CRM for wealth managers: requirements, options and cost

For a US RIA of about 20 to 100 staff, choose a wealth CRM that already stores households, or configure Dynamics 365 Sales or Odoo to do it. As of October 2026, Wealthbox prints household management from USD 59 per user per month, Redtail Growth is USD 59 per user per month billed yearly with no user cap, and Dynamics 365 Sales Professional is USD 65 per user per month paid yearly for a sales model that does not list households. Salesforce Financial Services Cloud publishes no dollar price. Seat cost is the smaller figure once advice notes, positions, and planning data each have a defined home.

A household is several people with roles, plus financial accounts that are not sales accounts. Dynamics 365 can be shaped that way with accounts, contacts, and connections. Odoo Contacts on the Standard plan is the wrong plan for that work, because customization and the external API sit on Custom. Below is the license math for a 30-user firm and an 80-user firm, the SEC books-and-records rules that apply to written communications, and the positions that stay at the custodian.

What the CRM has to hold for a wealth firm

Advisers live in relationships. One client record with a phone number fails the day a spouse, a trustee, a child beneficiary, an outside CPA, and an estate attorney all belong to the same relationship and do not share the same permissions. The record people ask for in a product demo is the household: one view that shows the people, the roles, the open tasks, and the recent meetings.

Redtail customers describe that need in plain language. One says, "Whether looking at one household or all of my business together, I can get to the info I need quickly and easily." If the household takes six clicks and a side spreadsheet, staff will keep the spreadsheet.

Four objects cover almost every wealth CRM argument:

1. The household, which groups the people who share planning, billing, or a service model.
2. The person, with a role that your firm defines (client, spouse, child, trustee, CPA, attorney). A job title on a contact card is not that role.
3. The financial account: custodian, account number, registration, and which people are related to it. A custody registration is its own object, separate from a sales account or a company.
4. The activity: meetings, tasks, and written notes, with enough structure that a recommendation or an order instruction can be found later.

Workflows sit on top of those objects. Annual review, new account paperwork, and a money-movement request are repeatable sequences. They are useless if the household underneath is a free-text field.

Wealth-specific products advertise this model as standard. A general CRM starts from leads, accounts, and contacts, and can be brought to a household view with configuration. RightCapital tells advisers they can use a generic CRM such as Salesforce, and that purpose-built CRMs are usually chosen to avoid heavy customization for compliance tracking, financial account views, and planning integrations. Pay the vendor for that model, or pay for configuration and the interfaces yourself.

How to configure Dynamics 365 Sales around households

Dynamics 365 Sales is sold as sales force automation: leads, opportunities, accounts, contacts, quotes, orders, and invoices, plus reporting. The pricing page does not list households, financial accounts, custodians, or portfolio data as included objects. Using it for an RIA means agreeing a data model and building it, then keeping it.

The pattern that fits Dataverse, the platform under Dynamics 365 Sales, is:

1. Use the account record as the household. Name it the way the office says it, for example the Chen household, so it is not stored as a company you hope to sell to.
2. Use contacts as people. Each person links to one household. A person who belongs to two households (an attorney who serves many families) needs a rule so you do not clone the contact.
3. Use connections for relationships other than membership in the household. A child, a trustee, a CPA, and a beneficiary each need a role, sometimes with a start and an end.
4. Add a custom table for financial accounts. Columns worth requiring in the design: custodian, account registration, account number (masked for most users), owner contacts, and household. Positions and tax lots do not belong on this table unless you have a feed you have seen update.

Microsoft's connection model links any two records that are enabled for connections. A connection can carry a description and a duration. Connection roles name the relationship. Creating one connection writes two rows so either record can be queried. Workflows and auditing are supported. The documented examples are general business roles, not households, beneficiaries, or custodial accounts. You will name the roles yourself: spouse, trustee, beneficiary, CPA, attorney, and any others your service model uses. Write the list down before anyone creates the first role in the environment. Role sprawl is how household views get slow and reports disagree.

