One Advisor at a Time

A Policy Stack consumer can be actively connected to only one advisor at a time. If a client tries to connect to a second advisor — through a seat invitation, a connection invite, or any other path — they're shown a conflict screen naming their current advisor and asked to make an explicit choice before anything changes.

This article explains the rule from both sides: what a client sees when the conflict screen appears, and what it means for your practice when a client switches to or from you.

Why the Rule Exists

Data-sharing consent is per-advisor. If a client could quietly accumulate multiple active advisor connections, they might not realize a previous advisor still had read access — and the connections that don't fit in their settings UI would be invisible and hard to revoke. The one-advisor-at-a-time rule keeps the client's current relationship explicit and easy to manage.

What the Client Sees

When a client clicks an invitation (or hits any accept path) while already connected to another advisor, a Connection Conflict modal appears before anything is created:

• "You're already connected to {current advisor's name}."
• Two clear actions: Cancel or Switch advisors.

Nothing changes if they cancel — their current advisor connection stays intact. If they choose Switch advisors, the modal confirms the change explicitly, then:

• The previous advisor's connection is moved to disconnected.
• The new advisor's connection becomes the active one.
• The previous advisor's seat (if any) returns to that advisor's pool.

The modal appears on every accept path — seat invitations, "Invite to Connect" links, the homepage advisor prompt, the in-app search-and-connect flow. There's no path that silently swaps advisors without the client seeing this screen.

What You See When a Client Switches to You

You see a normal connection acceptance. Once the client has confirmed the switch on the conflict screen, your invite is accepted and they appear in your client list as Connected (and Seated if your invitation included a seat). There's no special "switched from another advisor" label — the previous advisor relationship is the client's information to share.

What You See When a Client Switches Away

If one of your clients accepts another advisor's invite via the switch path, three things happen from your side:

1. The connection moves to disconnected the moment the client confirms the switch.
2. If you had a seat assigned to them, that seat returns to your pool and is immediately available to reassign.
3. A system event appears on that client's CRM Timeline: "Client switched to another advisor — seat returned to your pool."

The client's CRM record stays in your book as a contact — your notes, lead-source tags, and reminders are unchanged. What ends is the active data-sharing relationship.

See Disconnect Events on Your Timeline for the full list of system events that appear when a client ends a connection.

"Additional Advisor Connections" in Client Settings

On the client side, Settings → Your Advisor shows the active advisor as the primary card. If a legacy or race-state connection ever ends up alongside the primary, a compact Additional advisor connections section appears underneath with a per-row Disconnect button. This is a defensive surface — it lets the client clean up any duplicate connection directly, without going through the conflict modal.

In normal use this section is empty. It's there to make sure no advisor connection is ever invisible to the client.

What This Means for Your Practice

• Inviting an already-connected client is fine. The client sees the conflict modal and decides. Your invitation isn't a silent override.
• Losing a client to a switch is a clean break. The seat returns, the connection ends, the Timeline shows the system event. No partial states.
• The contact record stays yours. Switching advisors disconnects the connection; it doesn't remove the client from your CRM. You can re-invite later if the relationship resumes.

Related Reading

• What "Connected" Means — the two-consent model (connection + data-sharing) that the exclusive rule sits on top of.
• Unified Timeline — where switch-away and other disconnect events surface on the advisor side.
• Seat Expires but Connection Stays — why disconnecting and ending a seat are separate actions.