Goals is where you assess whether a client is on track financially. You'll find it under Planning → Goals inside any client. It answers the core question: "Given what this client wants to do, are they saving enough and do they have enough set aside?"
If you're coming from projection-based tools like RightCapital, Goals may feel different at first — and that's intentional. Kerdora doesn't show 30-year Monte Carlo projections or probability charts. Instead, it focuses on what's actionable today: how much does this client need, how much do they have, and what's the gap? This gives you a clear, conversation-ready answer you can walk through with your client — not a probability percentage that's hard to explain and easy to misunderstand.
What You'll See on the Goals Page
The Goals page shows a grid of all goals you've created for the client. Each goal displays two progress bars:
Balance Progress — How much the client currently has set aside toward this goal vs. how much they need. For example, if the target is $1,500,000 and they have $800,000 assigned, the bar shows 53%.
Cash Flow Progress — How much the client is currently saving per month toward this goal vs. how much they should be saving. If the target savings is $2,000/mo and they're saving $1,200/mo, the gap shows as "$800 under."
These progress bars give you an instant visual read on whether the client is on track — no digging into numbers required.
You can reorder goals by dragging and dropping them in the grid. Put the most important goals at the top so they're front and center during client conversations.
Below the goal list, you'll see the Goal Gap Analysis — a summary that pulls everything together across all goals. More on that below.
The Five Goal Types
When you click Add Goal, you'll choose from five types:
Retirement
The most common goal. The calculator determines how large a portfolio the client needs at retirement to sustain their spending, and how much they should be saving each month to get there.
Key assumptions you can adjust:
Spending Need — How much the client spends annually (pulls from Profile data by default)
Years Until Retirement — How many years until they stop working (derived from the oldest adult's age by default)
Tax Rate — Estimated tax rate on retirement withdrawals
Withdrawal Rate — The percentage they'll draw from their portfolio each year (default: 4.5%)
Investment Return and Inflation — Growth and cost-of-living assumptions
Additional Income — Other retirement income like Social Security or pensions
The calculator outputs a target portfolio amount (in today's dollars and future dollars) and a monthly savings target.
Education
Used for funding a child's education. Each Education goal is linked to a specific child in the client's household.
Key assumptions:
Current Education Cost — Annual cost of tuition today
Funding Percent — What percentage of the total cost the client plans to cover
Education Start/End Age — When the child starts and finishes school
Education Inflation Rate — How fast education costs are rising
Investment Return — Expected growth on education savings
The calculator outputs a future value needed, what that equals in today's dollars, and a monthly savings target.
Liquidity
An emergency fund goal. Simple and straightforward.
Key assumptions:
Months of Expenses — How many months of expenses to hold in reserve (default: 6)
Monthly Expenses — The client's monthly spending (pulled from Profile data by default)
The calculator multiplies these two numbers to get the target balance. There's no monthly savings target for Liquidity goals — it's just about having the right amount set aside.
Debt Payoff
A goal for paying down debt. The calculator builds a payoff plan across the client's debts and tells you how aggressively they need to pay to hit the target.
Key assumptions:
Strategy — Avalanche (highest interest rate first) or snowball (smallest balance first)
Solve For — Either solve for the number of months to be debt-free given a monthly payment, or solve for the monthly payment needed to be debt-free by a target date
For a deeper walkthrough of the Debt Payoff calculator and how to read its results, see Debt Payoff Goals: Setting Assumptions and Interpreting Results.
Other
A flexible goal for anything that doesn't fit the four categories above — a home purchase, a sabbatical fund, a business investment, a car replacement, or any other financial target. You set the target balance and target savings manually. There's no calculator for Other goals — it's a freeform container where you define what "on track" means for this particular goal.
Other goals still show up in the Goals grid with the same progress bars, and they're included in the Goal Gap Analysis just like Retirement, Education, Liquidity, and Debt Payoff goals.
How Goals Pull Data from the Profile
Many goal assumptions are derived — they automatically pull values from the client's Profile data. For example:
Spending Need on a Retirement goal comes from the client's annual burn rate (entered under Profile → Cash Flow)
Years Until Retirement comes from the oldest adult's age
Monthly Expenses on a Liquidity goal comes from the client's monthly spending
You'll see a small toggle icon on derived fields. When the field is in "derived" mode, it updates automatically as you change Profile data. You can always switch to manual mode and enter a custom value — the toggle lets you go back and forth.
This means you don't have to re-enter data you've already captured. Update income or spending in the Profile, and your goal calculations adjust automatically.
Assigning Accounts to Goals
Each goal tracks its current balance and current savings by looking at the accounts you assign to it. To assign accounts:
Click on a goal to open its detail page (or expand the goal row by clicking the bank icon)
Use the Assign Accounts dropdown to select which accounts count toward this goal
Each assigned account contributes its balance to Balance Progress and its monthly savings to Cash Flow Progress
For example, if a client has a 401(k) and a Roth IRA earmarked for retirement, you'd assign both to the Retirement goal. Their combined balance and monthly contributions would show up in the progress bars.
You can assign the same account to multiple goals if needed — Kerdora lets you split how much of an account's balance and savings count toward each goal.
The Goal Gap Analysis
Below the goal list, the Goals page shows a Goal Gap Analysis that answers two questions:
Step 1: Are you saving enough for your goals?
This compares the client's current total savings (across all accounts) to their total savings need (the sum of all goal savings targets). The difference is the Savings Gap — shown in green if they're saving more than enough, or red if they're falling short.
You can expand each row to see the breakdown: which accounts are contributing savings, any employer contributions, and which goals are driving the savings need.
Step 2: Can you afford to close the gap?
Even if there's a savings gap, it only matters if the client can actually afford to save more. This section looks at the gap alongside the client's current income deficit (income minus spending, savings, taxes, and debt payments) to calculate the Total Adjustment Needed.
Below both steps, a budget comparison table shows the client's current budget side-by-side with a proposed budget that meets all savings goals. It highlights exactly how spending would need to change — and by what percentage — to close the gap.
In that table, Spending is the "plug." It's the line Kerdora solves for. The proposed budget holds income, taxes, and giving where they are, raises savings (and any debt payoff) to the amount needed to fund the goals, and then sets the Proposed Spending to whatever's left so the budget nets to a $0 deficit. So the Proposed Spending isn't a number you typed in, and it isn't pulled from the Cash Flow tab (that's the Current column). It's the spending level the client would have to hit to free up enough to fund every goal.
Tips for Getting the Most Out of Goals
Start with data in the Profile. Goals is only as useful as the data feeding into it. Make sure the client's accounts, income, spending, and household members are entered before diving into goals.
Use the Extractor to populate data quickly. Upload the client's statements and documents, and the Extractor will populate accounts, income, and spending — which all flow into goal calculations.
Don't overthink the assumptions. The defaults are reasonable starting points. You can always fine-tune later. The goal is to get a directional answer, not a precise prediction.
Drag goals to reorder them. Put the most important goals at the top of the grid so they lead your client conversations.
Use the Goal Gap Analysis in client meetings. It's designed to be a conversation tool — "Here's what you're saving, here's what you need, and here's what would need to change."