Plan Zone is where a tax scenario's analysis turns into an actual strategy. You stack recommended moves (a Roth conversion, an HSA contribution, a charitable gift), watch the combined tax impact update as you tune the amounts, and then either save the stack as a new scenario or convert it straight into Changes to Be Made for the client.
Open any scenario under Planning > Taxes and click Plan Zone. The header keeps a running scoreboard: how many moves you've stacked, how many items are flagged for the report, and the total tax impact of the stack, green when it saves money.
Plan Zone has two modes, toggled at the top: Model moves (the default, where you build the strategy) and Review brief (where you review the summary and judgment items).
Where the Moves Come From
The Recommended moves section lists opportunity cards generated from this scenario's analysis plus Kerdora's observation rules. Each card shows the move, its category (Income, Deductions, Credits, Payments, Investments, Benefits), a default dollar amount, and a Details toggle with the full explanation.
You can filter the list by category, sort by Impact or Category, and Dismiss cards that don't apply to this client (a Dismissed toggle lets you see and restore them later).
Below the opportunities you'll find Manual levers: the same card format, but for moves you define yourself when you want to model something Kerdora didn't suggest.
Building the Stack
Click Add on any card and it joins the Strategy stack panel on the right. For each stacked item you can:
Edit the amount — every item has a dollar input, so "max the HSA" can become "$4,300" or whatever fits this client.
See its incremental tax impact — each item shows what it alone adds or saves, given everything else in the stack.
Remove it — one click takes it back out.
The Modeled result panel updates with every change: the total tax impact of the whole stack, plus the deltas for Federal tax, State/FICA, AGI, and Balance due. Below that, a Tax bridge walks from the base tax through each move to the modeled total, so you can see exactly which move does the work.
Order of operations matters less than size. If a stack saves less than you expected, check whether one move is eating another's headroom (a big conversion can push income past the bracket or threshold another move was counting on). The incremental numbers per item make this easy to spot.
Acting on the Stack
Two buttons turn the model into something real:
Save scenario — Saves the stack as a new tax scenario, with all the moves applied to the inputs. The original scenario stays untouched, and you can put the two side by side on the Compare page.
Create changes — Converts the stacked moves into Changes to Be Made on this client. Each move becomes a change item you can assign and track, and the card shows a link to its change so nothing gets created twice.
Review Brief Mode
Switch to Review brief when you're wrapping up. It has two parts:
Advisor brief — A structured summary of the scenario: counts of active, modelable, and report-flagged items, your Top priorities with their suggested actions, a Data to gather list of missing inputs worth chasing before the next meeting, and the base metrics (AGI, taxable income, total tax). This brief is also what Dora, the Kerdora assistant, uses as planning context for this scenario.
Review prompts — Items that need your judgment or more data rather than a modeled dollar amount. Each prompt can be turned into a change (Create change), flagged for the report, or dismissed.
The Report button on any card controls whether that item appears in the brief and the scenario's report output. Use it to curate what the client-facing story includes; Reset report puts everything back.
A Workflow That Works
Import the client's tax return and build the baseline scenario from it.
Read the Analyze view: headline numbers, thresholds, items to review.
Open Plan Zone, add the moves worth testing, and tune the amounts until the stack looks right.
Save scenario, then check it against the baseline on the Compare page.
When the client agrees, Create changes so the moves land on the client's action list.
Common Questions
What's the difference between Add and Report?
Add puts a move into the strategy stack so its tax impact gets modeled. Report controls whether the item appears in the advisor brief and report output. A move can be reported without being modeled, and modeled without being reported.
I dismissed a card by mistake.
Click the Dismissed toggle in the Recommended moves controls, find the card, and hit Restore.
Does saving a stack change my original scenario?
No. Save scenario creates a new scenario with the moves applied. The base scenario is never modified by Plan Zone.
What happens when I click Create changes?
Each stacked move becomes a change item in Changes to Be Made for this client, in the matching category. The opportunity card links to its change and shows Done, so re-running Plan Zone won't duplicate it.