Upgrading from Lextree for Entity Management

Upgrading to the New Lextree

The new Lextree collects your compliance, governance and entity ownership information in one place. This guide is not a tutorial on every new feature. It compares how the legacy version of Lextree organized your information with where that information lives in the new version, so you can translate what you are used to seeing into the new product.

All of your data has been migrated. Nothing has been lost. Where a particular piece of information ends up depends on how your organization used Lextree, how you classified your records, and what kind of information it is.

Where your information lives now

Use this table as a quick reference. Each row is explained in more detail below.

Before you start: two things to know

Lextree has many more modules

The new Lextree has 21 modules. Three of them cover what the legacy entity management product did, and they will be on when you upgrade:

• Legal Entities
• Entity Ownership
• Governance

Information that was packed into the legal entity in the legacy version has been unpacked into these specialized modules, so each area can do more.

Depending on how your organization used Lextree, you may see other modules too. Common ones are Real Estate, Taxes, Authority, Trusts and Treasury. You might see others, or none of these. See Information in other modules below.

Common features work the same way everywhere

The new Lextree has a set of platform features that are richer than the legacy version and work the same way on every record:

• A calendar that centralizes compliance dates and replaces alerts and notifications.
• Workflows that replace tasks and add collaboration.
• Customization of fields, sections and labels throughout the product.
• A timeline of changes to each record over time.
• Attachments for files and links, available everywhere.

Something that lived in one place in the legacy version may now use one of these features. This guide points you to them.

Your screens may look different

Lextree is now highly customizable. Your administrators control what is on each page, what data is collected, and how it is labeled. If your sections, labels or fields don’t match what you see in the video, that is expected. The examples use demo data.

The dashboard

The new dashboard has the same purpose as the legacy one. Instead of compliance requirements, filings and notifications on the left with alerts and tasks on the right, you will see:

• Upcoming events, a preview of what is coming due. Select any event to jump to it, or open the full calendar.
• Workflows you are involved in.
• Recently updated records.
• Favorites. You can favorite any record you work with often and jump to it from here.

The dashboard is customizable. You can turn panels off and change what is displayed.

Legal entities

The registry

In the legacy version you selected the Entities tab to see your legal entities. In the new Lextree, go to Legal Entities › Registry.

Every list page in the new Lextree is sortable and has more capability and flexibility than the legacy lists.

The entity detail page

Select an entity’s name in the registry to open its detail page, just as you did in the legacy version.

The legacy version showed a summary panel of basic information with tabs for more detail. The new detail page has the same idea with some important differences. The summary information appears under the entity’s name, grouped into sections such as Identity, Lifecycle and Tax and Reporting. The vast majority of the data from your legacy summary panel has been migrated here. Your sections and labels may differ.

Below the summary are collections of related records. Two of them replace legacy tabs.

Governance Documents. Documents about the legal entity itself, such as articles of incorporation, bylaws and certificates of formation, are in Governance Documents.

Business Registrations. Requirements closely tied to the entity’s registration status are in Business Registrations. Annual reports and foreign qualifications are the most common examples.

If your legacy requirements included other types, such as special licenses or permits, those have most likely moved to a module dedicated to that kind of compliance requirement.

Select any row in a collection to open its own detail page. A foreign qualification, for example, has sections specific to the registration: local details (if you do business across national boundaries), registered agent information, and additional details. To add a registration, select New and enter the basic details.

Calendar, attachments and workflows on every record

On the right side of every detail page you will find three panels. Look here for things that used to be alerts, documents and tasks.

Calendar. Alerts have migrated to calendar events. They work like any other calendar: add an event or open one to see its details. All events also appear in the global calendar under Activity.

Attachments. Add documents, files and links to any record. Any file format works, as it did in the legacy version. One improvement: you can drag and drop several files at once, instead of attaching them one at a time to a document record.

Workflows. Most tasks have migrated to workflows. Workflows can be very simple or very elaborate, can be highly automated, and can update records for you. You can see all workflows under Workflows in the left navigation. Workflows are available on the Business and Enterprise plans, not the Professional plan.

Replacing the View menu

The legacy View menu showed everything of one kind across all your entities. The new Lextree gives you two ways to get that view.

First, the Activity area has the Calendar (all notifications and compliance dates, as a month or a list, with filters and a subscription) and Attachments (every file and link).

Second, every item in the navigation opens a list of that record type across all your entities. Instead of View › Requirements, go to Business Registrations to see the registrations for every legal entity, sort by entity, and open any of them. This works at every level. If you track periodic filings, you can list and explore all of them the same way.

Ownership and org charts

Ownership information is now in its own module, Entity Ownership, which is much richer than the legacy Ownership tab.

Equity ownership

The legacy version stored ownership as a series of paired relationships between an owner and a holding. The Ownership tab showed an entity’s direct parents and direct subsidiaries, and Lextree built the org chart from those pairs.

Every one of those paired relationships, across all your entities, has migrated to Entity Ownership › Equity Ownership. The list shows all the relationships with the columns you are used to. You may see additional columns, because ownership records now support custom fields and the standard configuration includes some. Sort by entity to see a particular entity’s parents and holdings.

There is no Ownership tab on the entity detail page. You manage ownership in Equity Ownership.

Charts

The new Lextree builds charts from the same ownership data, on the same principle, with far more control.

In the legacy version you built a chart from one entity’s perspective. To chart your whole structure, you started from the ultimate parent.