Two limits matter before you buy seats.

Microsoft's pricing page treats Professional as the core license and Enterprise as the license associated with advanced customization. Have the implementer create a financial-account table, a household view, and one connection role on the exact license you will buy. Do not assume Professional includes that customization because Enterprise is the more expensive SKU.

Custodian feeds are a separate line. Schwab, Fidelity, Pershing, and any other custodian you use should be demonstrated against your own accounts. Microsoft's Sales pricing page does not list a custodian feed. Ask the bidder for the direction of the feed, the fields that update, the match key (usually account number plus custodian), and what happens when the custodian sends a registration change.

Dynamics 365 Sales implementation is the work of putting that model, the security roles, and the activity types into a tenant your advisers will open every morning. License math comes after the household view is visible on a sample of your own families.

How Odoo Contacts fits a household, and where it stops

Odoo 18 Contacts supports two contact types, Individual and Company. An individual can be linked to a company. Related people are added on the company's Contacts and Addresses tab as Contact, Invoice, Delivery, Follow-up, or Other address. That documentation stops at Individual, Company, and those five address labels.

Company-as-household is a poor stand-in. Invoice address and delivery address describe a commercial customer. They do not describe a trustee who should see one account and not another, or a child who is a beneficiary and not a client. Firms that force families into Company records spend the next year merging duplicate people. Model the household before the import and that merge gets much smaller.

A usable Odoo model for an RIA needs new fields or a custom module: household, person role, financial account, and the link from meeting notes to the household. Odoo says the Custom plan, not Standard, is the plan for multiple companies on one database and for customization through Odoo Studio, custom developments, or the external API. The external API means an outside system calling Odoo's JSON-RPC or XML-RPC API. A planning tool or a custodian file that must write into Odoo is an external API conversation, which means Custom, not the lower Standard price.

Odoo also says implementation is not included in the subscription. Firms under 50 employees usually buy Success Packs from Odoo. Firms over 50 employees usually use a partner. Odoo.sh hosting for custom developments is extra. Those rules name who sells the services. Ask each bidder to price your household model, your import, and your interfaces as separate lines before those figures enter the budget.

Standard at the promotional rate is the wrong comparison row if the requirement is Studio or an API. One App Free (USD 0, one app, unlimited users, Odoo Online) is the same mismatch: a household model that needs custom objects is not a single unmodified app. The Light User price, USD 8.90, is limited to employee self-service style access and is not a full CRM seat. Quote it only for staff who will never work the book.

Which books and records the CRM does not replace

Rule 204-2 under the Investment Advisers Act requires every SEC-registered investment adviser, and every adviser required to be registered, to make and keep true, accurate, and current books and records of its advisory business. The rule is a list. A CRM becomes part of that list only for the records you create there.

Rule 204-2(a)(7) requires originals of written communications received, and copies of written communications sent, that relate to any recommendation or advice given or proposed, any receipt, disbursement, or delivery of funds or securities, and the placing or execution of any order to purchase or sell a security. The rule states exceptions for certain unsolicited general-distribution letters. A newsletter that fits the exception is not the same record as an email that tells a client to raise cash.

Most Rule 204-2 books and records, including those (a)(7) communications, must be kept in an easily accessible place for at least five years from the end of the fiscal year in which the last entry was made, with the first two years in an appropriate office of the adviser. Some categories use different clocks. A policy that says every CRM note is kept five years is broader than the rule, and a policy that deletes all notes at five years can be short of it. Have compliance name the categories you create, including written agreements. Rule 204-2(a)(10) requires all written agreements, or copies, that the adviser enters with any client or that otherwise relate to the advisory business. Advisory agreements stored only in a personal inbox fail that test.

An adviser that provides investment supervisory or management services must keep, to the extent the information is reasonably available, records of securities purchased and sold for each client (date, amount, and price) and information from which it can promptly name each client and that client's current interest in each security. Those position and transaction records usually live at the custodian or in the portfolio system. Copying a stale balance into a CRM note does not replace them. The practical split we use in scoping is: the CRM holds the household, the activities, and the advice communications you choose to file there; the portfolio system holds the blotter and the positions; the custodian holds the official statement.

