Join me here on Thursday 13th November from 3pm to 4pm to find out!

Whether it’s about maintaining client data integrity, automating workflows and client comms, or uncovering Xplan’s hidden gems – start popping in your questions below and Ask Me Anything!

❗️Update: This AMA has now ended but please continue to pop your questions in the discussion forums and make sure you tag me at @"jessica.lamb" 

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As any executive chef knows, earning a Michelin star is one thing; keeping it is the real challenge.

A five-star restaurant doesn't become the best and then stop. It retains its star by relentlessly pursuing perfection. It adapts. It refines. It evolves. It introduces a seasonal menu.

In your Xplan practice, this is the art of continuous improvement. It’s not a one-off project but an essential, ongoing routine. This is how you ensure your practice is not just good for a day, but exceptional, every day.

Reviewing your suppliers: the datafeed freshness check

A chef’s signature dish is only as good as the ingredients they receive that morning. If the produce is wilted or the fish isn't fresh, the final plate is compromised, no matter how skilled the chef.

In your Xplan kitchen, your datafeeds are your daily produce delivery. They are the raw ingredients for every client portfolio, every review and every projection.

Datafeeds are not "set and forget." They require a daily "freshness check." This means:

• Daily reconciliation: Assign a team member to check the datafeed mappings every morning. Are there any failures? Are there unmapped accounts? For more information refer to this webinar.
  
• Supplier audit: On a monthly or quarterly basis, review your "suppliers." Are the feeds for a specific platform consistently causing errors? It may be time to speak to that supplier or review your internal processes for how new accounts are linked.
  
• Spot checks: Randomly select a few clients. Does the balance in Xplan match the platform statement? Catching a small mapping error early prevents a significant data-entry "food poisoning" incident later.

Just as a chef inspects every delivery, you must inspect your data. Clean, reliable data is the foundation of client trust.

Updating the menu: your template review cycle

Imagine returning to a fine-dining restaurant a year later, only to find the exact same menu, right down to the garnish. It feels dated. Stale.

Your templates – for advice documents, workflows, emails, and file notes – are your practice's "menu." They are the tangible expression of your service.

A static menu leads to a stale experience. Implement a regular "menu review" cycle: 

• Advice templates (the à la carte menu): Review these bi-annually or whenever compliance guidelines change. Ask: Does this still look and feel like our brand? Is the language clear? Are we incorporating the latest compliance text?
  
• Workflow templates (the mise en place): Review these quarterly. As your team and tools evolve, so should your processes. Can a new Xplan feature automate a step? Is there a bottleneck where "plates" are piling up? The Workflow Starter Kit highlights some automations that you may want to consider.
  
• Email & note templates (the service script): These are easy to forget but are used daily. Do they still sound professional? Are the links correct? A small tweak here can save your team hours and ensure every client communication is polished. To ensure your content is presented with five-star polish, check out these helpful Email Design Tips.

Listening to your diners: the feedback loop

A great chef doesn't just stay in the kitchen – they listen. They listen to the "diners" (your clients) and, just as importantly, they listen to the "waitstaff" (your advisers and support team) who are on the front line.

Your team knows which "dishes" are a hit and which are being sent back to the kitchen.

Create formal channels for feedback. Here’s how:

• Internal feedback: Your Xplan Champion should own this. Create a simple way for the team to suggest improvements (e.g., a shared document, a dedicated email).
  
  When your team says a workflow step is clunky or a report is confusing, listen. They are your first and best line of quality control.
  
• Client feedback: Use the reporting tools to spot trends. Are clients consistently stalled at one step in the process? Are review meetings being missed? This is your "diner" telling you something is wrong with the service, even if they don't say it aloud.

Planning for the next season: looking ahead

The best chefs are already planning their winter menu in the middle of summer. They are looking at new agricultural techniques, new kitchen technology, and emerging food trends.

As the "executive chef" of your Xplan site, you must also be looking ahead.

Make "looking ahead" a part of your job by:

• Reading the release notes: This is your "trade journal." Iress is constantly releasing new features and enhancements. Subscribe to the Iress Community and Release Notes. Are you using the latest "smart oven," or are you still trying to cook over an open fire?
  
• Scheduling innovation: Block out time – perhaps one afternoon a month – to only work on improving the site. Test that new feature. Build that new workflow. This is your "test kitchen" time.
  
• Train your team: When you do update the "menu" or get a new piece of "equipment," train your team. The most powerful tool is useless if the team doesn't know how to use it.

The standing ovation

Now, you know the final secret: it never stops.

This commitment to continuous improvement is what separates the good from the great. It’s the standing ovation you earn from your clients, who feel the quality and confidence in every interaction.

Your Xplan site is your kitchen. Keep refining your recipes, keep training your brigade and keep tasting every dish.

Bon appétit.

I don't know about you, but I enjoy the drama of watching an episode of Hells Kitchen just to see that infamous celebrity chef lose his cool and throw a plate full of food at his up-and-coming potential protégés. 

But let's be real here: drama can stay where it belongs, which is on the TV and not in Xplan. So why let Xplan “data drama” bog us down? 

All too many times, we’ve seen and heard the difficulties you can face when it comes to accessing and reading data within Xplan. Things like data being in a messy format, tables containing too much useless detail and not enough substance and reports that are just full of numbers that, after a while, just look like hieroglyphics.

In this article, we will look at using XBI and reporting like a head chef at the pass, where you need to inspect every "plate" of data before it goes out to ensure quality, manage costs and monitor feedback.

Look, feel and taste

These three key rules – look, feel and taste – can also apply to Xplan reporting. Let’s take a look at the fundamentals of these rules.

1: Does it look appetising? 

Nobody likes a messy plate of food. Similarly, with Xplan Business Intelligence, you need to ensure that you have a clean dashboard – one that is visually appealing and doesn't take long to understand what is presented. 

Having too much all thrown together on one screen can also be a nightmare to navigate, so keep it simple, keep it clean, but most importantly keep it relevant.

2: Feel 

We’re not talking about whether the data is hot or cold, but whether the data is tangible. Is it useful? Or are you gathering data just for the sake of it?

Being able to identify what is crucial data versus what is non-crucial data to report on is important when planning out your dashboards and reports.

3: Taste 

Easily digestible data is key. Can it be used elsewhere with other data? Does the result contain all the information that you are expecting? And finally, is the report easy for management to gain knowledge at a glance and answer questions that they have?

Food for thought

Whether you’re building a new set of reporting tools or reviewing what you currently have, you need to ensure that what you have (or end up with) is going to satisfy the hunger for information without leaving you overly stuffed and in a data food coma. 

“How do I do this?” you ask. Let's take a step back and analyse this one step at a time.

What are your business’s greatest strengths and weaknesses? List out where you excel and what you know needs improvement. Concentrate on what your business prides itself on and what services you know are your forte. 

For example, are you best known for your excellent knowledge in aged care requirements for high net worth couples and individuals?

On the flip side, are you not very admin-focused when it comes to renewing your clients’ ongoing service agreements? And do you sometimes find review dates can lapse before you have a chance to contact your clients to book an appointment?

Not only do you need to be able to identify these, but you also need to be able to pinpoint how this specific data is recorded against your clients.

Finally, what is it that you want to know about these clients? Could it be a specific set of fields that you need to see, or do you want to see how valuable these clients are? (For example, how much FUM do they have or what is the level of adviser fees they pay per annum?)

You might not just want to know their value but also how much time it takes to service them. This could be shown in activity such as the number of contacts you make with them or from how much follow-up work you and your staff do for them.

Once you are clear on all of the above, you can now think about how you would like to see the data and how you’d like it to work.

From kitchen to table

There are several reporting tools in Xplan that will help you serve up that beautifully-crafted plate of data.

For something simple and quick, Xplan management reports are a set of standard reports that can be run against a list of clients and will instantly provide you with a specific range of data in either a PDF or CSV file. They provide a point-in-time reference and are generally short and quick to merge reports.

For more detailed information, Xport reporting can provide you with a selection of reports that group together similar pieces of information and can be run against a specific list of clients (whether based on adviser, group or a search criteria). Xport reports can provide either a point-in-time data set or data over a period of time.

