Last week we hosted the launch webinar for Sesame One 4.0, the biggest release in the platform's history. Hugh from our product marketing team walked through the thinking behind the release and the new capabilities, and our product team, Benjamin, Ramis and Eddie, answered a packed round of audience questions.
If you missed it, or want a refresher, here are the highlights.
Why 4.0, and why now
AI is only as useful as the data it can see. When holdings sit in one system, entity structures in another and the general ledger in a third, AI lacks the context it needs to give reliable answers, and agents have nothing solid to work on.
For lean teams, the usual workaround is a web of API integrations and MCP connections to get separate systems talking. That takes technical resource most family offices and investment teams would rather spend elsewhere.
Sesame One 4.0 takes a different route: one system of record, in one secure environment, with AI built in from the start. Fewer systems to maintain, one source of truth, and AI that compounds in value as your record grows.
Three books of record, one platform
At the heart of 4.0 is the idea that an investment office runs on three books of record, now unified in Sesame One.
- The investment book of record: every holding and transaction, from custodian feeds, open banking, private fund statements or uploaded documents, consolidated in one place.
- The corporate book of record: your entities and ownership structure, alongside the documents, contacts and company records that give your investments context.
- The accounting book of record: new in 4.0, journal entries and a general ledger generated directly from the investment activity already in Sesame.
Three books of record, one system of record
With all three together, Sesame One becomes the complete record that AI needs to do meaningful work.
What's new in Sesame One 4.0
Doc Flow: agentic document ingestion
Doc Flow is our rebuilt document ingestion tool. Where the previous tool processed one document at a time, Doc Flow lets you upload as many documents as you need and hands them to a team of AI agents. The agents read each document, extract the holdings and transactions, map them to the right portfolios using your rules, and post the data into Sesame.
Upload documents in bulk and let AI agents extract, map and post the data
Doc Flow covers private fund documents, such as capital calls, distributions and quarterly updates, as well as bank statements. That makes it ideal for banks or custodians without an automated feed, or for onboarding a new client before feeds go live. When Doc Flow finds a holding that's new to the account, it can create it for you.
Accounting: from investment activity to general ledger
The flagship feature of 4.0. Family offices and asset owners told us that closing the books each quarter is as painful as investment reporting, largely because someone has to re-key investment data into the accounting system.
Accounting uses the transaction data already in Sesame to generate journal entries and a general ledger automatically, calculating cost basis and P&L along the way. Upload your existing chart of accounts and aLi helps configure it. Describe your journal entry rules in plain language and aLi helps build them, with no expressions to write by hand. When the ledger is ready, export it to the accounting system you already use.
A general ledger built automatically from your investment activity, ready to export.
Accounting is designed to feed your existing accounting system, which stays the home of your books. It removes the manual re-keying in between so your team can close each quarter faster.
Publisher: reporting rebuilt with AI at its core
Many teams using spreadsheets spend three days or more building each round of reports. Even with a dedicated reporting tool, the initial build and later edits can demand real expertise in the tool itself.
The new Publisher changes that. Describe the report you need and aLi builds the structure and pulls in the right charts. You keep full control of the finishing touches, from editing visuals to adding new ones and applying your own colour scheme. Prefer to start from a template? You can create a report in just a few clicks.
Describe the report you need and aLi builds the first draft.
Sesame One clients already save 80% of their reporting time on average, and one team cut its monthly reporting from three days to three hours. The new Publisher is built to push those gains further.
aLi: answers in seconds, help across the platform
aLi is the AI assistant built into Sesame One. Ask it a question, such as which days last quarter delivered the weakest performance and which holdings were responsible, and it returns the answer in seconds, work that would once have meant drilling through charts and data points by hand.
Ask a question, get the answer in seconds.
aLi also works inside the platform itself, helping configure your chart of accounts, build journal entry rules and structure reports, with more use cases on the way.
A new look, and a faster platform
The whole platform has been redesigned around two questions: what matters most to me, and what needs my attention right now? The new home dashboard leads with AUM, key P&L figures and an Act Now banner. New analytics pages by asset class make granular breakdowns easier to digest, and dark mode has arrived.
The new home dashboard, now with dark mode.
Under the surface, we've rebuilt the infrastructure behind it all. Data is now calculated on demand, so pages load faster and refresh more quickly when you change date ranges or switch entities.
AI you can trust and verify
Unsurprisingly, many audience questions focused on accuracy and security. Here's what the product team shared.
- Full traceability: every data point Doc Flow extracts links back to its source document, and you can choose to review data before it's posted.
- Consistent numbers: aLi uses exactly the same metrics, methodology and calculations as the rest of the platform, so any answer can be checked against your dashboards, analytics or Publisher reports.
- Deterministic accounting: aLi helps you set up your rules, while the postings themselves are deterministic, so the same inputs always produce the same outputs.
- Secure by design: aLi and Doc Flow run on OpenAI models hosted within Microsoft Azure. Your data stays within Microsoft's environment, is never used to train models and never reaches OpenAI's own platform.
What's next
4.0 is the first step in our AI roadmap. Next, we'll extend Doc Flow to more document types, such as real estate documents, and roll out more agentic workflows across Sesame One. The goal is simple: agents take on the manual, repetitive work, so your team can focus on portfolio analysis, deal evaluation and relationships.
Getting access
For existing clients, Sesame One 4.0 is included in your current subscription. Your client success manager will be in touch to arrange access and support your move to 4.0, and version 3 remains fully supported throughout.
New to Sesame One? Book a demo to see 4.0 in action.
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