A back office for family offices, investment managers and private funds
Every number accounted for.
Purser keeps your books, reconciles them every morning and has a named CPA sign off every change. You get the controls of a large operations department from a small, dedicated team that answers to you.
Morning log
Thu 5 Nov · Sample, illustrative figures
Schwab custody file
Received 6:12 AM · 412 of 412 positions match
Capital call, Fund IV
Notice read and booked · due 19 Nov
Interactive Brokers file
File did not arrive · your purser is on it
Client restriction: no tobacco
All 6 accounts checked
Net assets, Nov 4 close
$412,906,118.42
Signed off by [Chief Purser name], CPA, Chief Purser · 7:48 AM
The problem
A large firm’s obligations. A small firm’s staff.
Your allocators, auditors and family expect institutional controls. Meeting them usually means a controller, a fund accountant, a compliance consultant, an administrator and a spreadsheet that ties them together at month-end, when every difference is already weeks old.
8
people work at the median SEC-registered adviser.
IAA / Comply, Investment Adviser Industry Snapshot 2026
80%+
of investors name operational due diligence and transparency as the top barrier to backing an emerging manager.
AIMA / Marex, Emerging Manager Survey 2024
$83M
average breakeven AUM for a new manager, up from $70M two years earlier.
Marex, Emerging Manager Survey 2026
What Purser does
The work of a full operations department, under one sign-off.
Each seat below is usually a hire, a consultant or a vendor. Your pursers’ office covers all of them, on one ledger, with one invoice.
| The seat you would fill | What your pursers’ office does | How often |
|---|---|---|
| Reconciliation analyst | Matches every position, trade and cash balance against your custodians’ files, and explains every break with a cause. | Every business morning |
| Controller | Closes the books, locks the period and issues statements signed by your Chief Purser. | Monthly |
| Fund accountant | Keeps capital accounts, books calls, distributions and fees, and prepares investor statements. | As events arrive; quarterly |
| Private-markets associate | Reads capital-call notices and fund statements, books them, and asks you to confirm before anything posts. | As documents arrive |
| Performance analyst | Calculates returns against your benchmarks and prepares family, board and investor reports. | Monthly and quarterly |
| Compliance analyst | Monitors client restrictions, runs code-of-ethics attestations and personal-trading pre-clearance. Your CCO stays your CCO. | Daily and on schedule |
| Year-end support | Hands your auditor and tax preparer a complete, tied-out package with every lot and every source document. | Annually |
Your pursers’ office
A named team, led by a CPA, that knows your books.
You are not routed to a queue. Every client is assigned to one office, and you know every person in it by name.
One per office
Chief Purser
A certified public accountant who leads the office, reviews the work and gives the second sign-off on every change to your books. Their name is on every statement.
Up to seven
Pursers
Specialists trained on Purser’s methods and checklists, who prepare the reconciliations, bookings and reports, and who answer your questions directly.
Beside every purser
Tray
Purser’s AI reads documents, drafts entries and runs the checks. It never calculates a figure or changes your books. Code does the arithmetic, and people decide.
Tray drafts. A purser prepares. Your Chief Purser signs.
The calendar
What happens, and when.
Every morning
Books reconciled by [7:30 AM ET]
Custodian files in, breaks explained, and the few items that need you put at the top of your page.
Every week
Cash and commitments
Upcoming capital calls, distributions and cash needs across every entity and account.
Every month
Closed by business day [5]
The period is locked and statements are signed by your Chief Purser.
Every quarter
Reports and diligence
Family, board and investor reports, and an updated due-diligence package for allocators.
Every year
Audit and tax ready
A tied-out package for your auditor and tax preparer, with every source document attached.
Our own platform
One set of books. Open to you at all times.
Your office works in Purser’s own portfolio and investment management system. You sign in to the same books they keep. Nothing lives in a spreadsheet on someone’s desktop.
See the controlsWritten once
A trade is recorded once, and positions, accounting and performance all update from that one record. There is nothing to tie out between systems.
Nothing erased
Every record keeps when it happened and when we learned of it. Ask what the books said on any date and you get that answer.
Never a false pass
A check that could not run says “not checked”. Nothing turns green by default.
Your data, walled off
The database itself keeps each client’s records invisible to every other client, and our AI runs on our own hardware.
Who we serve
Firms too complex for a bookkeeper and too lean for a department.
$100M–$3B · 3–20 staff
Family offices
One view of the family’s wealth across trusts, entities and private funds, with every fund statement booked and confirmed.
For family offices$100M–$5B · 5–40 staff
Boutique investment managers
A daily shadow book against your administrator and custodians, and a diligence package that answers allocators before they ask.
For investment managers$50M–$1B per fund
Private equity and emerging funds
Capital accounts, calls, distributions and investor statements kept in the same books as the portfolio.
For private fundsFounding clients
Meet your Chief Purser.
We are opening our first pursers’ offices with [a small number of] founding clients. Before we take over anything, we rebuild your last four quarters in our books and show you that they match yours.
Fees are a fixed annual amount set by scope, quoted after a short introduction call. One invoice, no per-seat software charges.