Xplan Expert14th August AMA: We're Leah, Xplan expert, and Rob, IressNet product manager, Ask Us Anything!
If you're aiming to scale, enable client portals, or cut down on admin, reliable datafeeds aren't optional — they're essential.
But are you managing them efficiently?
For example, do you have questions on:
- What is the most efficient way to stay on top of datafeeds?
- How to set up alerts before issues snowball?
- Plans for how to get them under control when you have not given them attention?
If not, join myself and rob.borthwick here on Thursday, 14 August from 3pm to 4pm AEST.
We've helped hundreds of practices clean up and streamline their Xplan datafeeds – and we'll be live in the thread answering your questions.
Start popping in your questions below and Ask Me Anything!
💬 This AMA is text-based, so we'll answer your pre-submitted questions in the scheduled time.
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21 Replies
Hopefully I'm wrong and this functionality already exists but my understanding is that it doesn't (and it would REALLY help with ongoing datafeed management.
- Run a report which combines all datafeed reconciliation issues into a single report? Currently we have to do a run by either the adviser or the vendor, and can't do all at once.
- Either via scheduler or some other means run reconciliation reports on a regular cadence so we can identify day-to-day changes more easily.
- Have datafeed flags visible in Portfolio >Position (beta) screen
- From Reconciliation Summary Screen, the ability to right click an account to open in new tab, so we don't lose the current search screen we have.
- Perform bulk "Set to do not report" for several holdings at a time via the check boxes.
- Add additional filter options, especially considering dates e.g. Provider Balance Date (allow user to set a range), Date Reconciliation Performed (range)
- Add additional Fields to the Reconciliation summary screen (Manual Trades)
- A direct link to the Platform Summary within Iress Community for specific vendors (where available)
- There are times when you try to perform a refresh but no data is available to come through, we really need a notification message that this is the issue. e.g. some closed account, Macquarie CMA transactions more than 2 years old). Currently there is no way of knowing what is happening with your request, it acts like it works but you never get a notification.
- (I suspect this last one is a knowledge gap for me) For closed accounts, the ability to clear these holdings out if the datafeed stops prior to sending this final transaction through
leah.saundersMichael,
Some amazing questions here! Thank you for the effort, but it is not all good news (sorry)
- Datafeed reconciliation- there is no report that does this, simply due to the volumes of data.
- Currently, no, but this is in our future thinking list, so thank you for confirming that we are on the right track!
- Not at the minute, I will provide the feedback to the Portfolio Product managers to have it in their requests. Great idea!
- This is in our development list. May take a little while (sorry)
- Bulk, do not report. Leah will lodge this into the IressNet Product Feedback loop.
- Our recommendation is always that you look to reconcile each day, so this is unlikely to occur
- In the notifications we do say that the issue is likely to be manual trade or date lock. Have a read of this article it may help.
- In relation to the direct link to Platform Summary- we are already planning this!
- If you refresh the account, you should always receive a notification even if there is no data. If you can please provide all of the information to the support team and we can follow up for you.
- Closed accounts. There are very few providers that stop sending data, but look into the Stale Accounts Reports (here is your Stale Accounts Link). This will identify the accounts that have not had data sent in 90 days, and you can opt to close out the accounts.
We will let you know when your items that we have in development become available.
Hi guys, I have a couple questions:
1) We haven't set up insurance datafeeds and aren't sure how much information actually flows through here and what impact it might have on the existing policy information entered in the insurance section. Are there set fields where every datafeed will populate or is every insurer a bit different? What happens if you overwrite a field, will it just be overwritten by the datafeed overnight?
2) We are constantly lodging support tickets for incorrect cash balances on netwealth datafeeds. Its now in a place where we are told manual cash entries are required. What is going on here and why is this so difficult only for netwealth datafeeds?
- leah.saunders
Hi Michael
Thanks for your questions.
Insurance datafeeds will bring through all of the core information of a policy. E.g. Life Assured, Cover Details, Premium amounts, payment amounts etc. Where they may differ is in some of the finer details around providing details on loadings and exclusions (as examples). If you manually enter data into a field that the Life Office is providing, the datafeed will override that field the next time the datafeed is supplied for that policy. For data points not supplied by the life office, they will not be touched, so any manually entered information will remain.
Netwealth - Unfortunately Netwealth have a couple of underlying issues with their Cash Accounts that we continue to work with them to resolve. We will provide this feedback to Netwealth, and we would always recommend that you do too!
