Custom report templates: what to send, how changes work, and giving feedback

Last updated: October 12, 2026

This article explains how to get Emma writing in your firm's own report template, how to request changes once it is live, and how to give feedback that gets actioned quickly.

Most firms run Emma on their own template, with their structure, wording and branding. The standard templates included in your licence are an alternative: they carry your branding too, and support can switch them on for your account. Choose a custom build when your firm or network needs its own structure, logic or house wording, and ask your account manager about the cost (see Pricing and your licence: who to ask). In the template list, standard templates carry the suffix (AAI) and the rest are your firm's own.

Before you begin

Gather three things. The quality of the build depends on them more than anything we do.

Your report template as a Word document. Templates must be Word files; a PowerPoint template cannot be built.
Two or three completed reports that show what good looks like, ideally covering different case types (for example a pension switch, an ISA recommendation and an annual review).
The input documents behind those reports, such as the fact find, meeting note, illustrations and research. We learn what to pull from where by seeing the inputs next to the finished report.

Please note: anonymise client details before sending, or ask us for an NDA and we will work with the originals.

Mark up your template

Templates use a colour code so the build team knows what Emma writes, what stays fixed and what depends on the case.

Leave standing text in black. Black text is static and goes into every report exactly as written: regulatory wording, disclosures, health and risk warnings, boilerplate.
Highlight the sections Emma should write. These are the parts that change with every client, such as circumstances, objectives, the recommendation rationale and costs.
Write conditional logic in red italic. For example: "this paragraph only appears for pension transfers", or a list of age-related risk warnings where only the ones matching the client's age should pull through. If-then rules like these work well, and Emma can infer the age or product type from any uploaded document. A condition can also be triggered by the recommendation rather than the report type: if the recommendation involves income being withdrawn from a SIPP, insert your sequencing risk wording. Send an example case with the template so the rule can be tested.
Mark data points in green. Figures and facts that come from a document, such as the plan value or a charge, are generated; they cannot be fixed text.

Please note: a static item left in black is forced into every report, even when it does not apply to that client. If a paragraph should ever be left out, it needs a red condition.

If you are unsure which sections of a live template are static, ask support for the template's logic documentation. The delivery team can send the logic tree for your template alongside an example report.

How the build works

Send your marked-up template, examples and inputs to support@advisoryai.com or your account manager. They confirm everything we need is there.
We rebuild your template in the platform, section by section. Structure is built into the template rather than learned from an upload, which keeps output consistent from report to report. This is also why we cannot take a batch of old reports and have Emma learn from them.
We map each section to the documents it should read. Uploaded documents are classified into roughly nine or ten categories by their content, so no special file naming is needed. Each section of a bespoke template is then told which types to read, for example objectives from the meeting note only and charges from the illustration only. This mapping is the main lever for stopping one document contradicting another and for keeping runs consistent.
We run the first test reports ourselves. Our team, which includes former advisers and paraplanners, checks the output against your examples before you see it.
You review and send feedback. Expect two or three rounds, each testing a different case type. The format for feedback is below.
Your template goes live for the people you choose. See Control access with groups for how access works.

A consultative template review is also offered before the build starts. Our former advisers and paraplanners suggest improvements, and firms often use the rebuild as a chance to modernise their report.

How long it takes

Stage	Typical time
First build, once we have your materials	Three to four working days for a template of around 20 pages
Each feedback round	About three working days
End to end	Two to three weeks per template
Changes to a live template	Three to five working days

Meeting-note templates are quicker, typically days rather than weeks. The biggest factor is your side of the loop: firms that generate test reports and return feedback promptly go live in around two weeks.

Request a change to a live template

Describe the change in an email to support@advisoryai.com, naming the template. Additions, removals and rewording of existing sections are made on the live template. Updates needed for a fee or regulation change are part of the service, but you need to tell us what changed. When your compliance service sends an update that requires a new statement in suitability reports, forward it to support@advisoryai.com with the template name and where the statement belongs; the team adds it to the template, and later changes of this kind are covered for the life of the template. You can also make the wording change yourself in the template editor.
Attach a generated report that shows the problem for formatting fixes such as mixed fonts, heading colours, a logo on the cover page or names in the footer. These are template fixes, and seeing a real output is the fastest way to pin them down. A background logo on the cover page, one font across the document and consistent heading colours have all been done in template updates for other firms, and the client names in the sign-off can be set as hard-coded fields. Check the download first: the in-platform viewer can display the wrong font while the Word file renders correctly.
Send an example case for recurring data misses. If the same figure keeps coming through wrong or blank, send the inputs plus the output with the wrong value highlighted. The team can then train the template on where that data lives.
Ask your account manager when the request amounts to a new template, for example a shorter letter for existing clients or a template for a new advice type.

Please note: branding is applied through the template build, not a logo upload in the app. A different letterhead for each adviser or trading style is handled as a separately named template. Provider logos, images, charts and graphs cannot be inserted by Emma, and dynamic content inside headers, such as the client name, is a known limitation.

Give feedback on a generated report

Feedback on a draft report is how your template improves between rounds. A consistent format lets us turn changes around quickly and accurately.