These two reporting options can be executed manually or scheduled to run at a specific time  – such as overnight, so as to not slow down your site.

Scheduler is an efficiency tool that allows you to run reports automatically at the frequency that works for you. It will find entities based on saved search criteria and execute a variety of activities including generating Xport or management reports, running Xmerge reports, and sending emails - all automatically based on the criteria or steps you add in.

Alerts are exception-based rules to be automatically run across the database, actively monitoring data and alerting when entities fail criteria. Alert rules can be used to examine client, user, supplier, professional adviser and referrer entities. Alerts can also be used within Wizards against the Portfolio Modelling Xplan interface element for compliance checks

You may also like to explore Portfolio Reporting, building custom portfolio reports using Report Builder, custom Xmerge Reports and dedicated Datafeed Reporting options.

The aperitif before the meal

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading the journey so far from takeaway crew member to becoming a culinary MasterChef. 

Our next and final article in this series will focus on setting routines to continuously improve your Xplan site. Perfecting that service before it's delivered to your client is like perfecting the dish before it is served. 

So get ready for the final order dash, and don't forget to review the wrap-up of the series coming soon. Until the kitchen closes, bon appetit.

It’s Saturday night. You try out the hottest new dumpling restaurant on King St, and it’s a revelation. 

The pan-fried pork buns are simultaneously crispy and juicy, the xiao long baos are bursting with mouth-watering umami, and the service (for a dumpling joint at least) is impeccable – you actually get everything you ordered. You can’t wait to go back, and have been singing praises to all your followers on TikTok.

Fast forward to your second visit a week later, and it’s … not the same. It’s stressfully crowded – your TikTok vid really got out there – and they had to quickly cobble together a table out of corflute and milk crates right outside the toilets just to squeeze you in. 

The pan-fried pork buns are now simultaneously mealy and dry, and the xiao long baos are mouth-scaldingly bland and uninspired. And the service - well, you’d be happy if you got out of there in one piece. It’s a letdown. Not a huge one, but enough to leave a bad taste in your mouth (pun intended).

Would you go back again? Probably not.

As consumers, we all expect consistency, regardless of whether you’re running a dumpling joint or an advice practice. It doesn’t matter how good a first impression you make; a perceived drop in standard is all it takes to spoil all that hard-earned goodwill.

When it comes to ensuring a consistent and exceptional client experience in your Xplan kitchen, templates are your friend. If the mere mention of the word “template” makes you recoil with disgust, you may be harbouring a deep-rooted belief that templating equals cookie-cutter. 

Well, I can assure you that is not necessarily the case; with the right approach and good coding, you can create highly repeatable templates that also feel personalised to your client.

Merge templates and Wizards

Are you writing out your letters of engagement on Word? What about your ongoing fee renewals or fixed term agreements?

You should review all your standard letters/agreements and see if these can be coded as Xplan merge docs. If you’re new to coding, this Learning centre module is a great place to start.

For more complex documents which require additional input from the user, you may need Wizards to make it happen (check with your site administrator to see if this is allowed).

Aside from the time savings, using merge docs reduces embarrassing mistakes like leaving another client’s name in. (Ouch!)

Client Portal

If you’re not familiar with Client Portal, definitely look into it if you want to spice up your client experience. As the name suggests, it’s a branded portal where your clients can log in, securely send and receive messages (including attachments), view their financial details, and complete their fact find online – all of which feeds right into Xplan, removing the need for manual handling on your side.

The following touch points offer opportunities for you to win over your clients:

1. Issuing client logins: these email templates are your clients’ first impression of Client Portal, so make sure to give it a bit of zing! (You’ll need your site administrator’s help if you don’t run your own site.)
   
   
2. Secure message: you can use note templates for sending more standard messages to your clients, e.g. welcome message, appointment confirmations/reminders, etc.

Advice templates (SOAs, ROAs, fact find)

While this is ostensibly a merge template, the sheer complexity of advice templates (usually involving a wizard and the ability to pull modelling data from various Xplan tools) means that this deserves a special mention.

Your Xplan site may already have an advice template solution, which is great.

If not, you might be writing SOAs off a saved Word template, and manually copy-and-pasting data from Xplan modelling tools (or spreadsheets) into your template. This is obviously a very time-consuming process, and not great for client experience since it’s taking longer for you to present your advice. And the manual handling increases the likelihood of errors. 

Also, how do you ensure that any compliance updates are being included into the documents?

You have the following options:

This is typically more feasible for larger outfits (as opposed to a one-adviser practice). You can engage our projects team to scope out and build your own templates. The benefits you get from a bespoke and well-constructed wizard and template that fits your specific business processes far outweigh the initial outlay and can save you a lot of time and money in the long run. 

Be mindful that you will need to dedicate internal resources to the project during the build and testing. Maintenance of the templates going forward is a key consideration; legislation changes, code updates to accommodate new (and obsolete) features and there may be changes to strategy text. 

Unless you plan on making these updates yourself, all of these will need to be re-scoped and quoted. This is the recommended approach if you have very specific requirements.

There are a number of third party providers with their own templates and support services.

This is Iress’s off-the-shelf advice template solution which allows styling and branding to make it look like your own. While it’s not designed as a customisable template, it has everything you need in an SOA or ROA, and the process of generating an SOA is simple and intuitive.

Workflows

Think of workflows as the maître d' of your restaurant; they supervise the wait staff to ensure that everyone who walks through the doors to your fine establishment gets a fantastic welcome and has a great experience.

In the same way, workflows ensure that the right people work on the right things, at the right time, and that all of your compliance obligations are met.

Imagine you have a new prospect query come in, and you have a workflow that holds the hand of your admin staff and advisers through the whole process. It automatically sends clients personalised emails or notifications when needed. It automatically opens notes for when an adviser needs to detail a meeting. It automatically captures all the important notes, documents, scenarios and modelling relating to your advice.

Workflows can be super powerful if you leverage all the various built-in automation features; which is why you should invest the time to design and build it.

But where to start?

If you’re new to workflows, I would first brush up on tasks, threads and cases in Learning Centre. Once you’ve gotten a handle on that, make sure to fire up the Workflow Starter Kit, a great interactive learning module which helps you consolidate your learning.

Also, you can add some zest to your workflows through Scheduler, which allows you to schedule works to be done for a list of clients.

What else?

If you see it in Xplan, there’s probably a template for it – Opportunity, Case, Email, Task, Diary, Note, Campaign, you name it. Browse through our handy resources on Community and Learning Centre to make sure you’re across how to create these templates.

As you can see, there’re quite a lot of ingredients in the Xplan recipe book for you to play around with, but I hope this helps you see what’s possible when it comes to whipping up the ultimate client experience.

Now that your highly-trained team is in place, it’s time to ensure the equipment they use is perfectly calibrated. 

Precision tools can make the difference between a good dish and a great one. A perfectly-calibrated oven, a razor-sharp knife, a precise sous-vide machine – these are what allow a chef to execute a recipe flawlessly, time and time again. 

In your advice practice, your Xplan advice tools serve the same purpose. Dialing in your core equipment, approved product list (APL), model portfolios and fee scales is what ensures every financial "dish" you create is precise, consistent and of the highest quality.

Your approved product list (APL): the hand-selected ingredients

A top chef doesn't just use any ingredient; they use a curated list of approved suppliers known for their quality and reliability. Your APL is your practice's list of hand-selected ingredients. Configuring this correctly within Xplan’s tools helps your team to create portfolios built from the best "produce" available.

Insurance menu

In Risk Researcher, your APL functions like a tiered pantry system for your insurance products. 

You can establish lists at three levels: Global (the default for the whole restaurant), Group (for specific kitchen teams) and User (a chef's personal list). If a specific team doesn't have its own list, Xplan works up the hierarchy, ensuring they always use an approved set of ingredients. 

You can even mark certain products as “preferred” to highlight the star ingredients you want your team to use first. For more information, see here.

WealthSolver menu

Within WealthSolver, the APL is used to restrict which products are available and used in comparisons. 

Think of this as ensuring your kitchen only uses specific, preapproved brands for a key part of your recipe. You can control which teams see which products by managing visibility based on user groups. 