Electronic storage is allowed under Rule 204-2(g) when the adviser does all of the following:

1. Indexes records so they can be retrieved.
2. Can promptly produce a legible copy or printout and a means to access the records.
3. Keeps a duplicate copy for the required period.
4. Maintains procedures to safeguard records from loss, alteration, or destruction.
5. Limits access to authorized personnel and the Commission.
6. Ensures that reproductions of non-electronic originals are complete, true, and legible.

Match a vendor audit log, a SOC report, or a cloud certification to those six conditions yourself. Wealthbox states that it is SOC 2 Type II certified and that it offers a compliant note-archiving feature. That is the vendor's description of its product. Your firm still decides whether the configuration meets Rule 204-2(g): the retention schedule, who can edit a note after it is saved, where the duplicate copy lives, and how you produce it. Ask each bidder to show those controls on your data.

Regulation S-P, Rule 248.30, requires every covered institution to keep written policies and procedures with administrative, technical, and physical safeguards for customer information. The definition of covered institution includes broker-dealers and investment advisers registered with the Commission. The current text also requires a response program for unauthorized access to customer information. Notice to affected individuals must go out as soon as practicable, and not later than 30 days after the institution becomes aware that unauthorized access has occurred or is reasonably likely to have occurred, unless a stated harm determination or an Attorney General delay applies.

The same rule requires written oversight of service providers that receive, maintain, process, or are permitted access to customer information. The service provider must notify the covered institution as soon as possible, and no later than 72 hours after becoming aware of a breach of a customer information system it maintains. The duty to notify affected individuals stays with the covered institution. Your CRM vendor, your email archive vendor, and any integration middleware are in that set if they hold customer information. Put the 72-hour notice into the contract. Do not leave it as a sentence on a security white paper.

The 2024 amendments were published at 89 FR 47786 on June 3, 2024. As of October 2026, the Cornell text of 248.30 includes the incident-response and 30-day notice provisions. Confirm with counsel which compliance date applies to your firm. A software go-live is a project date, and it is a separate question from that compliance date.

What changes if the firm is also a broker-dealer

The SEC's 2022 amendments to the electronic recordkeeping rule, described in press release 2022-187, added an audit-trail alternative to write-once, read-many (WORM) storage so a firm can preserve electronic records in a way that allows recreation of an original record if it is altered, overwritten, or erased. That release addresses broker-dealers, security-based swap dealers, and major security-based swap participants. It does not address investment advisers as a separate category.

A pure RIA should build its CRM retention story on Rule 204-2, including the duplicate-copy and safeguard conditions in 204-2(g). A dual registrant lives under both regimes. The CRM, the email archive, and the order system may each sit in a different rule. Say that in the RFP so a bidder does not propose an adviser-only archive for a broker-dealer book. Ask counsel and compliance for the retention period your registration requires, and put that number in the configuration test.

What published licenses cost as of October 2026

Prices below are US list or card prices as of October 2026, and each figure is a seat subscription that leaves implementation as a separate cost. Microsoft's Sales page presents displayed prices as informational, and the checkout price can differ. Odoo's lower figure is a discount valid for 12 months for the initial users ordered. Wealthbox prints a per-user monthly amount, and the cards do not spell out a separate monthly rate. Wealthbox trial signup links use a yearly path, so budget USD 59, USD 75, and USD 99 only after the vendor confirms the billing term.

