Best Cashflow
PeterM
Member
What is everyone's thoughts on the best cashflow software?
I have been asked to review what we use currently (Cashcalc and FinCalc) so I am comparing these to the following:
Voyant - Which I have used before.
Timeline - Which I haven't used before
I4c/Intelliflo Planning - Again never used before.
We are looking for a simple system to stress test retirement income (I'm currently thinking Cashcalc) and a more advanced system to carry out scenario analysis for clients who want to look at things in more detail (whcih I am currently thinking would be Voyant).
To be honest I can't really see past Voyant for the more complicated stuff.
I'm running a case where a 48 year old client is wanting to know if he can retire at 60 on £40k per annum on all of the above systems. The client has a couple of DC pensions and an old DB scheme however we don't know the projected benefits for the DB scheme at age 60.
So far Voyant seems to be the best at estimating the DB scheme, something Cashcalc and Timeline can't (or at least I can't work out how to do!).
Downside is the time taken to key in the details and having to add in asset class assumptions.
I4C/Intelliflo Planning doesn't seem to have much in the way of stress testing nor does it seem to be able to model randomised returns.
Timeline has loads of stress testing but carrying out different scenarios seems to be quite difficult, as does modelling things like using ISA allowances, selling businesses etc.
Am I missing anything?
Comments
You don't need to add in asset class assumptions into Voyant.
If you do, then you only need to do this once for all plans if you are going down that route (which I don't as its way too complicated and, in my view, totally pointless, unless you are going to get into Monte Carlo reporting etc and then you need even more data.)
You can use a single investment return figure.
So if you have a cleit with a risk profile of "Orange" which your advice / portfolio construction points to a target return of 3% pa use this figure which you can set in the plan preferences for the client.
Choice of cash flow - Voyant all the way.
You can make inputting etc as simple as complex as you want.
For example, if you have 5 pensions then you can add them as 5 individual ones or just add one with the total value.
Also, depending on your back office system you can import client data direct which saves on data keying.
Xplan and Voyant definitely integrate. You do have to make sure the quality of the data on the client record is accurate to make it worthwhile though.
Does anyone use Timeline as well as Voyant? How do they complement each other?
Anyone have any feedback on the i4c cashflow integration with the intelligent office back office system?
In my experience, quality of data on Xplan seems to be very hard to achieve, although there is an excel spreadsheet you can download, which shows which fields are exported to their own cashflow tool.
I would recommend Voyant, although If you are using Xplan, then why not try XTools? I'm sure Iress will give you a license to test it.
I haven't looked at timeline recently, but when I did it wasn't really a cashflow tool. It did do a great job live with clients looking at income sustainability.
I4C/inteliliflo is probably the simplest to use of the genuine planning tools though.
I've given it a quick go and it's ok but not as good as Voyant.
The integration seemed to work quite well but I couldn't get the capacity for loss to work and the growth rates are linear only.
We generally use Voyant for cash flow modelling for our clients. I got a bit bored one day however and decided to create my own tool for use with smaller clients that didn't warrant full cash flow analysis, sticking in their details etc, say those with circa £50,000 under management and they wanted to know a reasonable withdrawal level.....would be good to get some feedback! https://mycalcsonline.shinyapps.io/montecarlosim-1/