Billing
Athena reads the signed advisory agreement, AI-parses it, and bills from that document. One of the most common SEC billing findings is a fee in the system that no longer matches the contract. Clients also sign advisory agreements in Athena, so the contract lives on the household. You do not keep a second fee table that can drift.
Book a demoThe agreement is the calculator
New agreements are executed in Athena. Existing ones are stored on the same household and parsed the same way. The loaded schedule is that extract, not a table someone typed later.
Before the file leaves
This household: blended 1.00% / 0.85%, exclude employer stock, pull the fee from taxable, never the Roth. Athena confirms the loaded schedule matches that language, then builds the debit list.
A billing run
Schwab debits the dollar amounts you send. It does not store your fee schedule, and it will not sell holdings to fund the fee.
Pull the executed document on the household and extract the fee terms. If the loaded schedule does not match, the run stops.
Tiers, minimums, and named exclusions, on average daily balance or period-end, as the agreement says.
Check available cash, then the optimizer trades under the same investing rules so the debit can execute. See how those trades run.
Exact dollars on exact accounts, through Schwab Send. Failed debits come back here to reconcile and retry.
Trading
Before the Schwab file goes out, the Athena optimizer trades the household so the cash is there. Those trades follow every investing rule: allocation bands, tax location, wash-sale lockouts, restricted lots, and gains budgets.
Funding priority
Household rules
Athena can pro-rate across accounts or pull the household fee from taxable. An IRA only ever pays the fee attributable to that IRA.
When the household has a taxable account, the fee can come from there so tax-advantaged balances keep compounding.
Roth dollars are the last place a fee should land. The agreement can say they never pay.
A Traditional or Roth IRA can cover its own advisory fee. It cannot pay for a taxable account, a spouse, or another IRA.
Employer stock, private positions, cash above a line, or a whole account can sit out of the billable base if the document says so.
Around the fee
Once the agreement is the schedule, Athena invoices the household, pays advisors on the split you set, and sends exact dollars to Schwab. Households that do not bill at Schwab can pay by ACH or card.
The household gets an invoice and a billing statement from the same numbers that built the Schwab file.
Split grids pay advisors from the collected fee. The split is inside the firm, on this run.
If the fee does not come out of a Schwab account, the household can pay by ACH or card.
When Schwab rejects a debit, the item comes back here. You reconcile it and retry from the same record.
Athena reads the signed advisory agreement, AI-parses the fee language, and loads the schedule from that document. The deducted fee is supposed to be the fee they signed. Clients also sign advisory agreements in Athena, so new contracts already live on the household. Existing agreements are stored and parsed the same way.
The rate, tiers, minimums, named exclusions, billing frequency, and which accounts pay. Average daily balance or period-end is taken from the document, not from a default someone picked in a tool. When the agreement changes, the next bill uses the new file.
No. Schwab debits exact dollar amounts from available cash. It does not store your fee schedule or calculate 100 basis points for you. Athena turns the signed agreement into those dollars, invoices the household, checks cash, and then sends the file through Schwab Send.
The run does not send the file. Someone reviews the mismatch, and any override is named and logged. That gap is one of the most common SEC billing findings when firms keep a second fee table that can drift after the paperwork changes.
Who pays is part of the agreement. Athena can pro-rate across accounts or pull the household fee from taxable first. Roth is last, and the agreement can say Roth never pays. A Traditional or Roth IRA can cover only the advisory fee attributable to that IRA. It cannot pay for a taxable account, a spouse, or another IRA.
Whatever the document names. Employer stock, private positions, cash above a line, or a whole account can be excluded if the signed agreement says so. Those exclusions are parsed with the rest of the schedule, not typed into a side list.
The Athena optimizer trades the household so billing can execute. Those trades follow every investing rule: allocation bands, tax location, wash-sale lockouts, restricted lots, and gains budgets. Athena forecasts the cash the fee needs and raises only that amount. Taxable and tax-inefficient accounts are used first. Roth and other tax-efficient accounts stay protected. See Investing.
No. If cash is short, the debit fails. That is why the optimizer raises cash first, under the same rules as a client cash request. Schwab only pulls dollars that are already available.
The failed item comes back to the household. You reconcile it and retry from the same record. The invoice, the payout, and the retry all stay on that household.
Yes. The household gets an invoice and a billing statement from the same numbers that built the Schwab file. You are not assembling a statement from a second calculator.
Split grids on the same run pay advisors from the collected fee. The split is inside the firm. Direct bill by ACH or card is available when the fee does not come out of a Schwab account.
A reasonable advisory fee taken from that IRA for managing that IRA is treated as an account expense, not a distribution. The IRA still cannot pay anyone else’s fee.
No. Custody stays at Schwab. Athena calculates the fee from the signed agreement, makes the cash available, and sends exact dollars. Schwab debits cash that is already there.
On the household. What the document said, what was billed, who overrode a flag, and which Schwab items were retried stay together for exams. You do not reconstruct a quarter from a spreadsheet and a PDF folder.