• Dynamics 365 Sales Professional (Published price: USD 65 per user per month, paid yearly · What the price covers: Core sales objects: leads, opportunities, accounts, contacts, quotes, orders, invoices, reporting)
• Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise (Published price: USD 105 per user per month, paid yearly · What the price covers: The tier Microsoft associates with advanced customization)
• Dynamics 365 Sales Premium (Published price: USD 150 per user per month, paid yearly · What the price covers: Includes 1,000 Copilot Credits per user)
• Microsoft Relationship Sales (Published price: Contact sales, 10-seat minimum · What the price covers: Sales Enterprise plus LinkedIn Sales Navigator)
• Odoo Standard (Published price: USD 31.10 per user per month promotional (page also shows USD 38.90) · What the price covers: All apps on Odoo Online. Discount for 12 months on initial users. Studio, external API, and Odoo.sh hosting for custom code are not included)
• Odoo Custom (Published price: USD 61.00 per user per month promotional (page also shows USD 76.20) · What the price covers: Studio, external API, multi-company, Odoo Online, Odoo.sh, or on-premise. Odoo.sh hosting cost is extra. Same 12-month discount on initial users)
• Wealthbox Basic (Published price: USD 59 per user per month as printed · What the price covers: Contact and household management. Workflows and two-way email sync are not on this card)
• Wealthbox Pro (Published price: USD 75 per user per month as printed · What the price covers: Adds workflows, two-way email sync, and broadcast email)
• Wealthbox Premier (Published price: USD 99 per user per month as printed · What the price covers: Adds customizable dashboards and up to 5 workspaces)
• Wealthbox Enterprise (Published price: Custom, contact sales · What the price covers: Adds SSO, a dedicated account manager, unlimited workspaces)
• Wealthbox AI Notetaker (Published price: USD 49 per user per month · What the price covers: Add-on on every plan, described as a special introductory rate)
• Redtail Launch (Published price: USD 39 per user per month billed yearly, or USD 45 billed monthly · What the price covers: Maximum 5 users. CRM features without Growth workflows, Imaging, or Speak)
• Redtail Growth (Published price: USD 59 per user per month billed yearly, or USD 65 billed monthly · What the price covers: No user cap. Includes Imaging (200 GB, audit trails) and Speak)
• Redtail Enterprise (Published price: Custom, minimum license commitment · What the price covers: Partnership pricing)
• Salesforce Financial Services Cloud (Published price: No dollar amount published · What the price covers: Contact sales at 1-800-664-9073. Page is informational and subject to change)

Sources for the rows: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales pricing, Odoo pricing, Wealthbox pricing, Redtail pricing, and Salesforce Financial Services Cloud pricing.

A 30-user book and an 80-user book

Assume 30 people who need a full CRM seat. Assistants who only open the household and the calendar count. Staff who never touch the book do not. Multiply seats by the published rate by 12. This is subscription only.

On those assumptions, Dynamics 365 Sales Professional is 30 × USD 65 × 12 = USD 23,400 a year. Enterprise is 30 × USD 105 × 12 = USD 37,800. Premium is 30 × USD 150 × 12 = USD 54,000. Odoo Custom at the promotional USD 61 is 30 × 61 × 12 = USD 21,960 for that discounted year on the initial users. The same 30 seats at the USD 76.20 figure also printed on the page are USD 27,432 a year. Odoo Standard at USD 31.10 is 30 × 31.10 × 12 = USD 11,196, and it is the plan that omits Studio and the external API.

Redtail Growth billed yearly is 30 × USD 59 × 12 = USD 21,240. The same 30 seats billed monthly at USD 65 are USD 23,400 a year, the same arithmetic as Sales Professional. Launch cannot be the row: it stops at 5 users, so a 30-user firm is already on Growth or Enterprise. Wealthbox Pro, if you extend the printed USD 75 by 12 months, is 30 × 75 × 12 = USD 27,000. Premier on the same method is 30 × 99 × 12 = USD 35,640. Adding the AI Notetaker at the introductory USD 49 for all 30 seats is another 30 × 49 × 12 = USD 17,640. That add-on alone is larger than the gap between Redtail Growth yearly and Sales Professional.