In the new Lextree, Charts lists every chart you have built, and you can save as many as you want. To create one, select New, give it a name, and choose:

• A starting entity, or none. Start from one entity when you need a chart for a financing, a due diligence or know-your-customer disclosure. Or chart everything.
• Direction. Show just the owners, just the holdings, or the entire group. The entire group traces relationships that may not connect directly to your starting entity but are still relevant to it.
• Depth. Limit the chart to parents and grandparents, or children and grandchildren. Zero includes every level.
• Conditions. Include or exclude records and relationships. For example, leave out trusts, or chart only LLCs.
• Fields. Choose the data that appears on the chart.

When you save, Lextree generates the layout in a second or two, even for hundreds or thousands of entities.

The second big improvement is design. The viewer is the same infinite canvas you know, but charts can now have a title, shapes, colors, and data both in the boxes and on the lines. Select Design to:

• Select an entire branch, or search to select matching entities.
• Change fill and border formatting.
• Lay the chart out top to bottom, bottom to top, or left to right.
• Control what data is displayed and how.

Download the finished chart and share it with anyone.

Officers and directors: Governance

The legacy People tab tracked officers and directors. All of that data has migrated to the Governance module, where you can track boards, board membership, committees, meetings and officers. Better governance management was one of our most requested enhancements.

If you only want to track each entity’s board and its members, add the board, add its members, and you are done. Everything else is there when you need it.

Boards

An entity can have as many boards as it needs, such as a board of directors, a board of advisors, or a board of members. Boards lists them all by organization and board name.

A board’s detail page shows its composition, number of seats, terms, and meeting rules such as frequency, notice and quorum requirements. Below that are the board’s members, with their titles, status, original term and current term. Select a member to see the details of the appointment.

Meetings

You can now record board meetings. Meetings can be annual, quarterly, special, or any type you define. Select New to add one. A meeting’s detail page captures logistics, outcome, attendees and resolutions. You can schedule a calendar reminder for a follow-up action, attach the minutes as a file or link, and start a workflow for anything that needs collaboration during or after the meeting.

Committees

Add committees to a board by giving each a name and a type, chosen from a list or your own. You can record a committee’s authority and any independence requirements, and mark it as standing or special purpose. Each committee can have its own members, appointments and meetings.

Officer appointments

Officer Appointments lists every officer appointment across all your organizations. Open one to see its details and its timeline. The timeline is a standard feature on most records. It records the history of a record as it changes, sometimes automatically and sometimes manually. You can add entries yourself, or your administrators can set entries to be created automatically.

Information in other modules

Depending on your legacy configuration, such as your legal entity types and requirement types, and the data you managed, some of your information may have been placed in other modules. If you see modules beyond the three above, it means some of your data had a better home there. Administrators can see which modules are on under Settings › Modules.

Common examples:

• Authority, for signing authority.
• Financial Statements, if you stored financial statements for your entities.
• Real Estate, for properties and real estate holdings.
• Taxes.
• Treasury, for bank accounts, credit facilities and lending.
• Trusts, for family offices or trusts in your ownership structure.

The Real Estate module shows what these modules offer. Each property has its location, property details, zoning and parcel information, investment, owners and investors, and leases. If you use Lextree for contract management, your leases may be in the contracts module, but you can also track a lease with the property it relates to, whether you are the lessor or the lessee.

Every module has the same structure: a list, a detail page, nested lists of related records, and the calendar, attachments, workflows and timeline panels. If you can’t find information where you expected it, it has most likely moved to a module dedicated to tracking that kind of information.

Activity: calendar, attachments and workflows

Like the legacy version, the new Lextree lets you step back from individual records and look across your whole organization. That view is now in the Activity area of the navigation.

Calendar

The calendar has a list view and a month view. It is much more comprehensive than the legacy alerts calendar: it brings together every date-driven field from every module you have on. Select an event to see its details and jump to the record.

If the calendar shows too much, filter it, for example to legal entity events only, or to a single entity. The filters available depend on which modules are on and how much data appears on the calendar.

You can also subscribe to the calendar from your personal calendar, so events update there automatically, or download all the events.

Attachments

Attachments lists every file and link across Lextree, with the record each one belongs to. In the legacy version there was one place to add documents. Now you can attach files anywhere, as close as possible to the thing they are about, with as many files per record as you need. Open any attachment to see where it comes from, download it, or preview a PDF in the browser.

Workflows

Your legacy tasks appear as Workflows. A workflow can have a status, a checklist with a progress bar, an optional due date, and fields that collect data along the way, such as the entity’s assumed name or whether a registered agent has been engaged. The activity panel records every action automatically, and anyone can post a comment that everyone on the workflow can see.

The biggest difference from legacy tasks: a workflow can create or update the record itself. In the legacy version you completed the task, then separately added the filing or updated the entity. In the new Lextree, the workflow can do that for you.

Reports

Most legacy entity reports are now simply available from the Legal Entities Registry. Select the entities you want and export them.

The new Reports area goes further. Lextree ships with about 80 standard reports, which you can edit or delete. You control the data on each report: open a report such as Ownership Stakes, then remove columns or add one, such as the legal form of each holding.

Access to reports is controlled by your administrators in Settings. If you don’t see Reports, nothing is wrong. Access has been limited, usually to a few people.

Trash

As in the legacy version, the Trash shows everything that has been deleted, and you can restore it.

Next steps

This guide covers the core features of the legacy entity management product from the day-to-day user’s perspective. If you also manage contracts, see Upgrading from Lextree for Contract Management. Both guides are on the upgrade page. You can find more about the new Lextree at lextree.ai. Questions? Email our support team at [email protected].