Back Office Platforms Provided by Stock Brokers

Actively managing a position in the market isn’t less than a big hustle. Being a trader or long-term investor, you may agree that actively tracking and adjusting the position is an indispensable part of the game.

But thanks to back office platforms provided by most stock brokers around the world. With sophisticated infrastructure and real-time updates, these platforms bring enhanced market visibility to the trader’s desk.

These platforms electronically interact with the trader and facilitate a faster, flexible, and finest user experience. This article covers a list of exciting items you see on back office platforms by the stockbroker. Take a look.

Some Coolest Things you see at the Back Office Platforms Provided by Stock Brokers

Back office platforms are tailored to suit the dynamic requirements of a stock broker. That’s why most stock brokers make the below-stated features available on their platforms.

Detailed Breakdown of Information

This section of the menu can be equipped with a combination of information meaningful to a trader in multiple ways.

Simply find them in the upper or lower menu bars, or locate them somewhere on the back office platforms on the screen. While you hover over a section of a menu, it must drop-down sub-menu.

Herein you can land on the specific page, tool, or section that you want to explore. These drop-down menus are provided on the screen exclusively to improve user interaction with the platform.

Making everything available in one place is the key intention of bringing this breakdown of information to the screen. You will access this feature on almost every trading platform.

After all, so many things are involved when it comes to real-time order executions, and it’s inherently challenging to leave the panel and locate options somewhere on the website during a live market.

Real-time P&L

Well, the key reason behind providing a real-time P&L report on a platform can be twofold. One P&L report may give a glimpse of the company’s “Profit” and “Loss” ratios with the exact figure.

On the flip side, the second P&L report may generate data on profits and losses made by a trader from the preceding trades.

Also, the P&L section gives the user a quick overview of the holdings in the portfolio and the value. It is easy to identify whether you are in profit or loss through this real-time tool provided by most stock brokers on their platform.

But being a savvy trader, you must be well aware that real-time P&L insights can be pretty misleading. If the position is open, the figures in P&L will keep fluctuating.

Thus, it is ideal to have your eyes on the section only when you are about to analyze your preceding trades and not for the current one.

Taxation Report at Fingertips

Income Tax Implications on Demat account transactions can sometimes be pretty disappointing. After all, tax filing is one of the most painful parts of trading due to the complex accounting of expenses, profit, losses, and other metrics.

But many brokers are simplifying the whole system of taxation now through their integrated tools and advanced options that keep accounting challenges to almost zero.

Such as how much you will be taxed for a trade or a transaction is clearly defined on back office platforms.

Not just will you access these reports via email or other contact media, but you can calculate everything with imaginative figures in advance.

Angel One, Zerodha, Upstox, and ICICI direct are some of the famous names making this facility available to the client.

Stock Gifting

Stock Gifting is unarguably the most exciting thing you will ever see in the stock market territory. Based on this feature, you are allowed to give some shares from your portfolio to someone.

You can do this for the resolution of a business or professional matter. Alternatively, you can gift them to your family members or friends.

Many companies have even been found gifting stocks to employees and employers under special resolution schemes or legal matters.

To simply put, you can replace the monetary culture with stock gifting as it is more flexible and an interesting style to process a deal or transaction.

Apart from stocks, Brokers allow you to gift gold bonds and ETFs as well. India’s popular trading platform Zerodha currently has this offer, but you can also find the feature on other trading platforms too.

Progress Assessment Tools

The most interesting part of the back office platforms offered by the stock brokers is here. Progress Assessment Tools may not be enticing to big investors or experienced traders, but it means a lot to beginners.

Simply put, these tools are the biggest encouragement to beginners who have recently started holding positions in the market and are worried about their performance.

In simple words, it happens in most events when a trader keeps trading while entirely unaware of the fundamentals of tracking profits and losses.

It’s the undying rule of the market that sometimes you will make a profit while other times a big loss.

Thus traders are advised to judge their progress with a brief assessment of profits and losses made during a month. Manually, it could be tough. That’s why brokers make a progression assessment tool available to clients.

The tool drafts the proper progress assessment of the client during the preceding trades and represents them through interactive visuals for a better comparison.

In-depth Analytics

Information transparency is the key to winning a trade. That’s why almost every back office platform provided by a stock broker has the feature available.

These in-depth analytics take you on a walkthrough of stocks and generate insight into the profits and loss profile of a company, including people’s interest in the stock and market trend.

Using these tools, you can cover a detailed summary of multiple things live on the chart – not in lines or candlesticks patterns but provided in figures. You can spot the high of the day and lower low at the same time.

