AMA: We’re Dela Dzadey and Lana Graham, paraplanning and Xtools experts, Ask Us Anything!

Great question tomm! 

Below is a trick I learnt from a paraplanner shortly after joining Iress. 

In Chrome, right click your mouse on the Xtools tab and select Duplicate. This will give you a second window, where you can navigate to another Xtools screen.

I use this approach while testing, to check the impact of my changes on another part of the projection.

You can use it to, for example to:
-    Cash out lump sums from the Super Display screen and
-    See the impact on Cashflow Consolidated.

Note that you should use this method on one client scenario at a time. Switching between two separate scenarios in this way can corrupt your data entry. 

Something else:

We’re mindful that calculations can slow the screens, which is why we are gradually adding the ‘Click to Update’ feature (example below at the bottom of the Surplus screen).

In the surplus screen, we have set up the screen so it only calculates when necessary, and when you “Click to Update.”

If there is a particular input that you feel is refreshing the calculations unnecessarily, could you please let us know by lodging a support request? We’ll look at adding a Click to Update. Please see this Community page for How to lodge a support request.

Hi Samyukta,

It sounds like you're referring to the auto allocation functionality. We extended it to work with Account Based Pension commencement and Downsizer contributions from the Accumulation account, in Xplan-24-4-321 (click the link to go to Iress Community and see the release notes). Its purpose is to ensure cashflows balance at commencement of these strategies, so earnings and Social Security calculations are based on the correct opening balances. 

We made some tweaks in Xplan-24-5-325, so provided you’ve balanced the cashflows at start of period, there should be no auto allocation. Click the release note link in this sentence if you want to see which transactions are now considered in the auto allocation.

Just in case you still have an imbalance, we'll be releasing an off switch soon - preview below. 

Hi stella0321,

Thanks for coming over to Advisely to ask your questions  :) 

1)    It sounds like you’d like the projection to show you the wife’s financial situation if/when her husband dies. This is not the first time we have heard this request. This would be a huge undertaking, considering the various changes to Centrelink and Tax treatment when someone transitions from Couple to Single, so its not something we can do in the near future - but we’ll keep it in mind because we can see that many users want it.

For the mean-time, you can adjust the husband’s Age Pension down to $0 from the year of his life expectancy by going to the Pension Details Display screen and entering adjustments in the row highlighted.

2)    The first step to modelling your Challenger annuity is to understand exactly which product it is. Below is an example from Challenger’s PDS of their Flexible Income product (standard death benefit).

I’ve written a guide on how to model it on this Community page.

Here’s a screen shot. In short:

• Make sure you set it as a lifetime annuity.
• Since you mentioned longest life expectancy, it sounds like the client has nominated a reversionary beneficiary, so set reversionary (highlighted blue)  to Yes.

3)    Regarding your request for a % field for Preservation components: Coincidentally, we’re just about to start a project to look at adding more standard inputs to Client Focus.  However I don’t believe it would be correct to add a % field for Preservation, since the preservation amounts are locked in as fixed dollars until age 65, at which time the balance becomes 100% unrestricted non preserved. I’m keen to hear about any other fields you’d like to see in Client Focus, to then be imported to Xtools.

Hi Maria01,

You can set a custom return for super. Note that you need to change the Investment Profile to one of the standard investment profiles instead of the Client, Partner or Joint Risk Profile. You can see the difference between Bob and Betty's Rates in the screen shot below:

A couple of other points:

1. Your licensee may have set a limit on the returns you use, so that it can’t exceed the return for the investment profile selected. In this case, if you want to maximise the return projected, you may need to select the most aggressive investment profile.
2. Did you know you can adjust all of the investment returns in a single place under Investment Returns? See below:

Thanks primrose.foster. We find that this time of year is especially hectic for our industry. Everyone is feeling the pressure and things can start to fall through the cracks. Putting in place clear and simple processes within your practice (and also individually) during the slower periods, means that there is less pressure and confusion when things are busier. I realise this doesn't help anyone now that things are busy, so if you are finding things start to fall apart, use checklists! They should be short, simple and clear for anyone who needs to use them.

Thanks Alex, great question! There are definitely some 'complex' areas of advice that we paraplanners so more frequently than advisers, so they do lean on us to have that expertise. We are however, finding that the increase in demand for paraplanning services is across all complexities and even review documents. Most advisers i speak to feel that their time is being drained by many areas that aren't client facing (administration, research, ongoing services, compliance). They want to have a trusted partner that can handle the bulk of this for them, while they can focus on seeing clients. Experienced paraplanners give the advisers confidence that strategy discussions and research of products can be done in a time efficient and compliant manner. That then frees up the adviser's time to see more clients - leading to more advice and work for the paraplanners too!

Howdy ppdyabs,

Sadly the short answer is No.  At the moment there are a number of steps you need to follow to draw cashflow from a company.

1. See tomm ’s question above. You will need to duplicate tabs so you can easily switch between screens.
2. Keep the Cashflow Consolidated or Cashflow Summary screen open so you can see the Net Cashflow.
3. Duplicate the tab and navigate to Display > Company > Assets Details
   1. enter withdrawals to meet your Cashflow shortfall.
4. Duplicate the tab and navigate to Display > Company Dividends
   1. enter Other Cash Dividend amounts to equal the NPAT amount.
5. Now go back to your Cashflow Consolidated/Summary tab and refresh to see the dividend come through.
6. Go back to the Company Assets tab and repeat the steps to cover the cashflow in each period.

I acknowledge that this is by no means efficient. I’m keeping a record of this so we can look at making it easier.

Hi sarah.schultz,

I had a feeling users would ask to draw a deficit from investment bonds! Unfortunately we had to draw the line somewhere and  move onto other important work. We’ll be doing some work to improve Asset, Liability and Cashflow modelling later this year and into 2025 and Investment Bonds will be high on the list when we get to improving Cashflow. We’ll keep the age and 10 year options in mind.

Regarding the ICR/Pension tables. Is the ICR information for Super being drawn from Xtools+ or Wealthsolver? I think this may be something for our Wealthsolver team.

I love this question lana.graham

We work across several different SoA wizards and templates, and we find the wizards with sections that dont seem to feed into anything in the plan (and templates that don't run in logical order) can be very time consuming to work on. 

The final area that eats away at our time is flowcharts! We are still looking and open to any suggestions for a simple and quick flowchart tool😀