Leave comments on the generated report in Microsoft Word or Google Docs using the built-in comment feature, or use tracked changes. Each comment stays tied to the surrounding text, so we can see exactly what needs changing and why.
Do not edit, delete or strike through the report body, and do not spend time manually highlighting. The original draft needs to be preserved so the change is visible.
Cover three things in each comment: the issue (tone, formatting, content or accuracy), the requested change (suggested wording is always helpful) and the priority: High must be fixed, Medium should be fixed, Low is nice to have.
Send the file to support@advisoryai.com with the template name. Quote the date you sent it when you follow up.

An annotated example report, the AdvisoryAI Feedback Format Guide, shows exactly the format in practice. If you do not have it, or the format is still unclear, ask support@advisoryai.com for a copy or a screen-share with the delivery team.

Please note: only changes that most of your team makes repeatedly are made permanent, so templates do not flip between one person's preference and another's. In-platform edits and snapshot changes are not remembered. The reliable routes are the thumbs up or down on a report, a marked-up example for us to bake into the template, and the Dictionary for terminology.

Also asked

Why is data missing or wrong in my report (tables, charges, addresses, values)?

Most misses have one of four causes. The document holding the figure was not selected at generation (only green documents are read); the data point is in none of the uploaded documents, because profile data does not populate the report on its own; the provider's charge terminology (TER, OCF, AMC) confused the classification; or the figure sits in a table or graph, which is the weakest area for extraction and usually takes a build iteration or two to get right. Emma is built to get most of the report right, and the paraplanner's edit-and-check pass, using the citations to verify each number, is part of the intended workflow. If a figure that was reliable starts going wrong after no template change, send the report ID: a model update can occasionally cause a regression, and the team fixes those at template level. For a recurring miss, follow step 3 under "Request a change to a live template".

Can Emma pick up our managed portfolio name from the fund fact sheets we include?

Yes, provided the fact sheet is uploaded and selected at generation and the section that names the portfolio is mapped to read fact sheets. Emma does not take the portfolio name from an illustration that does not carry it, or from the client profile. Email support@advisoryai.com with the template name, a sample fact sheet and the section where the name should appear; the team adds the fact sheet type to that section's document mapping and tests it on a real case. The same applies when a figure should come from the fact find rather than the meeting note: name the section and the document and the mapping is changed.

How detailed can the document classifier be, for example income from the fact find while general circumstances come from the meeting note?

Down to the section. Each section of a bespoke template is told which document types it reads, so income can come from the fact find while circumstances come from the meeting note, and a section whose data is missing from its mapped documents says so rather than guessing. A section can read more than one document type, but there is no priority order between them, so where the same figure appears in two mapped documents, map the section to the one that is right. The mapping belongs to the template, so everyone who generates from that template gets the same behaviour. Giving Emma hundreds of pages when a section needs two is what causes mistakes; the mapping is how that is avoided.

What do you mean by training the model on our data?

You tell us which input documents you upload for each report type, and the template is set up so each section looks at the right document: the meeting note for objectives, the reduction in yield report for costs, the fact find for income. This is document classification rather than machine learning on your clients' data; nothing is learned from report edits. It removes the most common extraction mistakes and lets the team test accuracy against one of your real finished reports before you go live.

Has the document classifier we sent for the main suitability report been incorporated yet?

Email support@advisoryai.com with the template name and the date you sent the classifier document. The team checks the template build and replies by email confirming whether the mapping is live, so nothing is rolled out to your advisers before it is in place.

What would you need from me to build a bespoke LOA pack output?

Send the blank template with your conditional rules marked, plus two or three completed cases with every input document that produced them (the provider response, and the meeting note, fact find or illustration where they feed the pack). The completed cases are what the team tests the build against. Turnaround for an LOA pack is about a week to ten days once the materials are in. See LOA pack summaries: what is included and how to customise them for what the standard packs already extract.

Can the branding on the standard report, like the blue boxes, be changed?

Yes. The build team works from the Word file you send, so set the logo size, fonts, spacing, colours and any boxes or artwork exactly as you want them in that file and the generated report replicates it. Branding on the standard templates is applied the same way, through the template build rather than a logo upload in the app. If a colour or box in a live template is wrong, attach a generated report showing it to your change request.

Is the protection LOA summary geared to individual or joint policies rather than group schemes?

The standard protection LOA pack extracts the fields of an individual policy. For a group scheme response, email support@advisoryai.com with a provider response from a group scheme and your checklist; the team runs it through the standard pack and tells you whether the fields come through or a bespoke version is needed. Fixed wording that should read differently depending on the client's circumstances is a template condition, so include an example of what you want it to say in each case.

Do firms use one overall suitability template or lots of customised templates for different jobs?

Most firms consolidate into one master suitability template. It reads the meeting note and leaves out the sections that do not apply, such as a GIA or bond section when neither is recommended, so a single template handles most cases. Some firms run up to about ten templates, for example a shorter letter for existing clients or a separate annual review, and rarely more than that.

Next steps

Once your template is live, read What File Formats Can I Upload? so the inputs match what the template expects.
To make small wording and presentation changes yourself, see Use the template editor.

Ready to start? Open AdvisoryAI and generate a report with a standard template today. When you are ready to go bespoke, send us your marked-up template and we will take it from there.