This requires specific permissions, ensuring only authorised kitchen managers can modify these crucial ingredient lists. For more information, see here.

Portfolio menu 

For your investment portfolios, the APL is your master list of pantry staples, the individual securities and funds you use daily. 

You can stock your pantry by adding products one by one, searching for them by code, or you can perform a bulk order by importing a list from a CSV file, getting your kitchen stocked with everything it needs quickly and efficiently. For more information, see here. 

Model portfolios: your signature recipes

Every great restaurant is known for its signature dishes; the ones that are so consistent and beloved that customers return for them again and again. In Xplan, your model portfolios are the secret to that consistency.

Think of a Target Set, in IPS, as the master recipe card for a specific investment portfolio.

In a kitchen, a recipe card lists the exact ingredients and their precise measurements to create a consistent dish every time. A Target Set does the same thing for your investments: it lists the specific securities (the ingredients) and their exact target percentages (the measurements).

Then WealthSolver Model Portfolios are the final, plated dishes on your comparison menu. These are the specific dishes you present to clients. Model Portfolios can be created by:

• importing from Portfolio Target Sets, or
• manually within the tool

Just as a head chef signs off on every plate, this process ensures every financial dish you serve is meeting the standards of your practice. For more information, see here.

Assumptions: the science of your cooking

Every great kitchen is built on the science of cooking: the foundational rules that ensure bread rises and sauces emulsify. Your economic and asset class assumptions are the core scientific principles of your financial kitchen. 

These are your base ingredients, like inflation rates and expected returns, that are used in all your modelling and projections. By setting these centrally in Xplan, you ensure every adviser is operating from the same set of fundamental rules. 

These assumptions must be reviewed regularly to ensure they align with your licensee’s guidelines and reflect the current environment. For more information, see here. 

Risk profiles: defining the flavour

Before a chef cooks, they need to know the customer's preference. Do they like it mild, medium, or extra spicy? Your Risk Profiles serve this purpose, defining the flavour for each client.

• Setting the spice levels: First, you must define your 'spice levels' from mild to extra spicy (e.g., Conservative to Aggressive). Each level corresponds to a specific asset allocation, so your team knows exactly what "medium spice" means in terms of ingredients.
  
  
• Questionnaire: This is the conversation with the diner. By configuring your risk profile questionnaire directly into Xplan, the system can take a client's responses and calculate their preferred flavour profile. This removes guesswork and ensures you aren't serving a fiery vindaloo to someone who ordered a mild korma.

For more information, see here. 

FUM scales and custom products

A Michelin-star chef would never guess the amount of a critical ingredient; they measure with absolute precision. Your funds under management (FUM) scales must be configured with the same exactitude. 

Setting up your FUM scales in Xplan ensures that your fee calculations are always accurate and consistent, removing ambiguity and ensuring fairness.

Similarly, sometimes a dish requires a unique ingredient not found in the regular pantry. Configuring custom products in Xplan allows you to add these bespoke elements to your financial recipes while still maintaining control and consistency within your system. For more information, see here and here.

Scenario templates in Xtools

Modern kitchens are equipped with smart tools that can execute complex cooking processes at the touch of a button. Scenario templates in Xtools function in much the same way. By creating templates for common financial modelling scenarios, you equip your team with a powerful tool to run complex projections quickly and accurately. 

This is like having a preprogrammed setting on a smart oven, it ensures the "cooking" process is efficient, reliable, and produces a perfect result every time, freeing up your team to focus on the client rather than the mechanics. For more information, see here. 

The taste of quality

The behind the scenes work of configuring your advice tools is a critical ingredient in providing a Michelin-star client experience. 

Just as a client tastes the quality of the ingredients in their meal, your clients feel the quality that comes from precisely calibrated advice tools. It manifests in the clarity of your advice documents, the consistency of their experience and the confidence they have in your service.

Don't let uncalibrated tools compromise the quality of your service. Take the time to review your advice tool configuration. Are your APLs, model portfolios and FUM scales set up to deliver the precision your clients deserve?

Want to know how the best structure their access levels? Or how often good site administrators review their assumption sets or update APLs?  Or maybe there is a system setting you've never quite worked out. This is your chance to ask the questions that matter to you most.

If it’s to do with running your practice, there’s a good chance Kenny can make Xplan more efficient for you. He's here to help!

Here are some topic areas to get you started: 

• Best hierarchy structures for Xplan?
• successful onboarding / off-boarding process examples
• Mastering user group management policies 

Join Kenny here on Thursday the 13th of November from 3pm -4pm AEDT

Start popping in your questions below and Ask Me Anything!

A five-star restaurant is only as good as its team. You can have the best ingredients and the most refined recipes, but if your team can't deliver, the experience falls flat. 

This is where you, the Xplan Site Administrator, come in. You're the head chef or the maître d'; the "master of the house" who’s responsible for ensuring the team is not only well-equipped but well-trained and empowered to deliver exceptional service.

I started my working life in a small beachside restaurant. At 18, I was fortunate enough to work for Christa, an owner who was laser-focused on providing exceptional customer service.

At the end of one shift, Christa asked me,

“Did anyone have to ask you for anything?”

I was confused. My job was literally to wait on people; they asked me for everything – for wine, their meal, the bill.

Christa’s response changed my perspective forever:

“It is not your job to wait.” she said. “It is your job to anticipate.”

I learned that exceptional customer service isn't just about delivering what's asked; it's about knowing what someone needs before they even know themselves. This principle applies directly to modern advice practices and technology. 

Mastering onboarding and offboarding

The team's journey with Xplan begins and ends with you. Onboarding a new team member doesn’t end with providing their login credentials – a well-thought-out and supportive onboarding process is critical. 

In the hospitality industry, first-year apprentices are supported with both theoretical and practical application of what it takes to become a successful chef. New users in a financial planning practice should be, too.

What does this entail?

• Access and credentials: ensuring suitable licenses and capabilities and the set up of their Iress ID is the first step. Ensure all relevant parts of their profile are completed so their details merge seamlessly into your coded templates.
• Personalising logins: Walk them through how to set their User Preferences, including time zone, email signature, calendar integration and which page to set as their default “Start Page After Login”. (We recommend the Task Hub. Help them set up role specific client and user dashboard widgets.
• Foundational training: Walk them through your Xplan site and your specific ways of working. Make sure they understand the fundamentals around logging in and navigation, client management, document management, and workflow.
• Use the Task Hub to filter, group, and conquer outstanding tasks for efficiency. This will empower your team to manage their workload rather than dread it.
• Role-specific training: This is where you train each team member for their station. The Xplan Learning Pathways in the Iress Learning Centre are a great way to ensure each team member knows the parts of the system they need to do their job:
  • Advisers: focus on client meetings, fact-finding, creating Statements of Advice and generating reports.
  • Paraplanners: focus on drafting advice documents, utilising modeling tools and working with data feeds.
  • Administrators: focus on client data management, client portal support and managing workflows.
• Integrations: Explain how to manage datafeeds and other software integrations.
  Schedule check-ins: Hold regular one-on-one meetings to answer their Xplan questions and provide feedback.

A solid onboarding process will provide your team with the foundations to shift their focus to anticipating client needs rather than simply getting the job done.

The importance of ongoing training

The world of financial advice is constantly changing, and so is Xplan. As an ever-evolving system, you need to foster a culture of continuous learning. A restaurant won’t retain its competitive advantage if it just serves up the same dishes from year to year, after all. 

You need clean, up-to-date data and well-trained users if you want your firm to successfully leverage future tech like agentic AI and meet your data-driven goals.

A great way to foster this culture is to:

• Subscribe to release notes: These notes are your early warning system for new features, bug fixes, and system enhancements. By staying ahead of the curve, you can prepare your team for changes and ensure a smooth transition.
• Disseminate updates internally: Run tailored internal training sessions or send out quick, digestible updates to your team. A five-minute rundown on a new feature can save hours of frustration later.
• Assign champions: Ask for volunteers or assign champions to specific areas of Xplan that align with their job role or interests. Ask a paraplanner to stay on top of updates to the modelling tools and share these with the team regularly.
• Shortcut your favourite menu items: Encourage the team to "Star It!" to save frequently-used screens (like Reconciliation Summary or Policy Search ) to their My Links menu , saving them valuable clicks.
  

