Planit:5.1 Release Notes
From Planipedia
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PlanPlus is pleased to announce the release of version 5.1. The new features, along with the fixes and updates are outlined in this document.
New Features and Enhancements
TFSA
Within version 5.1 we have incorporated the TFSA account type and the tax treatment is correct in the long term planning. There is also some new fields added to support TFSA’s:
- Personal Information screen: Under the Planning Assumptions section, there is a field to enter any unused TFSA room for both the client and spouse
- Auto Model Screen: There is a new checkbox to optimize contributions to the TFSA. Turning on this flag ensures that you are always using any unused contribution room. This field recognizes contributions and withdrawals to the TFSA over the client’s lifetime. This unique approach allows you to show that not all contributions to the TFSA account are new savings, but rather clients repositioning other open capital into the TFSA. For example for a retired client, they are no longer doing any new savings, but frequently will be moving money into their TFSA account from their accumulated capital in their normal non-registered accounts. This optimization feature is a unique approach to the TFSA that automates the process for you. In other words you won’t have to worry about figuring out when you need to move money into the TFSA in your long term projections. This is all done for you.
- If your client has already accumulated money in their TFSA accounts (as identified on the Assets and Liabilities screen) the Optimization option will automatically turned on and cannot be turned off.
Planipedia
We are very pleased to announce that PlanPlus is sponsoring a new community wiki site called Planipedia. This information resource will function similarly to Wikipedia. Planipedia is a collection of published and referenced information relating to financial planning. Financial planners anywhere in the world can search, add and edit various articles and documents and contribute to building a consolidated and reputable source of information. Over time Planipedia will also become the main source for all training materials within PlanPlus Planit.
With the 5.1 release, when you click on “Help” while on any screen, you’ll l be brought into Planipedia and be presented with the help available for that component of the software. For this launch we have also incorporated all of our user guides, FAQ’s and Elearning modules so you’ll be able to do comprehensive searches to find information across all of these areas. You’ll also still be able to access these training components within PlanPlus Planit in the Training Centre since our transition to Planipedia will be gradual. In future releases we will expand the “Help” facility to allow you to click on screen text to be provided with help that that is context sensitive and very specific to the field you are requested help on.
To become a contributor to Planipedia, we encourage you to join the Planipedia community and take advantage of this knowledge sharing community. To access you can go to www.planipedia.org or just click on “Help” in PlanPlus Planit and you’ll get a taste of this powerful new feature!
Naming Convention
If you have clients from jurisdictions like China where names are presented with the family name first and the given name last, you now have the ability to choose how the client’s name appears in the header of the site and in all of the client documents.
A new checkbox under the client and spouse on the Personal Information screen lets you identify if you with to switch to this naming convention. This feature is only turned on or jurisdictions where this is a common practice.
Index Rate on Salary
With today’s economic environment, it’s not uncommon for client’s to experience salary freezes or to see annual salary increases that are less than the overall inflation assumption you are using for your client. To accommodate this, some users have requested the ability to edit the inflation rate on client salaries.
In previous versions we always used the default inflation rate from the Personal Information screen to inflate the salary. In version 5.1 you now have the ability to change the inflation rate on the salary. This can be done on the Pension and other Revenues screen by simply clicking edit beside the Salary and changing the inflation rate to 0% or some other rate that is less than or greater than the default.
When you make this change it will also impact the client’s “Current Lifestyle”. If a client’s salary is expected to index at a lower rate than the default inflation rate you’ve used for the case, then it makes sense that their lifestyle will also increase at a lower rate, since clients generally tend to live within their means.
Let’s consider an example. You have a client with an income of $50,000 and the spouse also has an income of $50,000. If you use an inflation rate of 0% for the client and 3% for the spouse, then the current lifestyle index rate will be proportionate to the index rate on the two salaries. In this case, the lifestyle would index at 1.5% (3% x 50% + 0% x 50%).
This approach recognizes that in such a situation, clients will not continue to spend at ever increasing rates if their overall income has not kept pace with inflation. Their cash flow will adjust to recognize the more slowly increasing income and expenses will maintain a consistent relationship with the family income.
