The Liquidity goal helps you figure out how much cash reserve a client needs, typically an emergency fund or short-term liquidity cushion. You set a few inputs, the calculator does the math, and you get a target amount plus a recommended monthly savings rate you can track against the client's actual accounts.
To find it, go to Planning → Goals for any client, then click the calculator icon on a Liquidity goal row, or click into the goal's detail page where the calculator is always visible on the left.
Setting Up the Calculator
The Liquidity calculator walks through four steps.
Step 1: Months of expenses to cover
How many months of living expenses the client should have set aside. Enter a whole number.
Common starting points:
3–6 months for a dual-income household with stable W-2 jobs
6–9 months for a single-income household
9–12 months (or more) for self-employed clients, business owners, or clients with variable income
There's no universal right answer. Use your judgment based on income stability, job security, and risk tolerance. The question itself is a great conversation starter.
Step 2: Monthly expenses
The client's average monthly spending. This field works in two modes:
Derived (default): Kerdora pulls the number from the client's total spending in Profile → Cashflow and divides by 12. You'll see a small link icon indicating the value is being pulled from client data.
Manual override: Click the link icon to switch to manual mode and type a custom number. Useful when recorded spending doesn't reflect actual burn, or when modeling a different scenario.
Click the link icon again to flip back to derived mode.
Step 3: Target date
The month and year the client should be fully funded by. This drives the recommended monthly savings calculation. If they already have enough saved, this date has no effect on the target amount, it just defines the runway for closing any shortfall.
Step 4: Expected yield on savings
The annual rate you expect the reserve to earn, entered as a percent. For a high-yield savings or money market account, something in the 3–5% range is reasonable. Leave at 0% if you'd rather not model yield.
The yield matters because it reduces how much the client has to save each month to hit the target. Higher yield, lower required contribution.
How the Target Amount Is Calculated
The target is auto-computed from the first two steps:
Months of Expenses × Monthly Expenses = Target Reserve
If you set 6 months and monthly expenses of $8,000, the target is $48,000. You'll see a summary below the inputs:
You need a reserve of $48,000 to cover 6 months of expenses.
You can override the target on the goal row if you want a different number. When you do, the summary keeps showing the months-based figure for reference and flags the override with a badge.
Reading the Results
Once all four steps are filled in, the calculator shows two key outputs.
Recommended Monthly Savings
This is the monthly contribution needed to hit the target by the target date, accounting for the current balance assigned to the goal and the expected yield. If the client already has enough saved, this drops to $0.
Tip: adjust the Target Date or Expected Yield to see how the recommended monthly savings shifts. Pushing the date out lowers the required contribution. Bumping the yield does too.
Balance Progress
This compares the client's current liquid assets (from accounts assigned to the goal) against the target amount. If the client has $30,000 assigned and the target is $48,000, the bar shows 62.5%.
Savings Progress
This tracks how much the client is currently saving per month toward the goal versus the recommended monthly savings. If current contributions exceed the recommendation, you'll see a green "over" indicator. If they're under, it shows in red, and that gap becomes a clear Change to Be Made.
Assigning Accounts
To track progress, assign accounts to the goal. Click the bank icon on the goal row (or scroll down on the goal detail page) to open the account assignment panel.
Typical accounts for a Liquidity goal:
Savings accounts
Checking accounts (if earmarked for emergency reserves)
Money market accounts
Click Assign Accounts and check off the relevant ones. Each account can be assigned as "rest" (the full balance counts toward this goal) or a specific dollar amount (if only part of the account is earmarked for liquidity).
Tips for Client Conversations
Start with the number of months. Ask the client how many months of expenses they'd feel comfortable having set aside. Most people haven't thought about this explicitly, and the question itself is valuable.
Use it as a gut check. The Liquidity goal isn't about complex projections. It's a simple benchmark: does the client have enough cash on hand? If the bar is green and full, move on. If it's low, that's a Change to Be Made.
Adjust for life changes. A client switching from W-2 to self-employment? Bump the months up. A couple going from one income to two? You might lower it.
Model the path, not just the destination. Once the target is set, play with the target date and yield to find a monthly savings number the client can actually commit to.