Keep an eye out for upcoming training sessions via the Iress Learning Centre.

Leveraging your resources

You don't have to be a one-person training department. Iress provides a wealth of resources designed to help you and your team master Xplan:

• Iress Learning Centre: Your digital training ground. Think of it as your digital culinary school, offering masterclasses and recipes to help your team hone their skills quickly.
• Iress Community: Your chef's handbook. It contains not only recipes but the fundamental techniques, best practices for ingredient preparation and troubleshooting tips for common kitchen problems.
• Advisely: Your chef's table. A place to share secrets, troubleshoot a tricky recipe and learn from other masters in the field.

Ongoing training will ensure your team is continually evolving their use of Xplan, implementing new features and maximising the return on investment.

Your offboarding checklist

Equally important to setting the team up for success is a solid offboarding process. When a team member leaves, you must have a clear procedure to deactivate or archive their account to protect client data and maintain security.

First, you need to reallocate responsibilities across:

• Clients: Reassign responsibility for all clients.
• Tasks: Reassign all existing tasks, threads, cases, or opportunities. Remember, the Auto Reassign feature only works for new tasks assigned during the user's leave period.
• Templates: Reassign ownership of all templates (task, thread, case, document note, xmerge) and update any Workflow Groups where the user was the Initial Assignee.
• Schedules: Recreate and replace any schedules that they own.
• Data and groups: Update any Managed Field Content that they own, update the owner on any Group Plans, and update Case Benchmarks and benchmark sets. Update the administrator of any user groups where they are listed.

Then, you need to remove access:

• Datafeeds and mail: Remove datafeed adviser mappings and remove the user's email address.
• User profile: Apply an 'archive' or 'terminated' access level to remove all capabilities.
• IressID: Revoke their IressID Access and, as a precautionary measure, set the Expiry Date to today.
• Licences: Cancel licences. Remove the licences and ask Iress to cancel them.
• Third parties: Notify any third parties where the user has been a contact or representative of your practice, such as Iress Connect.

By investing in onboarding, continuous training and using all available resources, you’re empowering your team to operate with precision and confidence, elevating your practice from a simple take-away counter service to a genuine silver service experience.

Have we piqued your appetite yet? Now that you have had the amuse-bouche, it's time for the entree. Let's now look at how to meticulously structure user hierarchies, groups and access levels so every team member can work efficiently and flawlessly within their designated station.

Stations, everybody!

Have you ever had to work in an Xplan site that had no structure and no organisation when it came to segmenting practices and clients amongst advisers? 

Was it a constant strain pulling you away from creating a masterpiece, having to sort out why someone couldn't find a client, why another person was able to see someone else's clients and why your paraplanners were constantly using the wrong entity to model against?

If this sounds familiar, ask yourself: what seemed to be the underlying reason that all of these issues arose? Was it access, capabilities or group memberships? 

Let’s focus on hierarchies and groups. Think about hierarchies as your kitchen stations: you have the executive chef that oversees everything, then you have the sous or station chefs that run each of their own stations. Finally, you have their teams, looking after their individual dishes and orders. 

Similarly, your hierarchy should reflect the running of the business. A typical complex licensee hierarchy may look like this:

There are four layers of hierarchy in the above picture:

1. Top level: licensee
2. Second level: business
3. Third level: state
4. Bottom level: practice

Not all of the businesses use all four, but some do. Advisers and their direct staff would sit in the practice level groups/subgroups. Some administrative staff may belong to multiple practice groups, but not necessarily all of them in their state or their business. 

Having advisers only in their practice groups means that there is no crossover and/or accidental access to clients they shouldn't see.

The state-based level might represent support staff such as client services managers and paraplanners that assist all teams regularly in their state/group, although perhaps not every day.

The business-based or sub-group levels would represent head office staff that may require overview of all practices, such as the compliance team and/or group CEO or manager.

Finally, the licensee level would represent users that require access to all business and groups across the site, such as site administrators or licensee head office staff. These users may not necessarily require access to view clients, but they would require access to the individual groups and users within them to assist with any business related needs.

The easiest way to remember all of this is that if a person is added to the top level, they will see everything below it. If they’re added to the second level they will see everything below that – i.e. third and fourth levels – and so on.

A smaller, less complex business hierarchy may look much more simpler:

Advisers and their staff would be a part of the individual practices that their clients are in and all shared/head office staff would be a part of the business (licensee) group.

Here are some handy hints to remember when working with hierarchies and groups:

• Identify which groups are “parent”/“licensee” groups in the hierarchy and which groups are “practices”/“branch”
  
  
• Keep it simple: we would suggest limiting your hierarchy levels to about three. Even though you can add as many as you want, sometimes less is more.
  
  
• Visualise your hierarchy. Map it out first; it's always easier to see it drawn up.
• Think about adding a Testing group somewhere in the hierarchy so that fake clients aren't mixed up with real clients.
  
  It could be at a site administration level or even at each individual practice level, depending on who you want to access this group.
  
  
• Hierarchies are a good way of applying group specific assumption sets and themes.
  
  There may be a group of practices that all have the same assumptions to be applied; this set can be added at the hierarchy parent level and will automatically be applied to all groups beneath it, making it less of an administrative burden to add it to each individual group.
  
  
• Default settings and a global assumption set are automatically applied to the top hierarchy parent. This ensures that any group beneath that does not have a custom or specific assumption set has the default one applied.
  
  
• Food for thought: be mindful of coding templates that draw group information (such as licensee details) from hierarchy parent groups. If a user is not a member of the hierarchy group, the details will not flow through, so think about using group level fields for this. 

Do you have the right equipment to do your job?

Have you tried to fillet a steak or fish with a whisk? What about de-boning a chicken with a pastry brush? It's an impossible task! You need the right tools to do the job. It’s the same with Xplan: you need the right capabilities that reflect your role.

The best way of doing this is to create access levels that best reflect your business and the staff within.

Here are some handy tips when it comes to access levels:

• Whether your access levels reflect role type or modules/licences, you should start with a matrix to keep track of which capabilities are added to which access level.
  
  This is easy enough to do by exporting your current access levels into a CSV file and using this as your starting point to review them all.
  
  
• Understand the difference between module licences and capabilities. Ensure that you allow users the right capabilities within a module, not just the licence itself.
  
  For example, having “View Portfolio” ticked applies the licence for the portfolio module to the user, but it doesn't automatically add all the related capabilities so that the user can do their job. Further to this, a Paraplanner will need more portfolio capabilities than an administrative assistant.
  
  They will need to model recommendations and apply target sets, whereas the administrative assistant might not.
  
  
• Keep your access levels simple and don’t apply capabilities that are not required for a user to do their job as this would result in more confusion than anything.
  
  
• When updating access levels, remember to push them through to the applicable users to ensure the new capabilities are applied. In line with this, try not to manually add capabilities to individual users, as any updates to access levels being pushed out to them will override manual changes

Moving onto the main course

Have we got your tastebuds tingling now? In our next blog, we will be moving onto the main course where we focus on onboarding, offboarding, and ongoing training of your staff.

We’ve talked about mindset and what it takes to truly be an Xplan champion. But before you can start serving up five-star advice, you need to get your kitchen in order. 

In Xplan, this means building solid foundations to establish how your site operates. Without a consistent foundation, your data will be inconsistent, your team will be inefficient and your client experience will be less than ideal.

Not every advice practice is the same, so not every Xplan site should be set up the same. A little bit of planning at the start can make a huge difference to your team’s experience and, ultimately, your end client’s experience – just like ensuring your pantry is stocked with all the right ingredients.

Your pantry: configuration and personalisation

Think of your Xplan site as a well-organised pantry. Just as a pantry's setup ensures you have everything you need at your fingertips, site configuration allows you to customise the look and feel of your site, making sure your team has easy access to their most frequently used functions.

