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 Others took the opportunity to review processes and improve on outdated workflows.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 filters 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.

What if you could automate your most time-consuming CommPay admin tasks? Stop running reports and uploading files manually, and start investing that time back into other business needs. 

It's time to reclaim your firm's most valuable asset: time

When it comes to maximising efficiency in CommPay, what we often hear from administrators and financial planning firms is "I don’t know what I don’t know". In this article series, our goal is to highlight the most powerful, yet underutilised, features that allow CommPay to do the heavy administrative lifting for you. 

Let's start with a foundational tool for efficiency: Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP).

Before diving into the setup, here’s why implementing SFTP is worth the effort for your firm:

• Streamline manual processes
• Reduce time taken & upgrade efficiency
• Automate recurring tasks

Key automation opportunities

SFTP allows you to employ a powerful ‘set and forget’ automation engine across repetitive and essential CommPay tasks. These include:

1. Supplier revenue files

Eliminate the manual upload process for supplier files. By utilising a nominated SFTP folder, you can automate this task entirely. CommPay will periodically review the folder, grab the files, and push them directly to the ‘Scheduled Uploads’ screen for you. These files are then automatically processed and ready for review the following day. Tools are also available to track the files' progress, ensuring complete visibility.

2. Management and adviser reporting

Physically running each type of Report or Search is a repetitive task that significantly consumes an administrator's time. Instead, use the SFTP automation to schedule an endpoint location for the reports’ delivery. They can be sent via email or another nominated location, ensuring critical management and adviser data is delivered automatically when you need it.

With these automations fully implemented, you can cut out many day-to-day CommPay processes. The automation engine kicks in, delivering significant time back to your team for client-focused work and strategic tasks.

Next steps to setup SFTP

Take a moment to review our community guide for full details and setup steps: Setting up SFTP for Scheduled Statements and Searches.

To all our CommPay Backoffice Administrators - when you are ready to implement our automation, please log a call with the CommPay Support Team via Iress Connect to initiate your SFTP setup. 

Note:  SFTP set up is functionality for CommPay Backoffice.

Stay tuned for part two of our CommPay article series, coming soon - CommPay Backoffice: Automating the heavy lifting.

Stop wasting hours on repetitive CommPay admin. Invest in setup now, and gain countless hours of productivity back, by letting the automation engine work for you.

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.

Client file notes are an essential tool for maintaining comprehensive records, meeting compliance requirements, and providing continuity in client service. But most advisers would agree, without an effective system, keeping your client notes organised can be a real challenge.

The good news is managing file notes doesn’t have to slow you down. To help you simplify and stay on top of your admin, we’ve made a series of improvements to Doc Notes, including two new features we’ve just released that allow you to tag your Doc Notes, and merge multiple file notes into one. 

A snapshot of the latest features

Merging notes to stay organised: With the new merge notes feature, you can now consolidate your client’s notes by merging up to ten source notes and attachments into a single note. This feature is useful for keeping track of interactions that span multiple notes because it gives you a complete view of the advice given and actions taken. It also saves you time, reduces the risk of missing important details, and helps avoid any confusion or miscommunication among your team. Find out more.

Tagging notes for easy access: Tagging is a game-changer when you need to find information quickly, especially with complex client histories or for follow-up meetings. By tagging your notes, you can categorise them by advice area, interaction type, or discussion topic. This makes it much easier for you to search and filter relevant notes quickly, boosting productivity and leaving you to focus on other important tasks. Find out more.

Features rolled out in our Q3 roadmap update

Earlier this year, we introduced the ability to pin notes, so you can easily highlight and prioritise the most important information. With pinned notes, critical details are always visible and readily accessible to your team, eliminating lost time searching for what you need.

We also added a bulk update feature, allowing you to make changes to up to 10,000 notes at once. This streamlines the process of keeping your records up-to-date, consistent, and compliant.

You can now also link notes to related entities and workflows, ensuring that all relevant context is connected and easily accessible.

As Sandra Schieck, Martens Wealth Management says, “The change made to the Related Tab in the File Notes pop-up window is fantastic and a real time saver. I always forget to be in ‘partner’, ‘both’ or ‘all entities’ as appropriate before I add a file note. 

“That meant I then had to search for the correct individual or entity to add to the Related tab. Now, with the addition of the link button, my problems in this area are solved,” she says.

Each of these new features have been designed to boost your workflow, bringing clarity and efficiency to managing client records. By cutting down on administrative tasks, you'll save valuable time and have more energy to deliver outstanding service and build stronger client relationships.

With these improvements, Doc Notes is set to transform how you manage client records, making your work more efficient and your client interactions more impactful.

These are the notes that have been added from outside a client record and forgotten to be linked to a client, the forwarded emails that couldn’t find a matching email address or the notes that have been accidentally unlinked from an entity.

Checking for these regularly should be part of every good site administrators routine activities.

🖥️ Hubs > Notes & Documents > Change your List filter = Unallocated > Search

How often do you check for unallocated notes?

