This FAQ answers the most common questions about Goals, Goal Mapping, Gap Analysis, and the Retirement projection. Goals is an advisor planning workspace under Planning → Goals. Clients do not open this workspace directly; share selected results through a delivered Guide.

A new client can have no goals. Choose Add Goal and select Retirement, Education, Liquidity, Debt Payoff, or Other.

If a goal exists but its amounts are zero or incomplete, check:

Goals does not infer that every retirement account belongs to Retirement or every bank account belongs to Liquidity. The advisor must map the dollars intentionally.

Yes. Open the Retirement goal and select Projection. It provides Portfolio, Income, Spending, and Gap Analysis views in Chart or Table format.

Use Planned to follow the saved spending plan exactly. An underfunded portfolio can run out before the plan horizon. Use Sustainable to scale the same year-by-year spending pattern to the highest level the portfolio can fund through the end of the plan and any legacy goal.

The projection is deterministic. It does not provide a Monte Carlo probability of success or model market volatility and sequence-of-returns risk.

Current is the balance allocated to the goal from Assigned Accounts. Fully funded is the amount the goal requires today under its current assumptions.

This comparison answers whether enough assets are already set aside. It is different from the balance required at a future goal date. Open the goal to see the calculation and timing behind the benchmark.

Current is the regular monthly savings allocated to the goal, including applicable employer contributions. Target is the full monthly contribution required by the goal.

The target is not only the additional amount above current savings. Subtract Current from Target when you want to discuss the monthly savings gap.

When you explain the table to a client, separate the two questions it answers:

A goal can be ahead on one measure and behind on the other. For example, a household can have a strong existing balance but still need to raise monthly savings, or it can be saving at the target rate after starting with too little. Open the goal before making a recommendation so you can explain which measure creates the gap.

Some goal assumptions are derived from Profile or Household data. Changing spending, an adult's retirement age or life expectancy, an income record, or an account balance can update the goal.

This keeps the plan connected to its source data. Use a manual override only when the planning assumption should intentionally differ. If the source record is wrong, correct it instead of overriding the goal.

Open the goal's Assigned Accounts view or Goal Mapping → Assignments. Confirm the account exists in Profile and that the correct portion of its balance and monthly savings is allocated to the goal.

A fixed assignment allocates an exact amount. A remaining assignment receives what is left after other fixed assignments. Review remaining assignments after changing another goal because the amount can move automatically.

Avoid allocating more than the account holds or saves. If linked balances are stale, refresh the institution rather than creating a duplicate manual account.

Yes. Split the balance and monthly savings through Goal Mapping. Use fixed amounts for explicitly earmarked dollars and one remaining assignment when a goal should receive the unallocated portion.

The same dollars should not be fully counted toward several goals. Review the assignment matrix and its over-assignment warnings before relying on the progress figures.

Funding sequence redirects portable monthly savings after a non-retirement goal is projected to remain funded. Open Goal Mapping → Funding sequence, choose the destination goal, or leave the amount as future unallocated cash.

When Retirement is the destination, choose the contribution's tax treatment: Taxable, Tax-deferred, or Tax-free. The projected release date depends on current assumptions, assignments, and savings and will move when those inputs change.

In the proposed budget, Spending is the balancing line. Kerdora holds the other displayed cash-flow categories in the comparison, raises savings and applicable debt payoff to the amounts required by the goals, and solves for the spending level that balances the proposed budget.

The PLUG amount is not pulled from Profile and is not automatically saved. It is the spending level the household would need under that fully funded scenario. Use it to discuss trade-offs, then decide what recommendation is realistic.

Open Profile → Cash Flow → Income and add Social Security as an income record. Create a separate record for each household member who will receive a benefit. Enter the amount using the correct frequency and set the owner and start timing.

The Retirement projection reads the income record directly. If the record is monthly, enter the monthly value and choose Monthly. Do not multiply it by 12 and then also label it monthly.

If Social Security appears in the wrong year, check the start timing and owner. Use What If inside Retirement to test a temporary reduction without changing the saved income record.

Kerdora does not select the client's ideal claiming age for you. The Retirement What If tool can test a temporary reduction to the entered benefit, but it cannot change the claiming age or benefit start timing. To compare different claiming strategies, update the saved income timing and amount for each scenario, record the result, and restore the adopted plan deliberately. Make sure the amount and frequency describe the same benefit. A monthly benefit should be entered as a monthly amount with Monthly selected.

Planned spends the retirement plan as entered. Sustainable changes only the scale of the year-by-year spending pattern while keeping the source income, contribution timing, tax rules and household tax profile, return assumptions, withdrawal order, plan horizon, and legacy goal in place. Annual withdrawal and tax amounts are recalculated because spending changes.

An overfunded plan can support more than 100% of planned spending. That means modeled headroom, not a calculation error.

The retirement spending calculation is year-specific. It combines the spending plan with inflation, applicable income, contributions, taxes, withdrawals, return assumptions, and the plan horizon. Because those values change over time, Sustainable is not a simple account balance divided by the number of retirement years. Use the Spending, Income, Portfolio, and Gap Analysis views together to see what drives the result.

Yes. Open the Retirement goal and select What If. Test retirement timing, returns, plan end year, legacy amount, spending, or a Social Security reduction. Presets provide common scenarios, and Find earliest retirement tests when the plan first works at the current savings level.

What If results are temporary. If the client adopts the scenario, update the relevant saved assumption or source record deliberately.

The household can have one Retirement goal. The Add Goal menu removes Retirement after it exists. You can create additional Education, Liquidity, Debt Payoff, and Other goals when the client needs separate people, timelines, liabilities, or targets.

Use clear names so the Goals table, assignment matrix, and Funding sequence remain understandable.

No. The advisor's Goals, Goal Mapping, Gap Analysis, Retirement What If, Projection, Assigned Accounts, and Client Summary are not portal workspaces.

Use a Guide to share selected goal results and explanations. Use a client task when the client needs to upload a document, confirm information, or complete an action. Review any client-supplied Profile data before relying on it in the goal.

When you present a goal, avoid describing a single number as a promise. Explain the assumptions, the current funding position, the monthly savings gap, and the trade-off the household can control. For Retirement, also explain that the projection is deterministic: it shows the result under the selected assumptions and does not express a probability of success.

Work backward through the data flow:

If a saved goal still fails to calculate after the required inputs are complete, contact Kerdora Support with the client name, goal type, the unexpected value, and the assumptions you expected it to use. Do not send account credentials.