Here’s how to get your pantry in order:

• Creating a theme: Develop a unique flavour for your site that reflects your brand’s colour palette.
• Uploading logos: Ensuring all logos (Site, User Group, and Report logos) are uploaded means your brand is easily reflected in all that you do.
• Configuring defaults: Setting default site and client focus settings that align with how the majority of your team work will ensure their most used ingredients are easily accessible.
• The app title: A small tweak, but updating the browser tab title from “Xplan” to something more unique can give your Xplan site a signature dish of its own.
• Updating chart visuals: Aligning chart colours with your brand presents a cohesive image to your clients. You can even adjust chart settings, like opting for an exploding pie chart. 
• Establishing email signatures: Implementing a site-wide email signature, means every communication sent to your clients is brand-aligned and professional as well as ensuring licensee and business details, along with any compliance required text is always included.
• Quick links: These are the chef's go-to shortcuts. Include ‘mise en place’ links to external URLs that your team uses frequently, allowing them to navigate quickly and easily to external websites from directly within Xplan.

Recipes for your site's default settings

Xplan site default settings are the fundamental rules of your Xplan kitchen. They ensure everyone on your team is operating from the same recipe book, no matter what they're working on.

Here, we're talking about things like:

• Economic and asset class assumptions: These are the core ingredients used in all your modelling and projections. These should be aligned with your licensee’s assumptions on site set up and reviewed regularly.
• Risk profiles: These define the final flavour profile for each of your clients. Have you set up your ‘spice levels’ from mild to extra spicy? You can also configure your risk profile questionnaire into Xplan so the system can take the clients’ responses and calculate the end risk profile for you.
• Interface design: This is your kitchen layout. If you’ve ever renovated your kitchen at home, you’ll know about kitchen layout rules, of “the work triangle” aimed at creating efficient workflow between the sink, refrigerator, and stove.
• Design your Xplan interface with a similar focus on the optimal “work triangle” for your team. Keep your naming conventions similar to the standard so your team can benefit from the standard training resources in Iress Community and Iress Learning Centre.
• Field definitions: We advocate for using standard Xplan fields all the way. Some of these fields should be configured to align with how you work. Note, and task types and subtypes are one of these areas. Plan your types and subtypes well. You want a comprehensive, descriptive range that covers all areas of the advice process without becoming a messy 'potluck'. 
• User and client dashboard configuration: These are your 'prep stations'. Set up practical site-wide default dashboards across daily activities, workflow, and practice management so your team has access to everything they need to know at a glance.

These are the recipes for your success. These recipes should be reviewed regularly to ensure they continually meet the evolving needs of your business.

Ready to serve?

Taking the time to get your Xplan site's foundations right is an investment in your practice's five-star restaurant review. It's the difference between a chaotic kitchen and a well-oiled Michelin-star restaurant experience. 

Next week, we take you through perfecting your team's roles and stations.

Do you struggle with getting Xplan to work in your business? Does it feel like everyone in your office is doing their own thing, making it hard to tell where a client’s at or where important notes are kept?

If this sounds like you, you might be missing an “Xplan champion” in your business.

The Xplan champion is key to making sure your advice technology works for your practice. Much like the executive chef who conducts the operations of a well-oiled Michelin-star kitchen, the Xplan champion ensures that your practice’s everyday operations chugs along smoothly: everyone knows their role, the tasks they need to do and when they need to do them.

This means they have a big job ahead of them, but many hands make light work. Depending on the size of your business, the Xplan champion may delegate other team members as “owners” of certain Xplan modules – the paraplanner, for example, might own Xtools+ and WealthSolver/Risk Researcher. 

The Xplan champion can be a client services administrator, paraplanner or adviser, and their roles and interests should be aligned with the mission of facilitating an efficient and effective advice process via Xplan. 

Here are some of the core qualities we believe a successful Xplan champion should have in order to become the executive chef of your advice practice:

Curiosity

Xplan is a behemoth when it comes to functionality, and often there are many ways to skin a cat. So a great Xplan champion should always be curious about existing features and the options available to solve a particular business problem.

They should always be open to learning new features and staying on top of updates (all can be found in Iress Community). They should always be asking themselves, “Is there a better way to do this?” 

Don’t be afraid to reach out in Community or Advisely if you have a sticky problem you’re trying to solve – other users may have an answer at hand!

Influence

Influence plays an important role, too. No, I’m not talking about TikTok videos, but rather the ability to cajole the advice team into using Xplan systematically.

A process is only as good as the people using it, so the Xplan champion acts as the bridge between the leadership’s vision and the rest of the team.

This means understanding how the team uses Xplan: where are the pain points? Can we find a solution? Everyone needs to be on the same page as to how things should be done.

The sage Xplan champion understands that not everyone embraces change easily. Be patient, positive and persistent when encouraging adoption. Celebrate small wins to keep momentum.

Connector

The Xplan champion connects Xplan solutions to their specific business needs.

Key to this is understanding how different parts of Xplan interrelate:

• Do you keep seeing duplicate clients (could be a datafeed or client wizard issue)? 
• Do workflows keep getting stuck at certain stages (could be a user or automation problem)? 
• Are you seeing unreasonable income and growth projections in Xtools+ (assumptions set may need updating)?

Great Xplan champions have the ability to distill the business problem that needs solving, find the solution and roll it to the wider business. Instead of waiting for issues to come up, they anticipate pain points, look for efficiencies and encourage others to bring ideas for improvement.

This is a skill that takes a little while to cultivate, but a healthy dose of curiosity will get you there.

Have I missed anything? What other qualities should a top-tier Xplan champion possess? Let us know!

Ever wish your marketing system could think for itself? Xplan’s automation features are getting closer to that reality, and one of the most practical examples is how it handles client unsubscribes.

Here’s how you can streamline compliance and client preferences with just a few smart configurations:

Why it matters

Under Australian regulations, clients must be able to opt out of marketing communications at any time. Fortunately, XPLAN makes it easy to honour that legal requirement with automation.

How it works

Xplan uses boolean fields (true/false fields) to track a client’s subscription status. These fields can be updated automatically based on client actions, removing the need for manual intervention.

Here are the steps to set it up:

• Create your distribution lists: segment your contacts based on interest, service type or communication preferences. These lists will be the foundation for targeted outreach.
  
  
• Add an unsubscribe link to your email template: include a dynamic unsubscribe link in your marketing emails. When a client clicks it, their bool field flips from "yes" to "no," instantly removing them from future sends.
  
  
• Enable re-subscription options: want to give clients the chance to opt back in? Include a subscribe link that reverses the bool field from "no" to "yes". Perfect for newsletters or event updates.
  
  
• Use saved search criteria to stay accurate: to ensure you're only contacting clients who are still subscribed, build and use saved search criteria that filter contacts based on their bool field status. This keeps your distribution lists clean, compliant and up to date, automatically.

Why it feels like AI

This setup behaves like a smart assistant; it listens, reacts and updates your system without you lifting a finger. Clients stay in control and your team stays focused on strategy, not spreadsheets.

Need help with the unsubscribe email template feature? Drop your questions below and let’s equip you with the right tools, settings, and phrasing to make it work.

In our new Advisely series, we’re going to focus on what all great Xplan site administrators do to ensure the sites they manage are the best of their kind. 

Great Xplan administrators possess a deep understanding of the system, enabling them to transform their sites into paragons of efficiency. We will highlight what these top-tier professionals do, illustrating the awesome benefits you can achieve by adopting proven strategies.

The financial services industry has changed. It's no longer enough to just deliver great advice. The entire client experience, from the first meeting through to ongoing service, is what sets you apart. 

Think of your Xplan site as the bustling kitchen of a five-star restaurant. What the client sees is the beautifully plated dish: the well-orchestrated meeting, the clear advice documents and the timely follow-ups. 

They don't see the rigorous standards, the perfectly calibrated equipment or the seamless choreography of the kitchen team. That's the part that you, the Xplan administrator or practice manager, are responsible for. It’s the behind-the-scenes work that makes everything look effortless.

This series is your guide to turning that behind-the-scenes work into a five-star service signature dish.

We'll start by focusing on your mindset. To build a five-star practice, you need to think like a visionary leader. We'll explore how to cultivate the mindset of a chief executive who owns the vision, sets high standards and inspires their team to pursue excellence in every task.