If you review the Platform Summary reports, you will see known issues for each provider.
I hope this helps!
Thanks Leah and Rob for hosting this AMA.
When doing my daily datafeed checks is there anyway I can get a holistic view of any quality issues for the datafeeds? It would save so much time if there was a known issue before checking each one individually.
- leah.saunders
Hi Willerd,
Here are a couple of ways to assess datafeed quality within Xplan. All of this is accessible through the System Datafeed menu.
First Stop- Platform Summary Report (think of this as your Global View)
The Platform Summary report in Xplan offers a high-level overview of your datafeeds. Use this report to view all of the feeds and look at which feed to review. This report shows:
- The total number of holdings provided for a specific datafeed.
- How many of these holdings reconcile on units (meaning the sum of transactions for a holding equals the provided balance).
- The overall quality percentage.
If your % reconciled holdings in your site is lower than the % reconciled holdings in IressNet, then you have some homework. I recently wrote an article on how to trouble shoot this, and you can find it here. You can find more information on this report, as well as the related Adviser Summary report, on the Iress Community.
Once you look at the summary report, you need to investigate what is happening in each datafeed. To do this you need to look at the Reconciliation report. When you get there
- Filter by the specific datafeed you want to examine.
- Set the Units Reconciled field to "false."
This will list all holdings where the units don't reconcile, allowing you to delve deeper into the discrepancies. Additional details on this report are available in the same link above.
If your data reconciliation is still not meeting expectations, follow the recommendations for Support in the trouble shooting article I pointed to before. Good luck!
Thanks for hosting this AMA, I really appreciate the opportunity to raise a few questions around adviser mappings and credential management.
As a site administrator, one of the ongoing challenges we face is managing adviser credentials for datafeeds, especially with more providers that now require credentials to be re-entered annually. Is there a central reference or cheat sheet available that outlines which providers have these requirements, and any best-practice tips for checking adviser mappings regularly? I remind advisers to diarise this to remind them, however when 12 months comes around it will sometimes get missed.
Additionally, we’re looking for a scalable way to notify advisers when their mappings are due to expire, ideally something automated that includes clear instructions on what they need to do. Is there a recommended approach within Xplan that supports this kind of workflow?
Lastly, we’ve recently encountered cases where advisers re-enter valid credentials, but the validation still fails. We've been advised that deleting and re-adding the mapping can resolve this, is this a known issue, or the expected process in these scenarios? If so, is there a guide or documentation that outlines this I can provide to advisers?
Being proactive with datafeeds is critical to maintaining the integrity of data across reports, the client portal, and other advice tools, so it's definitely an important topic for us. Keen to hear your thoughts!
Jackie- rob.borthwick
Xplan Product
Thanks for the question Jackie,
We have broken the response up to make it easier.
Credential requirements
The bad news is that, at present we do not have a central reference that identifies the requirements of each of the data providers in regards to credentials. We hear you and will investigate how we can make this easier for you.
Expiry Date Notifications and Management
Within Xplan, the expiry date for credentials is clearly displayed on the Adviser Mappings page. To ensure timely updates:
- One Month Prior to Expiry: Advisers will receive an email notification warning them of upcoming credential expiry.
- One Week Prior to Expiry: Daily notifications will be sent to advisers if credentials remain un-updated.
- Post-Expiry: Advisers will continue to receive notifications indicating their adviser mapping is invalid, and data will no longer be received.
Administrators have the option to receive these notifications on behalf of advisers as well.
We strongly recommend that all users of datafeeds enable datafeed notifications. Details on how to configure these can be found on the Iress Community ‘Configuring User Notifications for Datafeeds’ .
Jackie, in your situation, follow the above and go to the All user config option.
Addressing Incorrectly Flagged Invalid Credentials
A scenario can arise where credentials are flagged as invalid by Iress, even though they are factually correct. This typically occurs when a data provider temporarily indicates an invalid status to Iress. Iress then records this status.
To enhance performance and avoid re-checking thousands of invalid mappings, the Iress datafeed system does not automatically retry the validity of an adviser registration if it hasn't been edited.
Here is my workaround for Incorrect Invalid Flags:
- Delete and Re-enter: While effective, this is less efficient.
- Edit Comment Field (Recommended): A simpler solution is to edit the comment field (e.g., by adding a single character like a period ".") and then saving. This action signals to the datafeed service that the adviser mapping has been changed, triggering a revalidation of the mapping the following day.