Further in-depth analytics related to numerous trading fragments may be available. After all, it is a widely-provided thing across stock broking trading platforms.

Unique Dashboard

Other things could be similar but not dashboards. Each back office platform provided by a stock broker carries certain features that make it totally unique from others.

The list of unique features can range from interactive visuals to useful functioning. Brokers try to build a unique dashboard to lure more-n-more clients. However, most keep their dashboard unique just for branding benefits.

Such as, the Groww trading platform has a green-colored theme. Thus you see the overall navigation and user interface in green and white color.

Similarly, the Zerodha console is blue and white colored, which defines the brand. But apart from color, the functioning of the Zerodha dashboard is also quite unique.

Simply put, as you log in to your account with Zerodha, you access a range of information, e.g., your equity summary, commodity investment, and details of mutual funds live on the screen.

Learning Center

The stock market is all about learning and practicing. The more you learn, the far you go and add more to your revenue stream. Stockbroking firms are well-aware of the significance of this critical term.

Thus, features and facilities on most broking platforms are centered around learning activities. Such as, you can learn in-depth how to trade, analyze a market, or how to use a specific toolset to derive helpful info from the market.

Some learning centers offer detailed courses, and some of them are free and premium. Such as Angel One, Zerodha, and Uptox courses are free, but others come with additional charges.

However, some brokers may provide a brief tutorial on how to use their back-office platforms from scratch.

In a nutshell, if you are unaware or unknown of anything about trading or related to the broking services and wish to learn first, you may take the help of this section.

Research Center

Research centers are an added bonus. However, not every stock broker may have this feature available except for a few big players.

They are special because here, you will be exposed to the top performing and losing shares in the industry.

You can scout on a specific share set in a specific index. Similarly, additional research-driven info is available in these research menus for traders.

From the latest stock market to some old names that are doing well in the market, you will get a well-structured and research-driven report here.

Currently, most stock brokers like Kotak Securities, ICICI Direct, Groww, and Zerodha make this facility available. You don’t need to scout for market research on your own.

You can bookmark the prospective player and can filter out the best results. Based on this research, brokers may also share trading recommendations or market updates that save time in the market.

Notifications

Back office platforms provided by a stock broker want to keep you updated.

For this, these platforms may use a range of notification options or networking channels to make the latest updates related to the stock market and a specific stock available to the client.

These notification bars have integrated functionality with the dashboard and trading terminal as well. Simultaneously it helps you get the latest updates on your portfolio.

Such as, whether the target has been hit or SL is triggered is instantly updated through the notification support.

All you need to do is enable the notification option, as it will help the broker understand whether you have consented to receive daily notifications on the market or portfolio.

You can receive notifications via mobile messages, emails, and other sources. But make sure the contact details you provided them are correct.

Screen Stocks and Charts

Screen stocks and technical charts are the basic requirement of every client from its stockbroker, and all of them make sure that they are met with precision.

Most notably, you can access line charts, point and figure charts, bar charts, and candlestick charts. Similarly, an option of switching between your one equity stock to another with one click may be provided by the broker.

This ensures the flexibility of trade executions and ease of moving from one stock to another.

And to make sure you don’t miss even a small market move, a fully responsive chart and stock menu are telecasted live on the screen.

Manage the Entire Family’s Account

Some broking platforms like Zerodha also undertake special arrangements to help a person in managing their family’s portfolio.

The feature is helpful to traders who often trade through their family portfolio or do trading for someone as well. All you need to do is, create sub-accounts and link them with your account, and access shared benefits in one place.

If investment in your family happens through multiple accounts, it becomes a great feature to have your eyes on.

Mobile Integrations

Mobile integration is an added feature offered at most back office platforms. However, this isn’t a feature exactly. Indeed it is a functionality that integrates desktop activities with a mobile app.

So that whenever a trader isn’t active on the desktop, they keep receiving real-time updates on their smartphones.

Not just market updates but order executions and portfolio adjustments are also possible through the mobile application.

The broker integrates your desktop software and the mobile application via a unique ID that brings flexibility to the work culture of investment and trading.

And the best thing, live activities can be tracked on both smartphones and desktops at the same time.

Conclusion

So this was the breakdown of features and functioning you access at most back office platforms. Almost every stock broker has all these features in common. However, you may see most of them with certain variations.

Still, they revolve around a similar objective. But you can’t deny that new broking platforms are even coming with some new and unique features, such as a family’s account or unique dashboard.