Emma Express : The new way to draft your reports

Last updated: October 12, 2026

This article explains the two ways Emma drafts a report (Express and the snapshot flow), how to regenerate one section without redoing the report, and how to use citations to check figures against your source documents. It covers more than Express alone: the snapshot flow, Regenerate and citations are all here.

Emma reads your meeting notes, fact finds, illustrations and other client documents and drafts a report from them. With the snapshot flow, Emma first shows you its understanding of each section and lets you adjust it before the report is written. With Express, Emma reads your documents directly, section by section, and goes straight to the finished report with citations next to each figure. Express is faster and needs fewer amendments; the snapshot flow gives you a chance to steer each section before generation.

Before you begin

You need a role with Emma access (Paraplanner or Paraplanner+). See Licences and Roles Explained.
Express is switched on per template by AdvisoryAI. If you do not see the Express toggle on a template, email support@advisoryai.com with the template name and your completed Doc Classifier guide (the document that tells us which of your document types feed which sections) and ask for it to be enabled.
Have your documents ready and keep them to the ones the report needs. See What File Formats Can I Upload?.

Generate a report with Express

Click Create Report at the top of the screen.
Select the template you want to use.
Choose the client the report is for.
Add your documents. Drag and drop them in, or click the upload box to pull them from your device or SharePoint.
Select the documents you want Emma to use. Selected documents highlight green. Only green documents are read.
Switch on the Express toggle. It turns blue when enabled.
Click Next. Emma reads the documents, maps the information to each section and writes the report. Express reports typically finish in a few minutes.

Please note: the progress bar can sit at around 78 to 79 percent for a while and still complete. Wait rather than restart.

Review an Express report

Open the review sections and citations down the left-hand side of the generated report. Each one shows where a piece of information came from: which document, and which section it fed into.
Click a citation to open the source and see the passage the figure was taken from.
Use the chat assistant side pane to ask questions about the report while you check it.
Edit the report in the platform or in Word. Download it with the PDF or Word buttons in the top right. The exported file does not carry the citation markers.

Citations show where each figure came from. They do not flag values Emma is unsure about, so every figure still needs a checker's eye.

Generate a report with the snapshot flow

Follow steps 1 to 5 above and leave the Express toggle off, then click Next.
Read each section of the snapshot. The text in each box is Emma's understanding of that section, not the wording of the letter. The citation numbers under each box show which document each point came from.
Edit or delete content per section. The snapshot is for data and figures: correct a wrong value, remove a point that does not belong, or delete a section that is not needed.
Regenerate a section that missed something rather than redoing the report. See the next section.
Generate the report once the snapshot is right.

Please note: pasted prose does not survive into the report, because the template logic writes the sentences. Change the facts in the snapshot, then edit the wording in the finished report. Once the report is generated you cannot return to the snapshot; edit the report in the platform or in Word, or start a new report. Snapshot edits apply only to that report and do not teach Emma anything for next time.

If a section you removed in the snapshot still appears in the report, the template includes it as standing text. Email support@advisoryai.com with the template name and the section so it can be made conditional.

Regenerate one section

Regenerate re-runs a single section and leaves the rest of the report alone. If a document was missed off the report, you do not need to start the whole report again: regenerate the section that needed it and select that document.

Open the section you want to redo in the snapshot and choose Regenerate.
Pick which uploaded documents the section should read. For example, point costs and charges at the illustration only.
Add a specific instruction if you need one, such as "include the fund charges from the valuation".
Check the section and keep what you like. You can regenerate a section more than once.

Please note: Regenerate inside an Express report was withdrawn while its replacement, refining the finished report through Atlas, is switched on firm by firm (see "Also asked" below). Regenerating can occasionally lose formatting in that section; if it does, report it with the report ID.

When to use Express and when to use the snapshot

	Snapshot flow	Express
How documents are read	Summarised first, then each section is written from the summary	Read directly, section by section
Document targeting	All documents available to all sections	Each section restricted to the document types that are relevant to it
Generation speed	Slower	Faster
Review effort	More amendments needed	Fewer amendments needed
Best for	Cases where you want to steer section content before generation	Simple letters, for example an ISA withdrawal, and any template set up with section-to-document mapping

Express works by identifying what each uploaded document is (a fact find, an illustration, a risk questionnaire, a cost and charges document) and pulling only from the right ones for each section. An objectives section has no reason to read an illustration, so it is restricted to your meeting notes and fact find; cost and charges works the other way round. This is why figures come through more accurately: pension values, charges, plan numbers and fund allocations come straight from the files you uploaded rather than from a summary of them.

If Express produces a longer section than the snapshot flow does for the same case, for example four paragraphs of circumstances where the snapshot gives two, that is template length rather than an error. Email support@advisoryai.com with the report ID so the template team can shorten the section.

Getting the best from either flow

Upload only the documents the report needs. A smaller set of current, relevant documents gives Emma a clearer picture than everything you hold on the client. When Emma has to work through a large pile of documents, it becomes harder to pick out what is relevant consistently.
PDFs work better than spreadsheets for figures-heavy content such as valuations and charges tables.
Check the citations before finalising. They exist so you can verify quickly rather than re-read every source.
Check the adviser name. A report generated by a power planner shows the client's adviser rather than the logged-in user. If the wrong adviser or client name appears, send the report ID to support@advisoryai.com.

See it in action

Demo

This targeting is why figures come through more accurately: each section only ever sees the documents

Download: AAI Best Practice Guide: Doc Classifer (1).docx

Also asked

When is the regenerate button coming back in Express?

The process has changed rather than the button returning as it was. Regeneration of an Express report now runs through Atlas: the generated report sits in one pane and you type the change you want in a prompt box, for example "rewrite the costs section using the illustration" or highlight a passage and give feedback on it, which is more interactive than re-running one section. Express itself keeps working in the meantime; only the regenerate control inside it was withdrawn. The Atlas route is being switched on firm by firm, so email support@advisoryai.com with your firm name and the template you use and the team tells you whether it is on for your account and adds you when it is.

Why does the report show the wrong adviser name, or switch between "you" and the client's name?

The platform has historically taken the report author to be the logged-in user, so when a paraplanner or power planner generates the report the wrong adviser name can pull through. Two things fix this now: send support@advisoryai.com the contact details of each adviser so reports can carry the right name, and have the adviser name, client name and address set as hard-coded fields in the template (the template editor offers these as selectable fields). Reports generated by a power planner already show the client's adviser rather than the logged-in user. A report that drifts between "you", the client's first name and "Mr and Mrs" in a client-facing document is a known issue that was fixed in March 2026 and reported again in August 2026, so send the report ID and the template name to support@advisoryai.com and it is raised for a fix.

When the system learns from our report edits, does it learn each of us individually or all of us collectively?

Collectively, through the template, and not from edits. Changes you make in the snapshot, in the platform or in Word apply to that report only. What changes future output is the thumbs up or down on a report, a marked-up example sent to support@advisoryai.com for the team to build into the template, and the Dictionary for terminology. Structural changes follow an 80/20 rule: a change is made permanent only when most of the team makes it repeatedly, so the template does not swing between one person's style and another's. Formatting changes are better made once at template level in the template editor than corrected report by report.

Next steps

Read What File Formats Can I Upload? to get the inputs right before you generate.
If you want Express on a template that does not have it, email support@advisoryai.com with the template name and your completed Doc Classifier guide, and we will get you set up.

Ready to try Express? Open AdvisoryAI, click Create Report and switch on the Express toggle.