Now assume 80 full seats, still inside a firm of 100 staff. Sales Enterprise is 80 × USD 105 × 12 = USD 100,800 a year. Redtail Growth billed yearly is 80 × USD 59 × 12 = USD 56,640. Odoo Custom at the promotional USD 61 is 80 × 61 × 12 = USD 58,560 for the discounted year. Wealthbox Pro extended from the printed card is 80 × 75 × 12 = USD 72,000, and Premier is 80 × 99 × 12 = USD 95,040. The seat gap between Sales Enterprise and Redtail Growth yearly is USD 44,160 a year before anyone writes a line of configuration. Pay that gap when the rest of the firm needs Dynamics. Design the household either way.

None of these totals is a project fee. Odoo says the subscription does not include implementation. Wealthbox Enterprise, Redtail Enterprise, Relationship Sales, and Financial Services Cloud are custom or unpublished. Budget a separate line for data migration, and another for each interface.

What wealth-specific products already include

Wealthbox lists contact and household management on every published plan, including Basic at the printed USD 59. Workflows and two-way email sync start on Pro at the printed USD 75. Premier, at the printed USD 99, adds customizable dashboards and up to five workspaces. Enterprise is a sales conversation: SSO, a dedicated account manager, and unlimited workspaces. The AI Notetaker is an add-on on every plan at USD 49 per user per month introductory. A firm that wants meeting capture for every adviser should add that line before comparing Wealthbox with a general CRM that also needs a notes tool.

Redtail Launch is a 5-user product. It is the wrong card for a 20- to 100-person firm even though the yearly rate is USD 39. Growth, at USD 59 billed yearly or USD 65 billed monthly, removes the user cap and adds Imaging (200 GB and audit trails) and Speak. Speak is labeled subject to broker-dealer approval. If you are a dual registrant, confirm that approval before you count on Speak for client messaging. Redtail states that it is trusted by over 100,000 advisors and footnotes the 2025 T3/Inside Information Advisor Software Survey for the claim that Orion holds the number-one CRM market share. Those are the vendor's claims. They do not tell you whether Growth's household and your custodian file will match.

RightCapital says it integrates directly with Wealthbox, Redtail, SmartOffice, and Advyzon so client data can move into financial plans. Its FAQ says advisors can use a generic CRM such as Salesforce, and puts the tradeoff this way: "You can, but most advisors find that purpose-built CRMs offer better value because they include advisor-specific features such as compliance tracking, financial account views, and pre-built integrations with planning and portfolio tools; without the heavy customization a generic CRM typically requires." If your planning vendor is RightCapital, a general CRM means you own the integration. Put a field-mapping session in the project, with a sample of real households, including one with two custodians and one with a trust.

Salesforce describes Financial Services Cloud as the features in Sales Cloud and Service Cloud plus an industry data model, with one product covering wealth, insurance, and banking. The wealth page advertises a household view, relationship maps, life events, financial goals, action plans, and a link between CRM and custodial or wealthtech data. The Financial Services Cloud for Advisors accelerator is described as preconfigured and best suited for RIAs with 25 employees or fewer, with use cases for client engagement, practice management, and data and insights. A firm of 20 people sits inside that band. A firm of 40 or 80 does not. Ask Salesforce what changes when you outgrow the accelerator: which objects stay, which you configure, and what the unpublished license becomes at that headcount. The pricing page still has no dollar figure. It tells buyers to call 1-800-664-9073 and says the page is informational and subject to change. Any secondhand price you hear is not a list price you can hold them to.

If Practifi, AdvisorEngine, Advyzon, SmartOffice, Envestnet, or Tamarac is already your portfolio or reporting system, ask that vendor for a written seat price and compare it with the table above. Require the same household demo either way.

How to choose and what to put in the first phase

Pick the product from constraints, in this order.

