It has been almost two years since my last in-depth look at Finance Logix, a Web-based financial planning application. Although the developer of the software, OLTIS Software LLC, commenced operations in 1998, my initial review of Finance Logix (formerly known as Saleslogix) was decidedly mixed. The application's strong points included its client vault, its alerts and its graphical interface. But some aspects of the software needed work, including its core planning capabilities and presentation tools, and there were data entry issues. I thought OLTIS had made a good start at developing the product, but the application was still a work in progress.

Recently, OLTIS announced the release of Finance Logix version 3.0, so I decided to revisit the application to see what progress, if any, had been made.

Getting To Know Finance Logix 3.0
There have been numerous changes to the interface since I last reviewed the product. This becomes apparent the minute you log on. In the past, your first stop was a home page that offered access to the various financial planning modules and a client list. Now when you log in, you are transported to an "advisor dashboard."

What's the difference between the old home page and the dashboard? The latter contains more information and is more of a business management tool. It allows advisors to add new clients and search for existing ones, but also offers much more. The dashboard also gives you a list of clients whose records have recently been modified; a list of clients who have recently logged in to their Finance Logix client portals; a system report (with the license type, the license expiration and clients with aggregation errors); and client statistics (the total number of clients and the client profiles created within the last 30 days, as well as the number of active client portals). The dashboard also offers new features, company news and release notes.

To the left of the dashboard is a navigation bar. It's not extensive, but it's effective, and offers quick access to three areas: Advisor Management (with an advisor dashboard, a client profiler and an opportunity finder); Client Management (which has a client list and a create-new-client section); and Account Settings (with user information, preferences, model portfolios and integrations). This structure organizes functions according to common tasks or basic work flows.

Under the first heading, you have shortcuts related to growing or managing your business. We've already discussed how the dashboard gives you some business-related statistics. The client profiler tool can also reveal business opportunities.

The opportunity finder is a simple but effective business-generating tool. After you've entered data for a client, it dynamically tracks projected surpluses or shortfalls for a client's retirement, education and insurance goals. This allows you to pinpoint those clients whose plans may need attention without running a full plan update.

The preferences selection, under Account Settings, allows you to alter some of the program's defaults, which you couldn't do in earlier versions. The Model Portfolios section offers an intuitive graphic interface for setting up model portfolios that can be applied to client cases. You can also customize models for specific clients. The asset class data, including the expected rates of return for assets, is supplied by Morningstar.

A nifty new feature is the Quick View. The original production release of the Quick View had some design flaws, but by the time you read this they will have been addressed in the updated version, which I had access to. When you click on a client's name on the dashboard, the Quick View pops up on the screen. It shows a total summary balance sheet, with a pie chart of the asset allocation breakdown. It also includes columns with subtotals for aggregated and non-aggregated assets/liabilities, as well as a subtotaled column representing managed (as opposed to non-managed) assets/liabilities.

There are two ways for a firm to enter plan data. One is for the advisor to interview the client and enter the information for him. The other is to send the client to his own client vault, where he can enter most of his own information-a process simple enough that he should feel comfortable with it. Account data can be entered manually or through aggregation (CashEdge does the aggregation for Finance Logix). Clients can change the aggregation settings to exclude accounts if they want to.

Once the data is all entered, advisors can view a scenario snapshot. This summarizes a client's net worth, his cash flow, his current holdings and the progress he's made toward his major planning goals-what he needs for retirement, asset allocation, insurance, education or his estate.
The retirement section is perhaps the most interesting. The pictures and charts show clients if they face a shortfall or surplus. In the summary section, the drop-down menus under the "vary account allocations" tab allow you to quickly change the view from all the retirement assets to only those that are taxable or nontaxable. The drop-down in the adjacent "what-if allocation" chart allows you to select a different model allocation and almost immediately view the effect of any change to it. You can also use a "vary retirement assumptions" tab that combines drop-down menus and sliders to adjust inflation, retirement goal percentages and survivor ratios.

The "strategies" tab allows the advisor to add strategies and alter the default sweep account. The "Savings" and "Income" sections operate in the same fashion, as does the Risk/Reward section. This last one includes a Monte Carlo analysis with a lognormal distribution. The default setting is 500 iterations for speed, but if you can wait a few extra seconds, the application will run 2,000 iterations on request.

