Managing Documents

Oftentimes, advisors need to pull data out of complex documents such as tax returns or balance sheets. Instead of entering that information in manually, ELLA makes it easy to be able to upload documents and send them through our sense-making pipeline. Documents also can be excluded from sense-making and will still be stored in a secure way that can be shared with other collaborators within a workspace.

Uploading & Organizing Documents

You can upload files in any of three ways:

1. Attach Files to Questions: During fact finding, you can can add questions that request materials that support a business factor, like financials, tax returns, or legal docs. This helps you keep the context of the document in the right place and makes it easy to prompt collaborators and clients to upload a given document.
2. Attach Files to Business Factors: If you're given a document that relates to a given business factor but you don't have a question created that it easily relates to, you can upload documents directly to any given business factor. This way, they are still organized and shown contextually.
3. Upload to Document Center: We also offer a document upload section that allows for easily uploading and sharing documents in a secure, centralized location (ie. a simplified virtual data room).

Collaboration & Access

In a future release, you’ll be able to invite collaborators (e.g., bookkeepers, attorneys, or tax professionals) and owners to upload or view specific files. Sharing will be at a granular level so you can always be sure only privileged people can see a given document.

Privacy and Security of Documents

Storage & Retention

Uploaded files are stored in a secure third party data storage service (we use Cloudflare R2 for storing documents). We only store these for as long as you need them. Once you delete them from ELLA, they are permanently purged from storage.

AI and Document Use

By default, all documents are processed through ELLA’s AI services so they can be used in Sensemaking. No matter which of the above options you use for uploading, you can opt out of AI processing at the individual document level. Documents and their content are never used for training AI models and we maintain strict contractual obligations with all third-party providers to ensure the same.