dela.dzadey
Advisely Board
Advisely BoardAMA: We’re Dela Dzadey and Lana Graham, paraplanning and Xtools experts, Ask Us Anything!
Got a burning question? Join us here on Wednesday 22nd May from 2pm to 2:30pm.
For those who don’t know us, I’m Dela Dzadey, director and advice manager at TNT Group, helping bridge the efficiency gaps in advice production for advisers and paraplanners. lana.graham is the Xtools product manager and resident expert at Iress, and we’ll be hanging out here to answer any questions you have. In the meantime, you can start popping your questions below and Ask Us Anything!
Update: This AMA has now ended but please continue to pop your questions down below or in the discussion forums and make sure you tag me at dela.dzadey or lana.graham
Hi lana.graham ,
This maybe just a one-off case, but I am currently working on a client whole will be living abroad for more than 6 weeks and less than 26 weeks, after they hit age pension age. Based on our assumptions they should be eligible for Centrelink.
According to Centrelink the below is the rule for Age Pension if you leave Australia for more than 6 weeks,
Is there a possibility to capture this on Xtools+. The stop in Energy Supplement and drop to basic rate for Pension Supplement.
Thank you, looking forward to hearing from you.- lana.graham
Iress Contributor
- Go to Basic Details to add a key dates and split out the initial 6 months (and the end date for the time overseas if applicable).
- Go to Display > Cashflow > Pension Details. Ensure Hide Null Rows is set to No.
- Enter a single adjustment to offset the amount of:
- Non Taxable Pension Supplement (this is the Pension Supplement amount that exceeds the basic amount).
- Non Taxable Energy Supplement.
See an example below:
I hope this answers your question sufficiently.
Please let us know how you go.
Kind regards,
Lana Graham - rainier.reyes
Advisely Team
Thanks for your question Asini.Pathirage69456 and I'm sure lana.graham will be happy to respond.
For future questions, please feel free to start a new thread in the forums here so that this valuable info isn't lost in an old AMA thread like this!
Hi lana.graham ,
Can I please know how we can model a negatively geared investment property to see the effect on tax on Xtools+.
anthony.derriscottIress Team
I can jump in here and thanks for your question!
Within Xtools+ you navigate to:
- Input > Individual > Assets > Property and add the property and enter the relevant details in the 3 tabs (Property Details & Acquisition / Growth, Rent and Expenses / Property Disposal).
- Then navigate to Input > Individual > Liabilities > Loan Details and add the loan, ensuring you enter the loan details in the other pages too, eg. Rates and Fees / Repayments / Drawdowns / Associate.
- Within the Display pages, you will then be able to view the cashflow and tax projections.
More details on entering property information can be found in the following Iress Community article: CALM Xtools+ Property 'Remodelling'
I hope this helps!
Thanks Anthony,
So I have added screenshots below, I dont see the tax deduction on the loss coming through.
Hi lana.graham , i have a question for company projections in xtools +. What is the best way to show these? from company financials. Is there any tutorial how we go about it?
- anthony.derriscott
Hi deepika.deepika ,
You can set up a Company in Xtools+ by:
- going to Input > Basic Details and the Entities section, where you can model up to 3 Company entities.
- For each Company entity you will need to navigate to the Input > Company screens to enter the company details (if you have access to Iress Learning Centre then see pages 64 to 67 of this guide).
- With the Company set up you can then complete your modelling as required.
- To view projected information, simply navigate to the Display > Company screens eg. Consolidated or Taxation etc. (see pages 104 to 108 of the guide). Each of these screens allow you to download a PDF version of the information you are seeing on screen through the PDF button that is in the top right of the screen.
Should you need to have any of the information on screen formatted in a certain way or into a report, then you would need to create an Xmerge document (a coded document) that could then extract whichever of the projected fields you wish, to create the document as you require.
If you have access to the Iress Learning Centre, then this eLearning course will take you through how to model a Company entity using Xtools+, and this coding guide gives an introduction to using Xmerge coding.
- rainier.reyes
Thanks for your question deepika.deepika !
I worry your post might not be easily visible to the rest of the community as this is an old AMA thread. Would you mind posting it again as a new thread here?
All you need to press is 'Start a Discussion' at the top of the page. Let me know if you need assistance!
- lana.graham
Hi JA ,
At the moment the Deficit settings for pensions can only be set in one stage, so I'd model it using the Expend payment option for the pensions.
- For the first 10 years, set the client's payment to expend and the partner's payment to minimum.
- After 10 years, set both the client and partner payments to expend.
Here is an example of the partner inputs below - however I set it to change after 5 years (when there is a pension balance > $0).
If I wish to establish a minimum pension payment for a client, with the deficit cash flow initially being allocated solely to him for the first 10 years, after the10 years, all Deficit cashflow will be allocated to him and his partner pension payments 50% each. how to do it on projection cashflow?
sorry, I am talking about the pension payments from Account Based Pensions, not age pension for Deficit cashflow allocation
- lana.graham
dela.dzadey in my paraplanner days, I always found it a challenge to reduce the time it took me to write an SOA as I was always tempted to go into too much detail! What are the low value areas you see paraplanners spending too much time on?
- dela.dzadey
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😀
Cashflow deficits - will there be functionality to draw cashflow deficits from an investment bond? Perhaps like we can do with super, being after preservation age or tax free age, with the bond being able to elect to draw before or after the 10 year withdrawal period.
Small thing, however, when we have pension tables come through into the advice document, it includes the ICR for each fund. Is it possible to have this come through for super accounts?
- lana.graham
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 will keep an eye out on future changes to cashflow relating to bonds. Hopefully it is something that can be brought in as I do use a lot of bonds.
For the ICR's, I enter these in XTools+ so when comparing super / pension projections, it will show a difference from current to proposed even if the risk profiles and contributions remain the same. When exporting the tables into Word, the pension tables show the ICR entered into XTools+ however the super tables don't.
Is there an efficient way to allocate personal deficit cashflow to be drawn from a related company in Xtools?
- lana.graham
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.- See tomm ’s question above. You will need to duplicate tabs so you can easily switch between screens.
- Keep the Cashflow Consolidated or Cashflow Summary screen open so you can see the Net Cashflow.
- Duplicate the tab and navigate to Display > Company > Assets Details
- enter withdrawals to meet your Cashflow shortfall.
- Duplicate the tab and navigate to Display > Company Dividends
- enter Other Cash Dividend amounts to equal the NPAT amount.
- Now go back to your Cashflow Consolidated/Summary tab and refresh to see the dividend come through.
- 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.
- alex.burke
dela.dzadey in your latest piece, you talked about the increasing demand paraplanning services and how external paraplanners have "never been busier". What would you say is the primary contributing factor here? Is it just the increasing complexity of the advice proposition? Or are planners leaning more on paraplanning support so as to scale up their operations? Or both/neither?
- dela.dzadey
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!
I'd like to know how to customise the return on an investment profile selected for a superannuation account in an Xtools scenario. I know it's possible for non-super assets but can this option be applied to super accounts only?
- lana.graham
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:
- 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.
- Did you know you can adjust all of the investment returns in a single place under Investment Returns? See below:
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