Picture a financial planning firm that manages more than 500 million in client assets, supports everyone from wealth builders to retirees, and handles everything from advice to tax prep to self-managed super funds (SMSF) work… all under one roof.
That’s AJ Financial Planning: an Australian wealth advisory firm known for guiding clients through some of the biggest financial moments of their lives.
As the business grew, so did the moving pieces behind the scenes. There were more clients, more services, more internal hand-offs and a team trying to keep everything running smoothly. It wasn’t that their processes were broken, they just needed a setup that made the work feel easier, clearer, and less dependent on memory or manual effort.
Copper was already in place, but only in a simple way. So when Director of Operations Edsel Capillanes joined the team, he began refining how they were using it. By reworking how tasks moved, how information was captured, and how the team stayed aligned, he helped the firm tap into Copper’s full potential, eventually shaping it into the backbone of AJ Financial’s operations.
The challenge: A fast-moving firm that needed smoother workflows
Before Capillanes stepped in, AJ Financial had the basics in place: a few pipelines, sporadic notes, and a lot of manual checking to make sure nothing fell through the cracks.
Opportunities stalled if someone forgot to move them forward. Notes were sometimes added in places that could be deleted or overlooked later. And as the team grew, everyone was juggling more information than the system could comfortably hold.
Capillanes came in with a fresh perspective and a very clear belief.
“Copper’s limitation is really its user — it’s very, very customizable,” he says. And that’s why he saw a chance to shape the system to match how AJ Financial actually worked.
The solution: Rebuilding their workflows inside Copper
The rebuild started at the ground level: the daily tasks and habits driving the team’s work.
Making everyday work easier
One of Capillanes’ first changes was adding small but important fields, like an “initial action date,” which showed when a task should be started and not just when it was due. This helped the team get ahead of the work instead of reacting to deadlines.
He also reorganized client records so anyone could quickly see a client’s category, life stage, and the exact mix of services the firm provided. With so many types of clients (like wealth builders, pre-retirees, retirees, SMSF clients) this clarity made everything easier.
Turning four pipelines into a full operational map
At first, AJ Financial was working out of just four pipelines. Now, they have pipelines for almost everything: onboarding, annual reviews, pensions, SMSF work, trading, compliance tasks, offboarding, even internal research projects.
This solved a challenge that’s pretty common for them: many clients have multiple entities or multiple pieces of work happening at once. With Copper, they can track all of those streams separately without clutter or confusion.
As Capillanes put it, the pipelines now act like a map of the business, giving a clear view of what’s happening, what’s moving, and what needs attention next.
The “game-changer” automation
One automation quickly became the turning point. Capillanes set up a workflow where finishing a task automatically moves the opportunity to the next stage, creates the next task, and assigns it to the right person. Before this, opportunities could stall if someone forgot to nudge them forward.
Now the work keeps moving on its own. Tasks land in the right person’s queue at the right time, and the pipeline stays accurate without anyone manually managing it. Capillanes called it their biggest improvement because it removed bottlenecks and let the team focus on doing the work and not on tracking it.
Strengthening how the team documents work
Another major shift was standardizing how notes are captured. Capillanes moved the team away from adding notes directly to the record and toward using task notes exclusively, following a simple structure: action → result → next steps.
Because task notes are time-stamped and not easily edited, this created a clean trail of everything that happened, which is something especially important in financial services. After some initial adjustment, the new approach became second nature across the company.
The results: Faster turnaround times, better clarity, and stronger adoption
Once the new workflows were in place, the improvements were dramatic. AJ Financial reduced their average task completion time from 20 days to 8. Everyone on the team now uses Copper daily as their shared workspace. Opportunities keep moving, tasks automatically appear at the right time, and documentation is consistent across the board.
“Copper lets us focus more on advice and investments,” says Capillanes. “Essentially providing service and less on admin.”
Building a connected environment
Copper also sits at the center of AJ Financial’s wider tech stack. It works alongside Box, PandaDoc, Google Workspace, Zoom, Calendly, Dialpad, Morning Star, Advisor Logic, Xplan, and Make. SMS messages from Dialpad automatically appear in Copper, giving the team a complete view of client communication.
With Make, they’ve even built advanced workflows that create tasks based on triggers inside Copper — which helps reduce manual work and keeps the team in sync.
Why they continue choosing Copper
As Capillanes explored other tools over time (including ClickUp, Asana, and Auto) he kept coming back to Copper.
“It’s the perfect blend of simplicity in the UI and the ability to be very flexible,” he says. “That combination is what sets Copper apart.”
The firm now sees Copper as a core part of their service delivery — and they’re not done building. Their next steps include GPT-powered projects, richer reporting, and new planning tools that will continue improving how they serve clients.
If you’re looking to build and maintain stronger relationships, try Copper for 14 days free today!
