Observations are Kerdora's way of scanning a client's plan and flagging things worth attention. Each flag is a rule evaluating the client's data against a threshold and spitting out a card when something crosses the line.
Every advisor-only client page has a flag icon in the top-right bar. Click it and you land on the Observations page, which lives under Planning → Changes (the dedicated Observations view). The number on the icon is the count of active flags waiting for review. Office → Home also surfaces your active observations alongside open changes and tasks, with an Observations count you can click to jump to the full list. And when you're on the Changes page, there's a "View observations" button next to the filters that opens a side panel with the same list — handy when you're already mid-way through building out a client's action items.
Today there are more than 90 rules running. Each one looks at a narrow question, like "is this adult underinsured?" or "is there a 529 goal for this kid?", and only fires when the answer clears a floor that filters out noise.
Where to find them
Planning → Changes → Observations. The full page view. Active, Dismissed, and Converted tabs sit across the top. This is where you work through everything in one pass.
Changes page side panel. Advisor-only "View observations" button at the top of the Changes page opens a right-docked panel with the same active list. Convert and dismiss work the same way. Good for triaging when you've already got Changes open.
Top-right flag icon. Every client page has it. Number shows active count. Click to jump straight to the Observations page.
Office → Home. Your active observations are surfaced here alongside open changes and tasks, with a count tile that links to the full Observations page.
The four kinds of flags
Every rule is tagged as one of four kinds, with the most actionable ones at the top.
Strategic changes. Gaps and opportunities worth addressing. Life insurance shortfalls, high-interest debt with idle cash sitting in checking, retirement goals that aren't fully funded, umbrella coverage that's too light for the net worth. These are the ones you'll usually convert into Changes to Be Made.
Observations. Fact-based findings about the plan that you should know about but don't always require action. A concentrated stock position, a retirement replacement ratio below benchmark, a joint asset that's imbalanced between spouses, a Roth IRA contribution lost to the phaseout, a liquidity ratio below the CFP 3-month floor, cash flow consumed almost entirely by spending + debt service. Investigate, then decide.
Plan hygiene. Housekeeping flags about the plan data itself rather than the client's finances. These catch the gaps and inconsistencies that quietly throw off net worth, cash flow, or coverage math: an account or asset with no balance entered, an account or debt with no owner assigned, a debt with a balance but no payment amount, a retirement account whose name points at one spouse while the owner field points at the other, an insurance policy that's already expired but still on file, a homeowners policy that isn't linked to a property, or a tax scenario that includes income, deductions, or accounts that don't appear anywhere else in the plan. The fix is updating the data, not advising the client.
Reminders. Date-driven heads-ups. A client turning 65 (Medicare), a client turning 73 (RMDs starting), April tax deadline, Q4 estimated tax deadline, open enrollment. Awareness, not homework.
What gets checked
A sample of the rules currently running, to give you a feel:
Life insurance gap. Compares current coverage against the need calculated on the Insurance tab. Fires when the gap is over $10,000.
Disability insurance gap. Same idea, on the disability side.
DI elimination period exceeds liquid runway. Per-policy. Flags a disability policy whose waiting-period days exceed the household's liquid cash runway — the insured would run out of money before benefits start.
Umbrella liability gap. Flags when umbrella coverage looks light for the household net worth.
Umbrella without underlying limits. Umbrella policy exists but auto or homeowners liability limits don't meet the umbrella's threshold.
Retirement shortfall. Looks at a retirement goal's assigned balance vs. the lump sum needed today to hit target at expected returns. Fires on a gap over $25,000.
Roth conversion window. Flags years where the client is in a lower-than-usual tax bracket and has room to convert without bumping brackets.
Roth IRA phaseout missed. Client is in the phaseout range and contributed anyway.
Spousal IRA opportunity. One spouse with earned income, the other without an IRA contribution.
401(k) match not maxed. Employer match available, client contributing below the match cap.
ARM reset approaching. Mortgage is ARM and the fixed period ends within a year or two.
Mortgage PMI still paying. Home has enough equity that PMI could be removed.
Mortgage refinance opportunity. Current rate is materially above today's prevailing rate.
High-interest debt with surplus cash. Client is sitting on idle cash while carrying debt above a rate threshold.
Cash drag. Too much in cash relative to the plan.
Cash flow tight or negative. Spending + annual debt service consumes 95%+ of gross income, leaving no room for savings or shocks. Escalates when total outflow exceeds gross income (the household is shrinking).
Liquidity ratio below 3 months. Liquid bank balances cover less than three months of essential outflows (spending + debt service). Below the classic CFP floor.
Concentration risk. A single underlying name is more than 10% of the portfolio, or a single sector is more than 30%. Sees through fund wrappers — a 100% allocation to VTI doesn't trip the rule because no underlying name dominates, but a sector ETF or single-stock ETF still counts as a single-name position.
Tax return and plan data mismatch. A tax scenario includes facts that don't have matching planning records. The plan-hygiene flag described above.