1. Data model. If you will not fund a custom household, financial account, and relationship roles, buy a product that already has them. Wealthbox Basic and above, and Redtail Growth for any firm past five users, are the published cards that match a 20- to 100-person office on price pages you can read. Dynamics 365 Sales and Odoo Custom are the cards that match if you accept configuration and you want the CRM in a platform you also use for the rest of the firm.
2. Headcount against product limits. Redtail Launch stops at 5 users. The Salesforce accelerator is aimed at RIAs with 25 employees or fewer. Odoo points firms over 50 employees toward a partner for implementation, and firms under 50 toward Success Packs. A 60-person firm should leave Launch off the shortlist, ask Salesforce what remains after the accelerator, and plan on a paid implementation whoever the software vendor is.
3. Systems that must exchange data. List the custodian, the portfolio system, the planning tool, the email archive, and the custodian statement store. For each one, write the system of record. System integration is its own scope: match keys, update frequency, and what staff do when the feed rejects a row. Ask for that design before you accept a seat discount.
4. Records and vendors. Name which CRM fields and emails are Rule 204-2 communications, where the duplicate copy lives, and which vendors must give you 72-hour breach notice under Rule 248.30. Ask for that on a sample note, including who can edit it after it is saved.
5. Seats. Run the 30-user or 80-user arithmetic on the license you will renew after the first-year discount. Odoo's promotional USD 31.10 and USD 61.00 last 12 months for initial users. Wealthbox's printed monthly amounts need a billing confirmation. Microsoft's checkout price can differ from the page.

Our CRM implementation work for a firm this size starts with that list. The license order follows the model. Our target for a first usable phase is 8 to 12 weeks. The Flectic Accelerated Delivery Framework is how we sequence it: the household model, the record categories, and the interfaces are agreed before configuration spreads. A consultant reviews the build against your sample households.

The RFP should force line-item prices. Use a CRM RFP requirements template and add these wealth-specific tests:

1. Load 25 real households, with roles, after names and account numbers are masked. Include one household with four people and two custodians.
2. Show a financial account that is not a sales account, and show who on staff can see the account number.
3. Save a meeting note that contains a recommendation, then show that it cannot be silently overwritten, that you can retrieve it, and that a duplicate exists.
4. Show the custodian or planning interface moving one field you care about, on your file layout, and show the error queue.
5. Price data migration as its own line. Price each interface as its own line. Price training as its own line. A single blended fee hides which of those you can drop if phase one is smaller.
6. Name the people who will do the work, and the hours they will spend in your firm, and state who owns the customizations if you leave.

Client-service work, such as a shared inbox for paperwork chasing, can follow the same activity model. The book of business is the household design. Do not let a service-desk demo stand in for it. A CRM implementation that goes live on contacts and tasks, and adds households later, is how duplicates get born.

If you already own a wealth CRM and reporting or account visibility is weak, run the same six tests on the system you have. Define the household, the retention file, and the feeds, then decide whether the seat you renew is still the right one. The blotter stays at the custodian through that decision.

How Flectic can help

Flectic sets up Dynamics 365 Sales around how your team sells, for sales teams of 20 to 100 people in the US and Canada. For a wealth firm, that means shaping the pipeline around the long, considered sales cycle of a new household, with one advisory team first. The first build puts lead and opportunity management live for one team before you commit to a wider rollout. Book a free discovery call with Flectic to scope the first phase, after you read the Dynamics 365 Sales offer.

Sources

17 CFR § 275.204-2 Books and records to be maintained by investment advisers, Legal Information Institute (eCFR text), October 2026

17 CFR § 248.30 Procedures to safeguard customer information, Legal Information Institute (eCFR text), October 2026

SEC press release 2022-187, electronic recordkeeping amendments, SEC, October 2026

Dynamics 365 Sales pricing, Microsoft, October 2026

Use connections to link records to each other, Microsoft Learn, October 2026

Odoo pricing, Odoo, October 2026

Odoo 18 Contacts, Odoo, October 2026

Wealthbox CRM pricing, Wealthbox, October 2026

Redtail plans and pricing, Redtail Technology (Orion), October 2026

Financial Services Cloud pricing, Salesforce, October 2026

Wealth Management Software for Financial Advisors, Salesforce, October 2026

8 of the Best CRMs for Financial Advisors, RightCapital, October 2026