I'm hoping you all just checked then - are you game to tell me how many you had? 😬

You should try Dynamic Benchmarks! These will only activate and append benchmarks that are relevant to the individual client’s scenario. If you have a client who is proceeding with advice and requires a document generated with modelling scenarios, these benchmarks can be configured to only pop up at the time of selecting “client wishes to proceed to advice” in your process and completing an advice discussion file note.

The benefit of using Dynamic Benchmarks over standard Benchmark sets is that you aren't left at the end of your workflow process with a list of incomplete benchmarks which are stopping the case from closing.

To go through an example of a Dynamic Benchmark set up, visit the Iress Community page here: Dynamic Case Benchmark Example - Iress Community

Or to learn more, visit the Iress Learning Centre: Dynamic Benchmarks.

Some of you already know that you can file an email to an individual client record in Xplan  by forwarding the email to the client’s “entity id@your xplan site name”. (If you didn't - you do now) but this existing functionality is way more powerful than that.

Simply forward or cc an email to your User Group inbox and Xplan will file it for you. It scans for matching email addresses across your database and files the note against the right client record automatically. Your Xplan Inbox  is your “user group’s id@your xplan site name” (as opposed to your client’s entity id). 

AND you can even have Xplan automatically set the type and subtype of the note that is created based on the email subject by setting up rules that recognise certain words or phrases in the email subject.

💡Pro Tip

If you prefer emailing to each entity individually but are still manually looking up the entity id each time, create an export containing client name and entity id, add a column for @sitenname then use the excel function ‘concatenate’ to create every client’s unique Xplan email address for you - then import into your email client!

If you’re wondering how long this feature has been available, or want to see the step by step instructions, check out this article from 2015! 🤯

https://community.iress.com/t5/Best-Practice-Xplan/Incoming-email-How-to-automatically-file-your-emails-from-any/ta-p/4660

Your Xplan site is the engine of a five-star client experience, but is chaos bubbling behind the scenes? This guide is your essential recipe for operational excellence. 

For Xplan administrators and practice managers, you are the executive chef of your firm’s technology. The client sees the beautifully prepared dish, but you are responsible for the seamless choreography of the kitchen team. This is the definitive blueprint for achieving consistency, precision, and peak performance in your advice practice. 

Inside, you will discover how to master:

• Solid site foundations: Build consistent default settings and control your Xplan environment from the ground up.
• Absolute precision: Configure your advice tools, including APLs and model portfolios, to eliminate errors.
• Workflow Excellence: Master templates and repeatable workflows to ensure a consistent process for every client, every time.
• Actionable insights: Monitor data quality and transform “data drama” into clear, reliable information.
  

Ready to refine your operations, empower your team, and earn a standing ovation from your clients?

Download this essential guide today.

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:

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

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

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 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!

Most of us want datafeeds to be "set and forget" but they need regular attention to stay accurate. When each adviser tries to manage their own, you often get duplicated effort and missed error patterns. Centralising this role means one person oversees the audit logs, links new accounts, and catches "out of balance" warnings before they impact your reporting or client reviews.

If your datafeeds have been unloved for a little while, you’ll need to know where to begin:

1. Start with the basics: Check out Datafeed Fundamentals and Datafeed Administration: Daily checks in The Iress Learning Centre then jump into the Getting Started guide from the Iress Community.
2. Pick a "quick win": Choose one provider that is almost 100% accurate. Use the Platform Summaries - APAC Region List to check the overall health of that specific feed first.
3. Review the summaries: Use the Platform Summary and Adviser Summary screens for a high-level view of data quality. The Reconciliation Summary allows you to drill into the detail of individual holdings. 
4. Check your mappings: Do all advisers have valid credentials? Are all adviser codes and client accounts mapped correctly?
5. Watch for date locks: Be careful overriding these if you aren't familiar with the history of that account.
6. Identify patterns: When troubleshooting, look for common threads. Are the errors all on the same date, for the same holding, or linked to one particular adviser?
7. Follow the trouble shooting guide.

Focusing on one provider at a time keeps things manageable. By starting with those quick wins, you'll soon have a list of feeds you can actually trust. From there, simple routine checks will help you catch and fix any new issues as they happen.

If you manage datafeeds, you’ll know the tedium of clicking through individual positions and confirming each one is safe to set as "do not report. Previously, Xplan only let you mark these one by one, but now you can select multiple rows and set them to ‘do not import' in bulk.

How? Navigate to the Reconciliation Report screen within your datafeed management area. Instead of handling each row separately, you can now use the checkboxes to select all relevant position rows. Once selected, use the bulk action to mark them as "do not report." This keeps your report clean and focused only on the discrepancies that actually need your attention.

💡Pro Tip This is a great way to tidy up your reconciliation reports after a large data migration or when you no longer manage an account and want to remove them from view. Just ensure you have actually reviewed the holdings before hiding them, as this helps maintain the integrity of your practice's audit trail.

How do you usually handle your daily datafeed maintenance routine?