November 2004		INVESTMENT EXECUTIVE	BUILDING YOUR BUSINESS
	SOFTWARE BY DAVID EDEY You get what you pay for with software, too Some advisors have a bad habit of being cheapskates when they should be looking for quality
o advisors pick financial planning software based on price rather than the quality of the financial plans it generates?

The recent Advisors and Technology survey undertaken by Investment Executive and www.advisortechsolutions.com (see our October 2004 issue) asked about the use of financial planning software. The research shows that the cost of software plays a key role in deter-mining what ends up installed on an advisor’s hard drive. The danger, then, is that inexpensive software can mean financial plans that are simple and generic, which may not suit the advisor’s client base as it evolves. While no one piece of financial planning software will be the ultimate tool, it’s obvious that advisors aren’t taking the time to research what is available in the market and what is appropriate for their practices.
Financial planner Peter Baigent, founder of Money Minders Financial Services Inc. in Kelowna, B.C., and its Money Minders Software division, has been designing personal financial planning software since 1989 for advisors around the world. His company’s most popular software product is Financial Planning Spreadsheets, Professional Version. The product is a series of Excel templates that deal with all planning issues.

The size and scope of the software has more than doubled since I reviewed it in 2000. It has grown to 155 reports and charts in its latest Canadian professional version; it had 70 in 2000.

It now provides many templates for illustrating sales concepts, including six leverage scenarios. It has a “pension maximization” template that illustrates the advantage of purchasing life insurance prior to retirement, which allows the client to choose the life-only pension option as opposed to the joint-pension option. There is a template that looks at whole life vs term insurance, buying vs leasing, as well as RRSP planning. A “revenue property investment analysis” lets users calculate the taxable reporting for any revenue property, as well as any capital cost allowance for the same property. (The calculations and layout conform to the Canada Revenue Agency’s form T776.)

When Baigent began developing his own software, he says, his users told him that they were looking for software that was easy to learn but, more important, they wanted the output to be something their clients could understand. He incorporated those concerns into his spreadsheets.

The software has all the components to do a comprehensive financial plan, which is important because most associations around the country require that their members have the ability to do so. You will notice that the menu tab for financial planning lists the six steps that every financial plan should encompass. A menu system allows advisors, or their assistants, to find the appropriate template quickly. A feature of the software is its ease of operation and the ability to produce a report that is straightforward for the client.

The software is an add-on to Microsoft Office or Excel. Baigent says that because most advisors are familiar with Excel spreadsheets, Money Minder’s templates are easy to learn to use. This also gets users away from a canned software package that does not easily allow any personalization. All of the Financial Planning Spreadsheets templates can be modified by the user or copied to a new spreadsheet for further personalizing to the client’s situation. The mathematical power of Excel makes the answers instantaneous.

The other reason for Money Minders using spreadsheets came from advisors, who complained about products that took hours to complete a plan. Many advisors had received software from their dealers, suppliers or head office that they didn’t use.
Baigent says his approach makes more sense because advisors gain business by winning over new clients. And the modular concept allows advisors quickly to do only a single-need situation, if that is what is right for a particular client.

The cost for the complete Financial Planning Spreadsheets software is $489. Quarterly updates are available. You can download a complete working version of all the charts and reports by registering. A free demo allows you to use all the templates for 21 days or 150 uses, whichever comes first.
Baigent says such a trial gives each advisor an opportunity to try all of the templates before making a decision to purchase.
IE

Note:

The software package has been re-priced since this article to $589.00 and now includes a 1 year "Annual Software License" with updates instead of the prior 3 months of update. Subsequent years are $169.00 for "Annual Software License" with updates.

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