managed from the holding's Transactions tab, where issuance rows show the adviser, fee value, and status inline, with row actions to edit the fee or set it Active or Inactive.
When creating a distribution, the Include Adviser Fees option controls withholding. For each active configuration, the fee is calculated on contributed capital, prorated for days in the period, deducted after tax, and capped so the investor's net payment is never negative. Withheld amounts appear on the distribution detail, the distribution export, the transaction detail, the distribution statement, and as an Adviser Service Fee line on the Investor Portal distribution view.
Paying advisers: adviser payment batches
Withheld fees are paid to licensees through an adviser payment batch on the fund:
Open the fund and select the Adviser Payment Batches tab, then click Create new adviser payment batch
Choose the period, payment date, whether to add GST, which fee types to include (initial, ongoing, or both), and optional commentary
Review the draft: one row per licensee, with alerts for capped fees, missing bank accounts, and already-paid fees
Confirm to generate the payment pack (ABA and CSV), the audit report, and one RCTI per licensee, published to that licensee's Documents tab
Every fee is only ever paid once. Initial advice fees are selected by issuance date within the batch period; ongoing fees by the distribution period. Confirming a batch claims its fees, and a double-pay alert blocks any batch containing an already-paid fee.
Note: Fees are paid to the licensee of the adviser's firm at the relevant date. If an adviser changed firms during the period, their fees are paid to the licensee their firm belonged to at that time.
Part 4: Adviser details on investor statements
When a holding has an adviser attached, the adviser's details render dynamically in the headers of the relevant investor statements, including the Holding Summary, Periodic and Exit statements and the Distribution Payment Notice, so investors and their advisers can see the advice relationship reflected on formal documents.
Things to keep in mind
Every adviser firm always has a licensee, and licensees and firms with linked records cannot be deleted until those links are moved.
An adviser's current firm is the link with the most recent effective date. Fee payments follow the adviser's firm and that firm's licensee, so review both before a payment run.
Fee changes apply prospectively only. Processed distributions are never recalculated, and initial fees are immutable once units are issued.
One adviser per holding. Split fees between advisers are not supported.
On a full unit transfer, active ongoing fee configurations do not carry to the destination holding.
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If you have any questions or need help at any stage, please contact our Caruso Support team either by email or live chat.