RRIF Withdrawal
We have changed the way the system identifies RRIF withdrawals. In previous versions, in the long term projection we did withdrawals from the registered capital based on the “Use as Required” amount or the “Minimum” or whichever is greater. When the minimum was calculated, it was based on the age of the client for the client’s registered withdrawals and the age of the spouse for the spouses registered withdrawals. In version 5.1, we have changed this approach and will use the age of the younger spouse when calculating the minimum withdrawal each year. For example, if the client is 71 and the spouse is 65, the client will still have to start doing minimum withdrawals when they are 71, but the withdrawal amount will now be based on the minimum withdrawal for a 65 year old. That means that instead of a withdrawal of 7.38%, the client would be required to do a withdrawal of just 4.00%. A big difference! This will allow registered capital to remain sheltered longer in situations where there is a significant difference in the client and spouse’s ages.
Retirement Calculator – Surplus Cash Flow Reinvestment
The Retirement Calculator now automatically will reinvest surpluses 50/50 into the Client and Spouses open accounts. Previously it would reinvest into the first account. Now it will put the money into all the open accounts, prorating by capital. For Example, if there were 3 accounts valued at $5,000, $10,000 and $15,000, and there was a surplus of $1,000, each account would receive: $167, $333 and $500 respectively. We also have ensured that any surplus capital identified each year is not put into any TFSA accounts, thereby exceeding TFSA room available.
Investment Policy Process Flow Change
We’ve made the “Security Selection” screen part of the Investment Policy Process Flow. Previously it was optional to go to this screen from the IPS Process Flow. You still can elect to keep your IPS strategic by just proceeding past the Security Selection screen without doing any security selection.
Automated Liability Pay Down on Death
You can identify situations when you want a liability to be paid off on death. This can be on the client’s death, the spouse’s death, either death or no disposition on death.
When you select an option for the loan to be paid off, the appropriate records will be generated on the “Objectives” screen.
Fund Fact Sheet
We are now introducing the ability to produce a Fund Fact Sheet for mutual fund products in deployments that are using Morningstar data. The Fact Sheet will open as a pop-up window via a link from several locations within PlanPlus Planit.
The link is located under:
- Preferred Portfolios
- Detail Assets Screen
- Product Selection Engine
- Favourite Lists
- Security Selection
As can be seen from the sample to the right, we capture key information on each fund including:
1. MER 2. Investment Objective 3. Asset Allocation 4. Geographic Allocation 5. Sector Weightings 6. Top 10 Holdings
Our longer term intention with the fund fact sheet will be to provide historical performance information on the fund as well as comparisons against appropriate benchmarks.
Business Planning
We are introducing some new features relative to how PlanPlus Planit handles business holdings. First we are introducing several new Business/Other Regulatory Account Types as seen to the right. When adding a Business/Other account, you’ll be able to define the appropriate type by using these new options.
When you add a Business/Other account type you will be able to identify the disposition strategy for the holding and your assumptions will then generate the appropriate records automatically on the Pensions and Other Revenues screen for the disposition.
The Disposition Strategy assumptions can be seen to the right and include the following data fields:
- Target date for disposition of the asset (when will it be sold).
- Payout period (typically 1 year).
- A growth rate assumption on the asset between now and disposition date.
- A growth assumption you want to make for dispositions that take place over several years.
- Capital Gains Exemption available to offset taxes on the disposition of the asset.
- You’ll identify the marginal tax rate that would apply to any taxable gains. This is entered so the report you generate can illustrate the taxes payable on the year by year projection. Note however that in the long term life goals analysis, the disposition proceeds will be taxed based on the owners overall taxable income in the year of disposition.
- To assist with the auto model process, you can identify how the revenue stream will be impacted by a delay in the client’s retirement date. This is pertinent when the sale of the business is tied to the client’s retirement target date.
- Finally you can define how the disposition strategy will be impacted by the client’s death or disability. You can retain the strategy as it is, change the strategy to “Sell Immediately” or even totally ignore the disposition on the death or disability of the client.
Once you have finished your entries, you can click on the “View Report” button and view a report that shows the year by year disposition projection.
The convenience of this process is that all the necessary records are created for you in the Pensions and Other Revenues screen to recognize the disposition of the asset, including the appropriate tax inclusion rate.
To the right is an example for ABC Manufacturing. The disposition record in the Retirement scenario shows the asset is disposed of in 2018 for a value of $2.6 million. However the two records created for Death and disability show disposition in 2009 at the current value of $2,000,000. For each disposition scenario the appropriate taxable percentage is determined.
Croesus Client Search
For deployments where Croesus integration is available, you now will be able to search the Croesus POP API to find clients and import them into PlanPlus Planit. This will streamline the process of bringing new clients into the system and updating client account balances. This feature must be set up on your account.