But before you can cook, you need a kitchen. We'll dive into the essential foundations of your Xplan site, covering system settings, economic assumptions and field and interface design. Getting these non-negotiables right is like installing the proper kitchen equipment: it ensures a consistent and reliable environment for all your work.

A well-run kitchen has a clear chain of command and user setup perfection. We'll show you how to structure user hierarchies, groups, and access levels so every team member can work efficiently and flawlessly within their designated station.

Your team is your most important asset. We'll focus on the people in your practice, mastering the art of staff onboarding, continuous training and leveraging resources like the Iress Community and Iress Learning Centre to ensure your team can execute new menu items (or processes) perfectly.

Just like a chef's tools must be precise, those in an advice practice also need to be equipped with the tools they need. We will take you through how to configure the advice tools: everything from setting up your APL to model portfolios and FUM scales, so you can ensure every financial "dish" you create is precise, consistent and of the highest quality.

Standardised recipes are the secret to consistency in a kitchen. With Xplan it’s developing your templates for workflows, advice documents, emails and notes that are your secret to consistency in your advice practice. We’ll show you how to guarantee every client receives the same exceptional service, every single time.

A great chef always inspects every plate before it leaves the kitchen. We will show you how to use reporting to monitor quality and performance. By inspecting your data at "the pass," you can ensure accuracy, manage costs and get crucial feedback.

In our final article, we'll talk about the essential routines for refining your service. This includes reviewing your suppliers (datafeeds), updating your menu (templates) and always looking ahead to keep your practice running at peak performance.

Join us over the next few weeks as we dive into each of these areas in turn.

What is Visualise?

Visualise is a client engagement tool which leverages Xplan’s CRM and modelling tools in a modern and easy to use interface. Advisers can use visualise to help their clients better understand their financial position, possibilities and recommendations.

Why should you use Visualise?

1. Client engagement: Visuals designed to engage clients and articulate the value of advice, leading to a delightful advice experience that clients understand.
2. Simple to use: Offers intuitive navigation in one screen, with all of the key tools and information within easy reach.
3. One integrated & trusted system: It’s an engagement solution using and modifying Xplan data. It doesn’t require head office to look outside of Xplan for a solution.
4. Modelling capabilities: Uses the feature-rich functionality of Xtools+ and allows advisers to quickly showcase the value they can offer their clients, and bring to life their clients’ current and future financial position.

How can you access Visualise?

Visualise can be accessed via the Hubs menu or via the Client Hub:

What do you need to access Visualise?

 A user will need the following to use it:

• Licenses: Core, Client Focus.
• Capabilities: Visualise, Login, Remove group data, Create/Edit Document, Add existing clients as partner entities, Client Focus, Create Clients, Edit Client, List/View Clients, Edit tasks, View Cases for Visible Clients.
• To model strategies from Visualise, an Xtools+ capability is required.
• To use the Monte Carlo Simulation, the Monte Carlo Simulation capability is required.
• For details on how to set up case templates, please refer to the guide on the community.

Naming

Visualise contains functionality that we refer to as 'Discovery' (the screen which summarises the client data) and 'Cashflow Visualiser' (the modelling screens). 

For more information, please reach out to your relationship manager, or comment below.

Hi everyone ?

I’m Lana Graham, Xtools+ product manager.

The way you use Xtools+ is always evolving and, understandably, can come a stack of “what’s the best way to do this?” questions.

That’s why I'll be live here in the Advisely AMA forum to answer your best practice questions, hear your feedback and clear up any curly ones.

To spark ideas, you might want to ask about – or share your feedback on – modelling across multiple scenarios, best practice for setting up complex strategies or smarter way to handle rollovers and lump sums without messy workarounds.

Drop your questions below – whether it’s something specific you’d like answered, or feedback on what would make modelling better for your advice process. 

I’ll be here live on Thursday, 18 September at 3 pm AEST to respond.

Looking forward to the conversation!

? This AMA is text-based, so I’ll answer your pre-submitted questions in the scheduled time.

 ? Click here to save the date in your calendar.

? Don’t forget to hit the bell in the top right corner to be notified.

?️ Let us know what you thought of the AMA and what topics you would like to see next here.

In every advice practice, data underpins everything: from client engagement to compliance. But messy records slow things down, create risks, and erode trust in your reporting. That’s where getting your Xplan data right makes the difference.

This best-practice guide from Iress Xplan experts shows you how to take control, from spotting and fixing “dirty data” to utilising advanced search, bulk updates, and validation rules. You’ll also learn how to maintain data hygiene, avoid duplicate entry and set up automated checks so your insights and your client outcomes stay sharp.

Click below to download.

If you’ve ever wished Xplan could just “do it for you,” Scheduler is your answer.

It’s the engine behind the scenes that runs tasks, sends communications and triggers processes exactly when you need them.

What Is Scheduler?

Scheduler is Xplan's time-based automation tool. You set the rules and it does the rest – no reminders, no manual clicks, no missed deadlines.

What can it do? 

Here’s how Scheduler can transform your workflow:

• Send reports to your inbox monthly: whether it’s a compliance summary or a business snapshot, Scheduler delivers it like clockwork.
  
  
• Email insurance schedules annually: keep your insurance clients informed with automated annual updates, no need to track dates manually.
  
  
• Prompt clients for review meetings: when a client is due for a review, Scheduler can send a personalised email asking them to book in, keeping your advice cycle on track.
  
  
• Trigger your ongoing service process: as soon as a renewal date hits, Scheduler can kick off your OSP workflow, ensuring nothing slips through the cracks.

How it works

Scheduler goes beyond automating tasks; it finds the clients who need action using saved search criteria, then performs multiple automation steps. These include:

• generating reports
• sending emails or SMSes
• updating field values
• creating diary events
• activating task templates
• and more!

Why it feels like AI

Scheduler is like having a virtual assistant who never sleeps. It scans your database, identifies who needs attention and executes the right actions without you lifting a finger.

Need help automating via Scheduler? Drop your questions below and let’s map out the triggers, templates and task flows that turn your processes into precision tools.

I’m Dexter Manuel, product manager of Xplan Business Intelligence (XBI).

We’re building XBI to make reporting in Xplan faster, smarter, and more useful – and I’d love to hear your questions and ideas.

To get you started, you might want to ask about:

• The kinds of business insights you’d find most valuable to see at a glance
• Insights already available (CRM, Docnotes)
• What’s on the roadmap (Workflows, Portfolios, CommPay)
• How reporting could be simplified or improved in practice

Drop your questions below — whether it’s something specific you’d like answered, or feedback on what would make reporting better for your business. 

I’ll be here live on Thursday, 4 September at 3 pm AEST to respond.

Looking forward to the conversation!

? Update: This AMA has now ended, but please continue to pop your questions in the discussion forums and make sure you tag me @"dexter.manuel​" 

?️ Let us know what you thought of the AMA and what topics you would like to see next here.

Have you ever thought, “I wish this task could just run itself?”

Well, Xplan has you covered. With automation built into Task Templates and Case Threads, you can streamline your workflow and let Xplan take care of the grunt work so you can focus on the advice.

What can be automated?

Here’s just a taste of what a single task can trigger:

• Generate and save reports: automatically create Xmerge reports or IPS reports and save them directly to the task for easy reference.
  
  
• Set field values: update client details on the fly. Change their category, add or adjust a date or turn on a distribution list – no manual data entry required.
  
  
• Add a file note template: attach pre-filled file notes to ensure consistent documentation and compliance.
  
  
• Activate another task or case thread: seamlessly kick off the next step in your workflow –whether it’s a follow-up task or a new advice thread.
  
  
• Create a diary event: schedule meetings, reviews or reminders automatically, keeping your calendar in sync with your client journey.
  
  
• Send communications: fire off an email or SMS to the client, their referrer or your paraplanner. All triggered by the task itself.
  
  
• Move your Opportunity card: move to the next Opportunity column automatically when you reach the end of a milestone task, ensuring your opportunity board is always up to date. 

Why it feels like AI 

This level of automation makes your workflow feel intelligent. Tasks don’t just sit there; they act, respond and move things forward. It’s like having a digital assistant embedded in your advice process.

