Accounting Today - April 19, 2010

The Extended version is a more detailed cash-flow tool with a sophisticated tax engine, with updates for current tax tables and inflation values. It provides a more comprehensive treatment of incomes, expenses, assets and liabilities, stock options, and taxes, and is an excellent package for practices that need more extensive capabilities.

NaviPlan remains the most flexible of the basic analysis packages, incorporating the simplicity of the Financial Assessment in NaviPlan Standard with more extensive stock option modeling and goal-setting. This flexibility and a commitment to better usability make it a standout among basic analysis products in an economical but very effective package.

Review
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NUMBERCRUNCHER/
FINANCIAL ANALYZER II
Leimberg & LeClair Inc.
(610) 924-0515
www.leimberg.com

NumberCruncher and Financial Analyzer II are simple but effective financial planning tools that include several directed to basic analysis.

NumberCruncher couples numbers, graphics, and cli-ent-ready explanatory text for applications that include a Life Settlement Number Cruncher, DeCoupleCruncher for clients that have decoupled holdings in one or more states, an Estate Planning QuickView, a Retirement Plan Analyzer and the Financial Analyzer II. NumberCruncher itself handles more than 100 computations — from 16 of the most common financial analysis ratios, to computation of QPRTs, GRATs, charitable remainder and lead trusts, and private annuities — in a fast and straightfor ward package that uses familiar columnar calculations.

Included in its analysis tools are those that compute four key numbers used in evaluating common stock investments; five key figures that are useful in analyzing bond investments; a computation of the compound annual rate of return on an investment; tracking of the life of an investment over 45 years; and a comparison of two investments with respect to gain or loss, total return and holding period return.

Financial Analyzer manages over 75 different financial planning computations to solve clients’ mortgage, investment, financial, loan and depreciation problems. Like NumberCruncher, it is a fast and simple Windows application that allows results to be integrated into documents or presentation materials. Also of note is the Retirement Plan Analyzer, which evaluates pension and profit-sharing distribution strategies, computing an almost unlimited number of alternatives under methods such as discretionary or attained age. It includes minimum distribution rules, has been updated with the most current tax tables, and prints comparative graphs of the generated data.

These applications are not full-fledged basic analysis systems, but they do provide an economical and easy-to-use method of handling the widest possible range of basic analytical tasks. They remain attractive in their simplic-

ity, effective results and appeal to sole professionals or small offices.

PROFILES PROFESSIONAL
EISI Inc.
(888) 692-3474
www.eisi.com

Profiles Professional is a comprehensive and cash-flow-driven financial planning solution with 14 modules for analysis, financial planning, estate planning and sales support for the professional. It covers a wide range of financial planning topics, with substantial emphasis on retirement considerations such as retirement fund acquisition and disbursement, asset allocation planning, disability, long-term care and death. It is offered in three formats — a desktop version, the Web-based Profiles On Demand, and a hybrid Universal Desktop Application format that augments the desktop with some online capabilities.

In the most current version, the focus is on enhanced scenario presentation, as well as on streamlined client data entry and management; changes to the left-side navigation system; and a Retirement Asset Results Timeline to track contributions, withdrawals, growth and account balance over the life of the plan.

In terms of basic analysis, the core functionality in Profiles Professional is found in the included Ibbotson asset allocation module; and in the portfolio analysis, portfolio allocation, portfolio re-allocation and portfolio rebalancing systems. In addition, enterprise-level fi rms have access to the Morningstar Advisor Workstation Enterprise Edition, with access to rich contextual data regarding stocks, bonds and mutual funds, as well as substantial practice management tools. And there are additional modules that include the Ibbotson Security Classifier, a database of over 30,000 mutual funds, individual securities and variable annuities that may be used to classify a client’s current holdings into multiple asset classes for portfolio analysis.

Profiles Professional is a flexible package with strong financial planning capabilities and a simple, but effective, set of basic analysis tools. Planners dealing with portfolios that are not stock- and fund-intensive will find everything they need in this package, though more extensive portfolio operations may require it to be augmented by an external research and analysis package.

RETIREMENT PLAN ANALYZER
Brentmark Soft ware
(800) 879-6665 ext. 115
www.brentmark.com

Retirement Plan Analyzer is another tool that provides support for a slightly different form of basic analysis — the ability to analyze specified pension and Roth IRA programs as part of a comprehensive basic analysis.

It is one of an array of such tools from Brentmark Software that also includes Estate Planning Tools, Retirement Distributions Planner, Kugler Estate Analyzer, Charitable Financial Planner, RetireNow, Estate Planning QuickView and the Savings Bond Toolkit.

Retirement Plan Analyzer is used to evaluate various
strategies of taking distributions from traditional IRAs,
Roth IRAs, Roth 401(k)s and other qualified retirement
plans. It calculates up to four alternatives simultaneously
for varying types of distributions, and handles the intri-
cate analyses required for effective retirement planning,
estate planning, income tax planning, Roth IRA manage-
ment and modeling/reporting.

STOCKOPTER PRO
Net Worth Strategies Inc.
(541) 383-3899
www.net worthstrategies.com

StockOpter Pro is a specialized analysis tool aimed at providing insights and analysis for the participants of employee equity compensation programs. Though more than 10 million employees hold employee stock options, there are surprisingly few tools that assist in integrating company stock and options into the overall financial plan — much less provide the tools needed to analyze, model and diversify these assets appropriately.

StockOpter Pro is built on the Microsoft Excel platform, but with specialized toolbars and functions that enable advisors to compare the resulting taxes and cash flow of various diversification strategies and then optimize the appropriate strategy for efficiency.

Though aimed at the broader application of stock option planning — maximizing terminal wealth and optimizing the subsequent after-tax cash flows, the strength of StockOpter Pro is in its analytical capabilities to reduce the risk of concentration in one or a limited handful of stocks.

It does this by contrasting the value of the company stock and options to the value of an investment account over a 15-year or shorter horizon, then enabling what-if scenarios to determine how these assets will perform against different strategies and stock price assumptions. The application enables equities from more than one corporation to be modeled, helping to manage the diversified careers of today’s highest-level executives.