Event Log Browser Features
Retirement, education and other goal calculator events have now been added to the Event log browser. An event is logged whenever a PDF report is generated. You now can perform logs on which reports are being generated. This is available at both the Advisor level and an Administration level.
Fixes and Updates
Child / Charity Beneficiaries not moved to Will Analysis - Ticket 339
In earlier versions of the software, when you set the beneficiary of an account in the Assets and Liabilities screen to a Child or Charity, the account proceeds were directed to the "Other" beneficiary in the Will Analysis. This is now fixed in version 5.1.
Disability Calculator Chinese Language Issues – Ticket 521
We cleaned up the Simplified Chinese in the Disability calculator report where there was some English content in the report.
Importing Clients with TFSA accounts failed – Tickets 679 and 749
When you tried to import a client from a 910 or Dataphile which contained a TFSA account, the upload failed and an error message was given. This is l corrected and the TFSA accounts now import without error.
Update to the Average and Marginal Tax Rate Suggestions link – Ticket 716
Within the Goal Calculators there is a suggestions link which shows the average and marginal tax rate suggestions; these have been updated with the 2009 rates.
Retirement, Education and Other Goals Analysis Consolidated Report Update – Ticket 769
The wording on the Consolidated report which is generated from the Goal Calculator has been corrected. Within the shortfall column of the Summary Analysis section, the formula is given as "A-F". There is no “F“column in the table. It should have read "A-D".
Typo on Reliability Forecast – Ticket 801
There was a typo in the Reliability Forecast report. The section was as follows: "Based on the combination of your expected investment return and the likelihood of your demise, this chart and graph show you the overall reliability of the strategy we have generated in achieving you financial goals." This has been corrected to say: "your financial goals".
Tax Rate Not Displayed in the Retirement Goal Reports – Ticket 816
On the Introduction page of the Retirement Goal Needs Analysis reports, the tax rate is not shown. This version corrects this and shows the correct tax rate.
Asset Owned by Dependent Not Handled Correctly on the A & L screen – Ticket 829
When you set the ownership on any non-RESP asset to 100% or even partially dependent owned the software was incorrectly including this amount on the Asset Allocation screen. This has now been fixed. ( The underlying assumption it that we don’t want to include dependent owned capital that is not earmarked for education, in the long term projections, since dependents are typically using these funds for their own expenditures and the amounts will not be used for client and spouse financial objectives).
Dataphile Information Not Being Replaced by New Uploads – Ticket 875
There was an issue with the Dataphile import, where some older assets remained in the client’s accounts after an upload, even though they were changed within Dataphile. This is now fixed.
Product Master Description Updates
We are re-importing all Morningstar Fund universe data that will correct inconsistent capitalization in product descriptions to match how it is entered in Morningstar data. For example, a product that was named “Agf Canadian Balanced” will properly be capitalized to say “AGF Canadian Balanced”. This will improve many of the reports in the software that reference products from the Product Master. Previously we received all Morningstar data in full Upper Case and we programmatically adjusted capitalization to the first letter of each word. We’ve been able to fix this now because the source of our data feeds is better.
Corporate and Administration Features
Regionalized Favourites List
You now have the ability to create a regionalized favourite list which will only be seen by the region of choice. This will allow corporate administrators to create a list for a certain region and it will only be accessed by advisors belonging to that region.
Regionalized Product Master
Products can now be set at the “regional” level so that they are only searchable to advisors within a specific region. This is to support proprietary products unique to a region and to allow integration to multiple back office system within a single deployment.
Email Notification
This new feature allows advisors to notify others when a document has been generated and is ready for review by this party.
Within the “Your Working Documents” screen there is a button which to send an email notification to other parties when a document is ready for review. Your site administrator will need to have this set up for your regions or branch. The box will not appear when there are no email addresses set up for the region and branch of the logged in advisor.
Event Log Browser - Error Ticket 580
When trying to run a log within the Event Log Browser as a security administrator you would originally receive an error message. This is corrected and security administrators can now run logs.
Changing User ID Resulted an Error / Reallocating Clients to Another Advisor – Ticket 588
There are two issues for ticket 588 and both of these are fixed within this new version.
1. After creating a new ID and then going to another ID to change the User ID, you would receive an error stating that it failed.
2. If you go and delete a user from the system and when asked if you want to reallocate the clients to another advisor and you say yes, it deleted the user but did not transfer the clients to the other advisor. The clients were still in the database but just not allocated to another advisor.