Need help automating your workflows? Drop your questions below and let’s build a seamless, scalable system that works while you focus on what matters most: your clients.

You've wrangled those dirty data monsters and scrubbed your datasets sparkling clean. Now, let's talk about keeping them that way!

Because who wants to constantly be on a data cleanup crew, right? It's time to put on our data hygiene hats and delve into some strategies for maintaining that pristine data perfection.

Leveraging field definitions for granular control

Within "Field Definitions" you can define data types. But have you explored their full power? This is where you configure not just basic types like Date or Currency, but also detailed validation rules. 

For instance, you can set min and max values, dates or length. Adding these simple validations help ensure the inputs meet criteria before they are saved.

What about a field you always require? You can set a field as required in the field definition. 

However, this can sometimes cause issues when a user tries to update a different field via the adviser interface and is unable to save (as they don’t have the compulsory field detail). An alternative is to add the field requirement through a wizard, which helps to capture the right data at the right time.

Regex data validation

This is where you graduate from basic validation to advanced. Regular Expressions (Regex) within 'String' field definition allows you to enforce highly specific formats. You probably have different format inputs for phone numbers and states across your clients. 

For example, you could require states and territories to be abbreviated and in capitals:

^(ACT|NSW|NT|QLD|SA|TAS|VIC|WA)$

^{Examples of values that will fail: Qld, Tasmania or VICTORIA}

As another example, you could require phone numbers to not have any spaces:

^\+?[0-9]{7,15}$

^{Examples of values that will fail: 0412 345 678, 31 456 456, 1234.}

These are relatively simple examples, but you could use Regex to validate any ‘String’ field that has a  specific format. Creating the Regex can be complex, which is where AI can be your helpful friend. Let’s assume you have a string field that must:

• be 6 to 11 characters long
• contain two capital letters
• all other characters must be numeric.

Add this detail to your AI prompt and ask it to generate Regex code:

^(?=(?:[^A-Z]*[A-Z]){2})[0-9A-Z]{6,11}$

Add this to the field validation and 'Test value' to verify your pattern works correctly before deployment. Make sure you test values that should and shouldn’t pass. When saved, this will force data correction when the field is edited, ensuring consistency.

Duplicate data entry

A significant challenge to client data integrity, and a source of frustration, is duplicate data entry. 

Duplication often occurs when information is captured in custom fields, only to require re-entry into standard fields or directly into tools – like Xtools, RiskResearcher and WealthSolver – for modelling and analysis. This not only wastes time and reduces efficiency but also significantly increases the risk of discrepancies and errors between different data points. 

Standard fields

To combat duplicate data entry and bolster data integrity, it’s strongly recommended that you use standard fields whenever possible. Standard fields are designed to integrate with core functionalities, reporting and tools like Xtools, ensuring that data entered once is accessible across all relevant modules.

If you are performing double entry, start by replacing custom fields with standard fields on your interface. Then, move your existing data from custom fields to standard fields by undertaking an export/import exercise. For large datasets, you may need assistance from our migrations team to facilitate bulk transfers.

Wizards and client data

Wizards are powerful tools for capturing and maintaining data. They enforce a structured and consistent approach, helping to reduce the risk of manual input errors and ensure all necessary information is collected in the correct format. For example, using a wizard to add a client:

• ensure you have the Duplicate Client Warning Handler element included.  This will check your existing clients to alert you if there is another similar client.
  
  
• when adding a partner have you turned on Adviser synchronised from Client to Partner. This will ensure that a client and partner have the same key adviser roles applied whenever this is updated.
  
  
• Taking this a step further, do your Advisers have AutoSet for Client in place? This can, for example, auto assign your paraplanner and servicing adviser to the client when creating the client. This helps to eliminate those dreaded zombie tasks.

Zombie tasks

As has been previously mentioned, zombie tasks are those tasks that sit around, generally with no/old assignee and well overdue. There are a number of methods available to avoid these from occurring:

• When creating a workflow use dynamic roles rather than a particular user for assigning the task.
  
  
• Keep the AutoSet for Client up to date on the client adviser as staff change.
  
  
• Update the roles on the existing clients as staff change.
  
  
• Bulk reassign user tasks.
  
  
• Use the Task Hub to have a clear view of everything that needs to be actioned across your practice. 

Combining these methods helps to ensure tasks are assigned to the right person and are easily visible.    

Client portal power

When a client completes a fact find within Client Portal, use the Client Portal Fact Find Comparison Report. This report highlights discrepancies between client-provided data and your records, allowing you to quickly identify and action changes, keeping your data perpetually updated and accurate.

Automated data quality checks

In the previous part of the data series, we talked about how to find missing and incorrect data with advanced searches. You should schedule these to run automatically and frequently. 

Imagine a weekly report listing all client records missing a specific compulsory field, or all insurance policies nearing their review date. Proactive scheduling of these reports allows you to address data gaps and inconsistencies before they become critical issues, ensuring your data is always audit-ready and reliable.

By implementing these strategies, you'll transform your Xplan data from a basic record-keeping system into a highly efficient and accurate engine for your financial advice practice.

What changes will you implement first to elevate your data?

Your data journey has come a long way – from the murky depths of spreadsheets riddled with outdated entries and duplicates to the crystal-clear efficiency of a centralised, well-maintained CRM. 

It has been a path of highs and lows, involving cleansing and correcting, updating and streamlining. Most importantly, though, it has brought you to a place where you can trust that the data in your system truly reflects your clients’ lives and financial realities.

But what’s next? What’s on the horizon for your data? And how can this pristine, reliable information start working for you – driving smarter insights, personalising client experiences and powering more proactive advice?

What if you had a data analysis tool that could take your cleaned-up data and turn it into something even more valuable? This will soon become a reality with Xplan Business Intelligence.

What is Xplan Business Intelligence?

Xplan Business Intelligence (XBI) is Iress’s new data analytics product. It will interrogate the information within your Xplan site and provide you with a summary of the most relevant and important insights of your business. You direct the content of the report and XBI will do the groundwork to get you the results. 

No more manipulating data in exports, CSV files or stitched-together spreadsheets.

How does it work? 

Dashboards are set up based on the type of data you value in your business. These dashboards pull together information across the client CRM and file notes (with more still to come). 

It can be used to give you a summary of the most important details of your clients and insights into commonalities or which types of clients you service the most. Or it can be used as exception-based reporting to tell you where inconsistencies are or where there’s missing data. 

Let's take a look at each one of these in more detail: 

1: Client details and demographics 

Imagine being able to interrogate your CRM to find trends across your clients: analysing demographic data, where they live, the age brackets of your most active clients and points of interest. This could help you focus on what financial planning areas would be of most interest to your clients or even provide them with the most relevant information for their situations.

2: File notes 

Have you wondered what the most common File Note you have across your clients is? Perhaps you want to know when the last SOA was completed and saved against a client. What about ensuring that related documents have actually been saved to a file note as an attachment?

Well, you could set yourself a Document Note dashboard displaying important data such as whether there’s an attachment to a file note, when the note was last modified (compared to created), the name of a file note attachment or even just a simple count of all file note types and subtypes in your database.

3: Exception reporting

Do you seem to have clients that are missing crucial pieces of information against their profile?

What about an exceedingly high number of retirees that seem to have aggressive investment risk profiles? XBI can investigate this information for you and identify the problem areas, alerting you to what needs your attention the most.

For example, you can set up a data quality dashboard that will display a list of clients that have missing dates of birth, marital status and/or employment status, all while filtering out entities that are companies, trusts or super funds. (Let’s face it: what’s the point of getting a list of all SMSFs with missing birthdates?)

But wait, there's more

We're not stopping here. Plans for future iterations of XBI include:

• Workflow and Case insights: we’ve heard your frustrations about the limited reporting functionality when it comes to Workflows and Cases. Imagine being able to view where all your clients are up to in a process, or getting a list of clients that are missing specific benchmarks in completed Cases.
• Portfolio insights: your top clients, performance indicators and all things portfolio.
• CommPay insights: for all revenue reporting related to your clients.
• And more!

