27th March AMA: I'm Lana Graham, Xtools+ expert and product manager. Ask Me Anything!

I'll note this as feedback joshua.heath 

Hi , 

Please check out these guides on Iress Community - they will cover the Mortgage Payments part: 

If you want to model some Fringe Benefits Packaging, start HERE.

Salary Packaging Mortgage Benefits for Exempt Employees (with Family Assistance)

For the Entertainment component, reduce the taxable salary/ increase tax free benefits by that amount and add a Post Tax Entertainment expense. 

For the Novated Lease, see my quick & dirty guide below in reply to the question from eliana.gonzalez 

Oh wow ashleigh.fox  that's allot of trusts! That's not a feature we will be adding to Xtools+ any time soon. I would consider whether any of the trusts could be modelled in a simpler way. Can you enter any of them as a financial asset, owned by one of the other entities? 

You will need to share a few more details for further help on this. Feel free to use Xtools Connect for this, considering that its quite an advanced strategy to model. 

More details here: 
XTOOLS Connect - a new way to collaborate with the Xtools team! (Australia)  

Hi again dela.dzadey 👋, 

It sounds like your client's husband was over 60 when he passed away, so the pension payments and withdrawals are tax free. 

To simulate this, enter the pension with 100% tax free component.

Hi eliana.gonzalez , 

Such an innocent looking question, yet oh so deadly and detailed! 

Yes its about time we wrote a guide on this. I do love a complex model, so I'm going to attempt a quick and dirty guide for you below. 

I don’t know about Remserv, but I assume it would be similar to this example have from sg fleet. I’ve highlighted all the important details below.
 

Quick outline of steps:

1. Enter client salary of $89,000, however note that for the car lease scenario, some will be pretax, ie:
1. Model $257.50 pf as tax free income, ie $6,695 pa
2. Model the rest as taxable income, ie  $82,305 pa
3. There’s no need to model a fringe benefit as the post tax contribution offsets the FBT obligation.
4. You would need to end this after 5 years and then model it without the pre tax income.
5. Don’t forget to adjust your super guarantee to include the pre tax income.
2. Enter Lifestyle Asset/Car purchase $47,000
3. For Financing enter:
1. New 60 month loan for $42,728, interest rate 8.62%, repayments $718.50 pm ($8,622 pa). 
1. Remember there will be a residual. Go to the display page for the loan and enter a lump sum repayment of $13,221 at the end of the 5 years.
2. The upfront GST saving of $4,272. Enter this as a once-off tax free income at the start of the lease.
4. Now you need to model the other costs. They total $619.04 per fortnight ($16,095 per annum). We’ve already modelled the lease repayments, so now we just model the other Vehicle costs, which will be $16,095 - $8,622). So enter Post Tax Vehicle expenses of $7,473 pa. 

Please give that a whirl and come back to me with any questions - we may need to fix up a detail or 2.

Hi shanae.gardam ,
Some product providers have special investment options that structure the income for tax effectiveness in the bond environment. Eg income losses can offset gains year to year. The broad return assumptions set in your site won't line up with those products as they are more generic/diversified.

It might help to adjust:

• the returns - use the Custom option and adjust income, growth and franking
• the taxable % of growth.

Our team would also love to know if in future, multiple offset/loan accounts are able to be used?

Hi ashleigh.fox , 

Thanks for this question - there was another similar question from bridget.schilg9 below. Short answer is Yes 🙂 . For the detail, please see the other answer below.

Hi alison.isherwood ,

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. 

1. For the property being sold,set the Linked Asset on Disposal to Cash. Also, model the purchase of the second property in the same period.

2. Now do a once-off repayment of the Liability in the same period the property is sold:

That will set the timing of all the transactions at start of period, so your Visualise Net Assets chart will show the loan fully repaid at the time of the property sale/liability repayment/new property purchase.

Hi alison.isherwood 
I see you are using our NZ Xtools+. I'll come back to this one next week.

Hi yonit.udis3 , 

Thanks for this question - its similar to another one I received in the last AMA. Currently you only have the option to either apply the tax free threshold or not - however just one option for non-residents (since there is no tax-free threshold). Your question highlights that we really do need to think about adding a % option for Withholding tax. Feedback noted!

Hi teresa.yardi , 

Calculating the Pension Drawdown
While we don’t have a magic button to calculate the perfect pension drawdown amount, using Visualise can make this much easier for you. As mentioned in another answer below, Visualise is a simple presentation layer for Xtools+ and helps you see the results while you are modelling. Here’s how it can work. 

First click the Visualise clicky button. If you can’t see it from your Xtools+ scenario, you will need to get in touch with your site administrator so they can make it available to you. 

You can play around with living costs and retirement ages on this screen to figure out retirement affordability. Note that it shows present value by default.

Now:

1. Select Strategies (chart icon - only available if you have an Xtools+ license)
2. Add a Retirement pension for each of your clients. 
3. Now you can adjust the pension drawdown amounts to find out the pension amount they can draw down. Note that these amounts are entered in future value.

SMSF Expend
Please see the answer I gave to bridget.schilg9 below.

WCA
We always show that row so you can use the popup window from the hyperlink. Thanks for the feedback - I’ll have a think about that.