Life can become hell when there is no proper planning for each stage. So today, we present a guide on Choosing Financial Planning Software to make it easier for you.
Why use a Financial Planning Software
It would help if you did many things when you were young because it is when you have the most energy. One of the most important is planning our life, considering the goals we want to achieve.
In our youth, we can visualize what our life will be like in a few years and begin designing the strategies we must develop to achieve our goals. An essential tool is financial planning, which will serve to know the steps we will have to take to achieve important goals such as retirement.
However, to carry out this planning process, it is crucial to have software that allows us to design the steps we will follow to achieve our financial objectives.
What to look for in a Financial Planning Software
Today, financial planning software is of high quality. It gives you an overview of what your financial plan will be, taking into account your goals, your sociodemographic traits, and your economic level.
The amount of software on the market is so high that the problem is no longer whether you need software or not. Currently, what you need to know is how to identify the best software for you. To find out, take the following into account:
Understandable interface
The software interface must be easy to enter data and generate reports with speed, quality, and clarity to meet the necessary explanatory requirements so that you or your financial advisor can understand it quickly.
Besides, you should have close options (in one or two clicks at most), so you don’t waste too much time using the software. This way, the technical part spends as little time as possible, while the analytical part works more, is more complete, and has high-quality data.
In conclusion, software that is understandable to the user must be intuitive. This saves time (which is spent on analysis and strategy building), and you quickly learn to use the interface.
Evaluate your needs
Remember that this topic is not about choosing the software with the most financial planning tools or with the most innovations in the industry.
When choosing software of this type, you must focus on what you will do with it.
- What do you want it for?
- What are your goals?
- And what tools do you need to plan those goals?
- Do you know any software that has them all?
Before buying software, evaluate your life, moment, and objectives.
Once defined, look for (from the hand of your financial advisor) the software that meets the requirements you need to make the planning of the steps you will take to reach those objectives that you have already meditated on and selected.
Ease of entering your data
Any software on this planet requires accurate data to generate reports for correct financial planning.
For this reason, the software you choose must facilitate the incorporation of the data, distributed in a single template (tab) with labels that help you identify where each goes to give you quick advice to find the fields of interest.
Software Flexibility
Basically, at this point, we have to talk about the three planning systems that we can find in the market:
The system is based on objectives:
- This software is dedicated to evaluating a client’s income-focused on a given goal in the long or short term.
- This strategy assesses whether the person has enough capital to achieve the goal set in the given time.
- It is generally recommended for people who are focused on their retirement.
A system based on cash flows:
- This system is focused on analyzing each client’s income.
- Through this process, the aim is to determine what these revenues can be used to become efficient assets to achieve one or several previously set objectives.
- This software will find the right place for each ticket you deposit in your bank account, maximizing your savings and expected returns.
Bucket System:
- A software based on a different process from the previous ones.
- Its objective is to make short and long-term investments with different types of risk, trying to “lengthen the money.”
- That is to say. It is sought that the income obtained by the user has high durability (until retirement), which allows him to reach goals.
Now, the software you will have to choose will be the one that has more flexibility, allowing you to change from one modality to another easily.
Remember that each person is different. For example, you may have goals that place you in the goal-based system. However, your liquidity may increase over time, so your financial planning needs can be moved to a cash flow-based system.
Then the software you will have to choose will be the one that allows you to make these changes without having to reincorporate the user data or create another template. If you choose software with flexibility, you will be able to have better projections and results.
In conclusion, the software we choose must be modern and contain the three types of systems within financial planning to save time in a person’s change of objectives.
Projections
A crucial aspect of financial planning is the projection systems that are used to determine what possible scenarios the user will have to face and how they will impact the final objective.
At this point, it is positive but not excluding to have software that makes a large number of projections based on different methods such as:
- Monte Carlo
- The Line Method (Least Recommended)
- The Binomial Method
Or other methods of statistical calculation of financial scenarios.
Projections that allow negative and positive scenarios to be included by distributing different probabilities to each can give more realistic results. On this, a linear projection speaks to us of a state of “freezing” where people’s income and investments will not vary in their yields over time.
On the other hand, the binomial system considers all possible changes giving each one a probability of occurrence. This last method will give us a closer approximation to reality, although this does not mean that it is an accurate prediction.
For the above reasons, getting the software with a projection system based on different methodologies is the best option. This way, we can make more realistic projections of how our financial plan will evolve.
Quality reports at a glance
The myth has been created in the financial planning software market that the more complexity, the better the result. At least, that seems to be the case in the development that some companies have carried out with the objective that their systems generate hundreds of pages full of complex information.
On the contrary, the idea is that the software you decide to use counts on simplicity (without losing quality) in your reports so that it is understandable even for a person without very advanced knowledge.
Complement the work of the software by hiring an advisor
In financial planning, there are straightforward and other quite complex issues to which you will need an expert to attend to and solve. For this reason, you must hire a financial advisor to explain and implement the strategies obtained by the financial planning software. Besides, the advisor can design a specific plan that suits your savings and investment needs.
If you are a financial advisor and do not have financial planning software, you are wasting time and lagging far behind your competition. It’s time to update and improve productivity. For that, you need a high-quality digital ally.
To Conclude
Remember that the perfect software hasn’t been created yet, so don’t look for something that meets all the abovementioned requirements. Instead, use them to choose the software best suits your needs. Good luck!