While it is impossible to detail all of the new version's features here, there are some I should mention. The new client list screen is much better than it was in previous versions-it includes better search functions and displays more client information. A client profiler tool allows you to divide your clients by net worth, by AUM or by the securities they hold. For example, it is now easy to filter for clients owning specific assets or those with assets under management of more than $3 million.

A Roth conversion strategy has been added as well, and the Roth 401(k) views have been improved so that they allow clients to better handle beneficiaries. Spouses can now be treated as partial beneficiaries of a distribution, for instance.

You can now also assign priorities to your client's goals. The program can provide individual college costs, for instance, to your client's education targets. You can also determine how frequently the client would like to achieve certain goals, scheduling major purchases like automobiles, for example, every four years. The number of goals that a plan can accommodate are now virtually unlimited.

Though Morningstar categorizes assets such as mutual funds automatically, an advisor can override them and drill down to the holding level with Morningstar's X-Ray feature. You can also perform this analysis at the account level.

Advisors could also use Finance Logix 3.0 to model a guaranteed lifetime benefit for deferred annuities. And OLTIS has allowed advisors to better handle income-tax-related data by adding an "advanced tax mode" that closely resembles a Form 1040.

Pros
The dashboard is more functional and information-rich than the old home page was. Meanwhile, the opportunity finder should be a helpful business-building tool. If you are alerted to the fact that a client is falling short on her retirement goal, for example, you might want to call her and explore the possibility of upping her 401(k) contribution before the projected shortfall becomes insurmountable. If there is a large projected surplus, you might want to discuss lowering the risk level of her retirement portfolio or deploying some of the assets set aside for retirement elsewhere. One goal like education might show a surplus, for instance, while another one (say, retirement) shows a discount, which presents you with an opportunity to shift assets between them. The balances and projections update constantly, of course, and there shouldn't be a need to constantly shift assets. However, the program lets you track those figures to keep them within bounds-even if you never act on the information, you can pull it up when clients call and show them you are in command of the facts.

I previously criticized the calendar because it did not sync with MS Outlook. It does now. The vault is much improved, too: It is faster, and the encryption has been upgraded to 256-bit, making it more secure. You can now filter files and folders to find what you need quickly. File attributes and vault utilization information are welcome additions, too. Additional reports have been added and report generation times are noticeably faster than before.

In the past, I've also criticized Finance Logix for a lack of training videos, and the company now offers some decent ones, though I think more are required.

Cons
Even though the dashboard is an upgrade from the old home page, it still has a 1.0 feel to it. Because it is static, advisors cannot customize it or move individual elements. Given the otherwise excellent graphical interface here, I expected more.

The opportunity finder is a good initial step, but more could be done here, too. Since thresholds are subjective, and since some advisors will want to vary their threshold depending on their market outlook, this function should be advisor-controlled.

The program's documentation is somewhat improved, but I'd still like to see more detailed help screens.

Browser Support
Browser support is an increasingly critical issue for Web-based applications. A substantial number of advisors prefer a Windows browser other than Microsoft's Internet Explorer, and since a small but growing number of advisors are turning to Apple computers, I'm turning an increasingly critical eye toward those firms that only support Microsoft's browser. This issue is even more critical for Finance Logix, since arguably one of the product's most enticing features is its client-facing portal. Financial planning clients are probably even less likely than the advisors to be satisfied with a portal supported by Internet Explorer alone.

In that regard, Finance Logix does a satisfactory job, since it supports both Internet Explorer and Firefox in Windows. But there is room for improvement here, too. I tried using my current browser favorite, Google's Chrome, but the experience was less than satisfactory. The program works with Firefox on Apple computers. Officially, Finance Logix does not support Safari, but it seemed to work OK for me. Chrome seemed to work with the program the same way on a Mac as it did on Windows.

Evaluation
With the release of version 3.0, Finance Logix is beginning to realize some of its potential. The core financial planning capabilities of the application will still fall somewhat short of the category's leaders, but they are good enough now that they will likely satisfy many users. In addition, you get valuable business building tools, dynamic updates and a functional, flexible and graphically pleasing client-facing financial planning portal. For many readers, the total sum of the parts is enough to justify the purchase of the product.

Over the years, I've learned that one critical differentiator between the better software developers and the also-rans is that the better ones constantly raise their game by improving their products. Although my history with Finance Logix is rather short, the evidence so far suggests that this firm consistently strives to improve. If it continues to build on the progress of the last two years, the firm and its users should have a bright future ahead of them.