As experienced mountain climbers know, getting down from the peak safely is a lot harder than getting to the top. Similarly, for financial advisors, helping their clients accumulate enough for retirement is often easier than creating and managing a distribution plan for their senior years.

Fortunately, there are several software programs on the market that help advisors determine maximum but safe and tax-efficient portfolio withdrawals for their retired clients. According to a recent survey, the top five programs used by professional financial advisors are MoneyGuidePro, eMoney, RightCapital, Money Tree and NaviPlan.

Which is the right one for your firm?

Sean M. Williams, wealth advisor at Sojourn Wealth Advisory in Timonium, Md., uses RightCapital. The software, he says, “allows me to provide extensive analysis. I’m able to look at different scenarios for tax-sensitive withdrawals for income. Rather than the plan being a snapshot of time with different forecasts, we now have a 365-day plan.”

At the same time, “the experience is very user-friendly for clients and myself,” he adds. “It was very important to me that any planning software I used allowed for a dynamic client portal and phone app.”

Derek Bostian, a certified financial planner at Two Waters Wealth Management in Huntersville, N.C., also uses RightCapital, and largely because of its ease of use. “I was able to figure out how to build a plan in under 30 minutes and understand why and where certain pieces of data went,” he says. “We evaluated all of the major players. It was the easiest for us to learn.”

“I like the display interface for clients so they can see the immediate effects of financial planning decisions that they can make,” Bostian says. “The tax tab is one of the most powerful because you can show current, future and hypothetical tax rates very easily. You can also show the effects of Roth IRAs, life insurance distributions and other planning strategies.”

“What-if” scenarios are available in other planning software programs, Bostian says, but RightCapital shows the probability of success in real time without having to change screens. “It’s very easy to show side-by-side comparisons of different planning situations and circumstances rather than having to toggle between different tabs and settings in the software, something I wasn’t able to do with previous software programs we’ve used,” he says.

Clients also have access to their own portal and can make different assumptions and change the variables as they see fit. The advisor has control over what is saved and what is not.

Leigh Fleming, director of financial planning at Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh, uses NaviPlan from Advicent Solutions. “We like this software because it allows us to customize our commentary on a prospective or current client’s portfolio as well as make specific recommendations for each account in their portfolio using our own language,” she says. “This helps us to explain why we think that particular investment strategy will work for them and explain our investment process and philosophies.”

NaviPlan was easy to grasp and to begin using, Fleming says. “Learning how the software calculated retirement cash flow projections took some time in the beginning, but internally we developed ways to double-check our inputs and the accuracy of the data that we are providing to clients. We use in-depth itemized cash flow projections that break down each input as discussed with the client.”

While Fort Pitt advisors didn’t have extensive training when they began using the software, Fleming says NaviPlan tech support “is always available to answer questions.” For example, the support person will organize a Webex teleconference “on the spot, which will allow them to see exactly what your question or problem is on a particular plan. This allows them to more easily diagnose the issue and help with a resolution.”

Most of the advisors we talked to at random, however (though this was not a scientific survey), preferred eMoney. While it seems to take longer to master than the other programs, it’s more dynamic and versatile, users say.

“I really appreciate that it can be used for both simple and highly complex client situations,” says Marc Russell, principal and co-founder of AdvicePeriod, a national wealth management firm based in Los Angeles.

“The software can handle multigenerational planning with many family entities, which is what we typically experience with our client base,” he says. The software’s Decision Center “makes it possible to create and modify a plan in real time with the client during a meeting. In addition, it provides valuable insight as to which variables will have the largest impact on whether the client is successful in meeting key objectives or not.”

Russell says “it takes time to learn how to use all of the bells and whistles within the system, but it is easy to quickly start using most of the functionality. The training can either be informal or through eMoney’s frequent training sessions and events.”

Stephanie McElheny, president of wealth planning at Aspen Wealth Strategies in Arvada, Colo., agrees that it “can take years to be able to master the software,” but a new user should be able to “hit the ground running” after about a week of training. “eMoney is just incredibly detailed and sophisticated in the amount of adjustments you can make,” she says. “I’ve been using this software for years and I’m still coming across things that you can do. The customizability and the depths that you can dig into with detail and analysis and how many adjustments you can make for different strategies is just incredible.”

McElheny is such a big fan that “when I was moving and looking for a firm to work for out here in Colorado, I knew I wasn’t going to work for somebody that didn’t use eMoney. That’s how strongly I feel about it. From my perspective as a CFP professional and a fiduciary, I have to do what’s in the best interests of my clients. I think eMoney gives me the best tools to be able to do that.”

eMoney provides a broader sense of where assets can be coming from—not just what the firm manages but all of the client’s assets—and what the total withdrawal rate is. You can also set it up to withdraw money from qualified or nonqualified accounts or from the most tax-efficient assets first and see what the impact is.

“We base a lot of our planning on tax-efficient spending strategies under different circumstances to see if it is going to be sustainable,” McElheny says. “We like to run scenarios based on the client’s estimated spending and what they want the net amount to be. Then we can make small tweaks to say ultimately what’s the best long-term scenario, what impacts their probability of success in terms of the order of withdrawals.”

eMoney also makes things more interactive with the client, she says. “That helps bring it to life for people. People are just wowed by that and it makes the conversation easier for us and makes them feel more comfortable.”

Kevin Michels, a fee-only financial planner at Medicus Wealth Planning in Draper, Utah, recently switched to eMoney after using Money Tree for the past five years.

Money Tree “does a really good job of calculating tax liability for the different withdrawal strategies you model out,” he says. “You can drill down to marginal and effective tax rates and it really helps in determining when to do Roth conversions and which accounts to withdraw from first.”

However, he says, “Money Tree is behind the curve when it comes to technology. It’s spreadsheet-based and you can tell. It’s tough to do interactive planning with clients, and it isn’t really designed for that. It also doesn’t integrate with any other software.” eMoney, by contrast, has more features when it comes to working with clients and integrates with a lot of third-party software, he says.

“If we could combine the technical and tax ability of Money Tree with the interface, integrations and tools of eMoney, I believe we’d find a perfect solution for our planning software,” Michels says.

Erin Voisin, director of financial planning at EP Wealth Advisors in Torrance, Calif., uses both eMoney and MoneyGuidePro. “MoneyGuide is great to show various risk/return scenarios, but because it is goal-based, I feel it limits the conversation with a client,” she says. “eMoney is a cash flow-based software that really allows you to have a deeper conversation with clients, not only about their portfolios, but on spending, distribution planning, tax planning and estate planning.”

Morgan Stanley’s 16,000 advisors use LifeYield in order to implement tax-efficient accumulation and withdrawal strategies for their clients.

“This technology gives a financial advisor a quicker, more efficient method to review a client’s multi-account portfolio and recommend strategies designed to help improve after-tax returns,” says Jed Finn, chief operating officer at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management.

LifeYield says it is “the industry’s only tax-efficient portfolio software with actionable multi-account advice.” It is now being rolled out at some of the major custodians.

“Taxes are the single biggest cost in investing,” notes Jack Sharry, LifeYield’s chief marketing officer. His company’s software can help increase a client’s after-tax income by one-third, he says. “We show people how to accumulate assets but also how to withdraw assets more tax efficiently, and we quantify the benefit in dollars and cents. No one else does that.

“The basic idea is that if you can figure out a way to take money out of multiple accounts in a tax-efficient way, you will have more money to spend in retirement.”