Asset missing balance. An account or asset is in the plan but has no balance entered. That leaves net worth, liquidity, and goal funding understated until it's filled in. An intentional $0 is fine; this only fires when the field was left blank.
Account or debt missing owner. An asset or active debt has no owner assigned. Owner drives the tax bucket, estate and titling, and contribution limits, so a blank owner leaves those calculations guessing.
Debt missing payment amount. An active debt carrying a balance of $500 or more has no payment recorded. Without it, cash flow, debt-to-income, and payoff-priority math are all off.
Retirement account owner/name mismatch. The account name mentions one household member but the owner field points at another, like "Sally's 401(k)" sitting under Bob. Usually a data-entry slip worth fixing before it skews ownership-based analysis.
Insurance policy expired. A policy's end date is in the past. Expired coverage still showing on the plan overstates how protected the client actually is.
Homeowners policy not linked to property. A homeowners policy isn't tied to a property in the plan, which blocks the property-level coverage-gap check from running.
Beneficiaries need review. Accounts where the named beneficiary hasn't been reviewed in the configured window.
No contingent beneficiaries. Primary beneficiaries on file, but no contingents.
Minor children no guardian. Minor dependents present, no guardianship designation on record.
Revocable trust unfunded. Client has a revocable trust but no assets titled into it.
Stay-at-home parent uninsured. Household has a non-earning parent with no life insurance.
Upcoming birthdays. Milestones like 65 (Medicare) and 73 (RMD start).
April tax deadline / Q4 estimated tax. Calendar reminders.
Each card expands to show the numbers it compared (current, needed, gap) so you can see the "why" without hunting.
Rules that use derived spending
Several cash-flow and insurance rules — Cash drag, Cash flow tight or negative, Liquidity ratio below 3 months, DI elimination period exceeds liquid runway — read derived spending rather than only the manual Profile → Cash Flow numbers. Derived spending pulls from the client's actual transaction history in Spending (under Planning → Spending) when it's available, and falls back to manual Cash Flow entries when it isn't.
The practical effect: as you clean up a client's transactions, these observations get sharper. If a client has linked accounts but Spending is messy, expect some of these flags to look noisy until you've categorized the obvious recurring items.
How concentration risk handles funds
Concentration risk used to fire on any large single position. It now looks through diversified fund wrappers using EODHD holdings and sector data, so the rule is more useful in real client portfolios:
A diversified fund (broad ETFs like VTI, total-bond funds, large index mutuals) is not counted as a single-name position. The rule looks at the fund's underlying sector allocation instead and contributes each sector pro-rata.
A concentrated wrapper (sector ETF, single-stock ETF, narrow active fund) is counted as a single-name position so a concentrated bet hidden inside an ETF still trips the rule.
A direct stock (AAPL, employer stock) always counts as a single name, contributing its full value to one ticker bucket and one sector bucket.
This means a client who's 100% in VTI doesn't get a false single-name flag, but the rule still catches concentrated employer stock, sector tilts, and single-stock ETFs.
What to do with a flag
Every active card has three paths:
Convert to change. Click the check mark. The convert modal opens, pre-fills a change description from the rule's suggested wording, and pre-picks a Change category based on the rule's tag (insurance, investments, cash flow, etc.). Confirm and it drops into Changes to Be Made on that client. The observation moves to the Converted tab.
Dismiss. Click the X. Good for noise, duplicates, or something you've already handled outside the plan. Dismissed flags live on the Dismissed tab and can be reinstated if they turn out to matter later.
Ignore. Leave it sitting. Observations re-run every time the page opens, so if the underlying data changes, the flag updates or disappears on its own.
Reminders don't get a Convert button, just Dismiss. They're not meant to become change items.
Jumping to the source
Most cards have an "Open details" link inside the expanded view that deep-links to the page where the data actually lives. An insurance gap takes you to the Insurance page for that adult. A retirement shortfall takes you to that goal's detail page. A beneficiary-missing flag takes you to Estate. Makes it quick to fix the root cause without digging.
A few reminders (tax calendar items, gift exclusion) don't have a natural page, so they stay non-clickable.
Seeing what a rule actually checks
Every rule has a threshold baked in. Life insurance gap floor is $10,000. Retirement shortfall floor is $25,000. Concentration risk uses 10% (single-name) and 30% (sector). Cash flow tight uses 95% of gross income. Liquidity ratio uses 3 months. High-interest debt uses a rate cutoff, and so on.
Right now those thresholds live in code and aren't user-configurable. When the rule catalog stabilizes, the plan is to let advisors tune thresholds or toggle rules off. For now, if a flag looks off or you want to know the exact numbers behind it, ping support and we'll walk through it.
Quick tip
Use Observations as your first pass on any client file. Open the client, click the flag in the top-right. Twenty seconds later you've got a list of gaps, data-quality issues, and upcoming dates you'd otherwise have to find by clicking through every tab.
Then convert the strategic ones into actual change items and you've got a starting agenda for the next meeting.