Let’s be honest. If you run a TPA firm, you probably have a love/hate relationship with Excel.

You love it because it’s the old reliable - the friend who’s been there since your first 5500 season.

You hate it because that same friend eats all your time, disappears when you need them most, and occasionally hands you an error that makes you question your life choices.

In 2025, you shouldn’t have to spend hours exporting, reformatting, and emailing spreadsheets just to see how your business is doing. By the time you’ve got the pivot tables looking halfway decent, the data is already stale, and the decision you needed to make was last Tuesday.

Why This Matters More Than You Think

Reporting isn’t just a “nice to have.” For TPAs (and honestly, most businesses!), it’s the control tower. It’s how you see the backlog before it buries you.

It’s how you catch that census data issue while there’s still time to fix it. It’s how you realize that Plan X's 5500 submission is about to blow well past its deadline, and that Advisor Y keeps sending you more business than you thought (and probably deserves a thank-you call).

When reporting works, you make faster, smarter calls. When it doesn’t, you’re stuck in “reactive mode”, and that’s when the big problems (and missed opportunities) sneak up on you.

How We Got Here (and Why Excel is Still Running the Show)

Legacy systems like PensionPro and ASC's PensionPAL have done a good job giving TPAs a menu of built-in reports.

They’ve even got dashboards - if you’re okay with a static homepage snapshot, and the occasional export to Excel. And if you’re really adventurous, you can use their Fetch tool, a kind of build-your-own-report feature… as long as you don’t mind the learning curve, separate training, and maybe a coffee IV drip to get through it.

The end result?

Most firms fall back on the one thing they know: dump it to Excel, work some magic, and pray nobody overwrites the master file. It’s the way things have been done for years. It’s also the way hours of billable time quietly vanish every week.

What “Good” Should Look Like

In a perfect world, reporting doesn’t feel like reporting.

It’s just… there.

You open your system, and every field - standard or custom - is fair game.

You can pivot it, filter it, and see it live on a dashboard without touching a CSV.

If you want to share it, you don’t send a file. You send a view that’s secure, filtered, and always up to date.

That’s what we built inside Stax.ai CX.

Stax.ai CX's Embedded Dashboards: Reporting Without the Hassle

We didn’t bolt on an outside BI tool that makes you log into yet another platform.

We embedded a full analytics engine right inside CX, so you can:

• Build any report you want, with any field combination. Yes, even that custom one you swore nobody would ever let you use in a pivot.

• Slice and dice data in real time with drag-and-drop pivots.

• Share live dashboards that actually stay live (no refresh-tab dance required).

• Control access with row-level security so people only see what they should.

• Skip the Excel shuffle entirely.

The difference is night and day.

One is like checking the scoreboard during the game. The other is waiting for the sports section to come out in tomorrow’s paper.

How It Stacks Up Against PensionPro

Let’s call it like it is:

PensionPro has reports, dashboards, and a query tool. But they’re still built for a world where Excel is the final step.

CX flips that.

We start with the idea that reporting should end where you’re already working - in the same system that runs your client communications, workflows, and compliance tracking.

Here is a side-by-side comparison of CX's embedded analytics against a legacy system (PensionPro Fetch reports).

Why This Changes the Game for TPAs

When your reporting is live and built into your daily workflow, a few things happen:

• You spot problems early enough to fix them without panic emails.

• You see trends you didn’t know existed (and can act on them before your competitors do).

• You stop wasting hours on report prep and start spending them on billable or growth work.

It’s not just about “making reports easier.” It’s about making better decisions, faster, with the data you already have.

See It in Action

We could keep talking about how smooth it is, but you’re better off seeing it for yourself.

Join our upcoming webinar on Wednesday, August 27, 2025 at 4:00 PM ET, where Cam - our Head of Engineering, walks you through our embedded reporting solution!

If you missed it, no worries! You can always talk to an expert on our team who can walk you through CX and its reporting capabilities for your specific use case.

Schedule a call with our team.

No exports. No CSVs. No “version_final_FINAL(3).xlsx.”