Now, you might be thinking that this sounds like too much effort to set up – or you might even need a degree in advanced space and physics engineering to create a simple dashboard. 

But what if we told you that you could get an integrated AI function to assist you in creating a comprehensive and informative dashboard? That’s right: just ask it a question or give it a prompt and AI will build your dashboard for you.

Have your say

What would you like to see XBI do for you? Have your say in our upcoming AMA with our product lead, Dexter Manuel on Thursday 4th September at 3pm AEST.

This forum will not only allow you to ask your burning questions, but you can also voice your opinions on what you think is important when it comes to business insight reporting for your practice.

By now, the Task Hub is likely front and centre of your daily activity in Xplan. Did you drift across from the Classic View without much thought or planning, or did you pause for a moment and consider how to get the most out of the intuitive, visual task management screens?

From talking to some of our clients, it seems to be a little bit of both. The intuitive, easy-to-use screens leant themselves to a seamless transition from old to new – particularly where users opted to use the list view. Others took the opportunity to review processes and improve on outdated workflows.

If you want to meet somewhere in the middle, here are the top six things I’d check out in the Task Hub.

Kanban

Kanban is the name of a Japanese manufacturing system where the supply of components is regulated through the use of an instruction card which is sent along the production line. The word "kanban" roughly translates to "card you can see" and its purpose is to keep track of work as it moves through a process.

Use the Kanban view of the Task Hub to help you visually keep track of work as it moves through your processes.

💡Tip: if you don’t feel you can see enough cards on screen, use the view options to zoom.

 Set the Task Hub as your start page

Save yourself a couple of clicks each morning and set the Task Hub as your default page after login. 

Never miss a key date or struggle with an overwhelming list of overdue tasks – when you put your to-do list front and centre, it empowers you to manage what is coming up, ask for help when the backlog is visibly daunting, easily move out due dates on time flexible tasks and focus in on what's important.

To set this page as your landing page, select your username in the header then choose > My Preferences > General >select Edit > set the Task Hub as your'Start Page After Login'

💡Tip: While you’re there, check out all the other user preferences available to help streamline your use of Xplan and put the features you use most often, right where you need them to be.

Task checklists

Gone are the days of death-by-task, where a business aimed to capture every component of the procedures manual in its own individual task within a complex workflow. Task checklists are simple and effective to use. They can act as a reminder for team members already well-versed in your process, enabling them to "check off" items at the end of a task, or they can be used as a step-by-step process for newer team members.

Checklists can be added on-the-fly to an ad hoc task, but they achieve the best results when templated, either as part of an individual task template or as part of a workflow process.

Make checklist items compulsory or mandatory as you see fit, or even force a comment on task completion if you want to make sure action items are acknowledged appropriately.

Rename task statuses

No longer do you need to wonder about what the difference between "actioned' and "completed" are, or decide whether to let a task stay as "unactioned" or move it to "pending".

Your site administrator can rename task statuses to better reflect the work in progress as it suits your specific business needs. If you want to see what is in progress versus what's with the client or a third-party provider, update the statuses to reflect this.

Filters

Get to know the Task Hub filters and use these to narrow down your view, cut out noise and focus on the tasks that matter to you. Consider what tasks might be able to be grouped together and completed sequentially to add efficiency to your day.

Complete all tasks relating to the one client or one adviser at the same time, filter in on your follow-up tasks and make one call to a third party to follow up on numerous outstanding tasks in one go: you can do all your meeting prep tasks together.

Saved views

Once you have a filter or two that work for you and make your day easier, save these filers as task views so you can load them anytime.

In List view, add in additional column headings that help you sort and prioritise your day then save this as a task view to reuse at a later date.

What are you waiting for?

Jump in and get the Task Hub, your centralised workflow management tool, working for you.

Manage all workflows, tasks and processes in one place, access real-time analytics and visibility, streamline workflow, improve productivity, enhance collaboration and improve your clients’ experience.

Are you still using third-party task management systems that don’t integrate well with Xplan? The Task Hub could also help lower your tech costs by consolidating these multiple systems into one integrated platform for managing your end-to-end processes.

I recently jumped onto Advisely to answer all your questions about optimising your advice document processes in Xplan.

Here are four of your best questions that came out of this AMA: 

Q: Is there any best practice examples on how to show insurance policies (existing and recommended) in an advice document that is easy to understand for the adviser and customer?

It’s so important to present insurance recommendations in a way that’s easy for both clients and advisers to understand.

One effective approach is to list all insurance policies – both existing and recommended – in a single table, with a clear column for the recommendation (e.g. Hold, Replace, Adjust, Recommend). This provides a simple, consolidated view that shows the complete picture in one place without the need to jump between sections or tables.

If you're using Xplan, there are standard Xmerge codes available to support this layout, which you can find in the Xmerge Code Library on the Iress Community. If you'd like help setting it up, our Tech Services team is available – just raise a request via the Iress Connect Portal using the Xmerge Connect tile (note: there may be a cost for this service).

Q: I'm always looking for tips to make our current process more efficient. We are using managed field content better than we have previously, so wondering if there is other functions we can utilise to streamline or automate the process further.

Great to hear you’re making the most of Managed Field Content – it’s one of my favourite hidden gems in Xplan, especially for advice generation.

There are so many tips for improving efficiency using Xplan - it's hard to know where to begin! Here are a few features that might be worth exploring:

Digital Signatures & DocuSign Integration

If you haven’t already, consider using digital signatures to streamline the process of collecting client sign-offs. You can use Iress' native Digital Signature solution, or the recent DocuSign integration - more information on both options can be found as follows:

• Digital Signatures Info
• DocuSign Integration Info

Client Portal Fact Find

This tool allows clients to complete their fact find online, which automatically updates in Xplan, reducing manual data entry and helping ensure information is always up to date. More information can be found here: Client Portal Resources

Task Outcomes

You can automate a wide range of actions using Task Outcomes – like updating fields (e.g. Next Review Date), creating file notes, sending emails, and more. It’s a great way to reduce admin time and make sure key tasks aren’t missed. Please refer to this article on Task Outcomes for more information. 

Schedules

Schedules let you automate activities across groups of clients, such as triggering review workflows, sending emails, or managing Fee Consent. You can create a series of automated steps and schedule them to run regularly. For more information, refer to this article available in the Iress Community on Using Schedules.

There’s so much potential to streamline processes – if you’ve got a specific pain point you’re trying to solve, let me know and I’d be happy to offer more tailored suggestions. Or anyone else feel free to jump into the comments and share ideas!

I should also add, that some of my colleagues are also regularly sharing great Xplan hints in the Advisely forums - so definitely keep an eye out for those!

Q: Could you recommend any existing platforms that integrate with Xplan and support the creation and distribution of newsletters containing compliant financial content for clients? We are looking to streamline the process of sending and creating newsletters for clients.

While there are currently no integrations available via Iress Open that directly support this use case, our Integrations team is continually engaging with partners, so we recommend keeping an eye on the Iress Open integration space in the Community for any new developments.

In the meantime, you might like to explore the Iress Financial Knowledge Centre, which offers branded monthly newsletters designed to help clients live with money confidence. It’s a great option for providing compliant, client-friendly content with minimal effort.

Q: It's obviously early stages with the proposed changes but I'm wondering if Xplan is gearing up for these changes and if Xplan feels there's a big difference between the old and new SOA/CAR? There's a bit of media coverage suggesting it's not going to look much different?

That’s a great question, and definitely a hot topic right now. We’re keeping a close eye on the proposed changes and are actively thinking about the future of advice and how Xplan can support it.

While the proposed Client Advice Record (CAR) appears to contain much of the same core information as the current SOA, we see this as an opportunity to rethink how advice is delivered to clients. Rather than continuing with long, compliance-heavy documents, there’s a chance for CARs to become more engaging, client-friendly, and easier to understand, while still meeting regulatory requirements.

At this stage, Iress hasn’t released an official plan regarding CAR support in Xplan, but it’s very much on our radar – so definitely watch this space!

If you want to know more about Xplan optimisations, head over to the discussion forums and ask a question – don’t forget to tag me at @"sarah.jacobs​"!