Future Enhancements: Daily Credential Revalidation
If you have been reading our 2nd Half roadmap, you will see that we have been concentrating on data security. This initiative will significantly assist advisers and administrators by automatically cleaning up old and expired adviser registrations, improving overall data management. We will provide updates on its release soon! Linked to this is, is a project to enable daily revalidation of credentials!
Thanks again for your feedback last week.
Regarding the user notifications, my aim was to be able to customise the notifications so advisers/users can clearly see the steps required to update their credentials. Is this something that can be supported? Otherwise, I would like to investigate other options where I could send my own automated notifications to advisers/users with detailed instructions on what needs to be actioned. Unfortunately, I can't find a way I can perform a search to identify this to automate the email. Are you able to confirm if this is possible?
For future enhancements, it would be incredibly helpful if the credential expiry notification could include a direct link to the adviser mapping section to streamline the process.
Thanks
Jackie
- rainier.reyes
Advisely Team
Welcome everyone to this AMA thread!
Please ensure you read the instructions on the right-hand side of this page.
Submit your Xplan datafeeds questions, queries and feedback now by hitting the 'Reply' button on the post above and either leah.saunders or rob.borthwick will respond during the scheduled time.
Not sure what to ask? I highly recommend checking out two things:
- Read Leah's latest blog on why managing datafeeds are like maintaing a garden
- Check out Rob's previous datafeeds AMA for similar questions you might have
Also, check out our new best-practice series on data in the Xplan Hub for some refreshers.
If you have any issues, please don't hesitate to send me a message.
Looking forward to seeing all your questions!
- rainier.reyes
Hi everyone and welcome to today's AMA! Great to see all your questions already. To see new questions and responses as they come in, make sure you refresh the page regularly.
If you find that you're receiving too many emails during the next hour, you can adjust your email notification settings:
- Click profile in the top-right corner.
- Click 'My settings'
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You can collapse certain Q&A threads by clicking the small arrow next to a post so you can focus on the answers you want to know.
Send me a message if you need any assistance!
Thank you for the opportunity to be part of this AMA.
I have a few questions I’d appreciate being raised during the session:
- Adviser ID Remapping
When an adviser ID becomes invalid, we currently remap it in our system to prevent the risk of data leakage.- Is this process still necessary, considering data may remain in the Iressnet datafeed for a period of time?
- Is there a more effective way to manage this risk?
- Insurance Provider Datafeeds
- Could you confirm which insurance providers currently supply datafeeds?
- How frequently are these feeds updated?
- Future Datafeed Plans
- Is there a rollout plan for adding additional providers to the datafeed?
- If so, could you share who they are?
- Are there plans to include KiwiSaver policies in future datafeeds?
- Datafeed Security Enhancements
- Are there any upcoming plans to enhance datafeed security settings?
- If so, will these enhancements be enforced in a similar way to IressID?
Thanks again — I look forward to any insights that come out of the session
- rob.borthwick
Hi Elizabeth,
Thank you for your questions.
AdviserID Remapping - Fantastic question and very relevant. If you have been reading our roadmap, you will see that we have been concentrating on data security. This first part of this initiative will significantly assist advisers and administrators by automatically cleaning up old and expired adviser registrations, improving overall data management. We will provide updates on its release soon!
Insurance Provider Datafeeds - A listing of all available datafeeds can be found on the Iress Community here. This details whether the datafeed is for Insurance, Investment or other. Frequency of updates from Life Offices varies, but it is either daily or weekly.
Future Datafeed Plans - Iress is constantly working with platforms, life offices etc to establish datafeeds. The Roadmap will provide a view of projects that we currently have underway for new datafeeds. Over the years we have had discussions with a number of organisations for the provision of Kiwi Saver, but unfortunately they have not amounted to a datafeed. Our Kiwi friends can help make this different by advocating with your providers to engage on building a datafeed.
Data Security - Data Security is always close to mind when we think of datafeeds. As mentioned above, if you look at our roadmap you will see that we currently have a Data Security projects underway for datafeeds. This project focuses on data retention, accessibility to data, old & expired Adviser registrations and more. We will provide updates as the varying components of this project are released.
If you have been watching the IressNet Release Communications on Iress Community, Iress has been collaborating with data providers to integrate credentials into datafeed registrations. This is a move towards stronger authentication and security measures for accessing datafeeds
Hopefully the above helps. If you have any other questions, please let me know.
- Adviser ID Remapping
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