LivePlan Has a New Look — Even Better Planning and Management
Posted Kody Wirth
We’ve just released a LivePlan update designed to streamline your work and make planning, forecasting, and monthly review even easier. It includes a full navigation overhaul, making LivePlan more intuitive, and expanding the usefulness of some of our best forecasting and reporting tools. This work is the culmination of hundreds of conversations with advisors like you, guiding our team to build the best tool for you and your clients.
This is LivePlan strategic advising reimagined.
Streamlined navigation
As a strategic advisor, you need to start with the numbers — getting LivePlan connected to accounting data and diving right into the forecast section. With that in mind, we found that the original top navigation was too forceful in how it encouraged a specific order of operations for doing LivePlan work.
This updated Left-rail navigation is designed to open up the way that you manage your work within LivePlan. The new menu takes up less space, makes switching between sections much easier, and even features a collapsable format to offer even more screen space for working.
It’s simply a more elegant navigation solution. One that not only makes LivePlan easier to work with but sets the stage for it to become an even more sophisticated product moving forward.
Putting your business first
Our co-branding feature is a unique benefit only available to strategic advisors. However, we recognized that the logo display took up precious screen real estate. There was a need to simultaneously improve the experience, while still featuring your advising practice.
Now your logo is prominently displayed in the upper left section of the screen, in place of the LivePlan logo, which has been shifted down to the base of the new navigation menu. It utilizes screen space more effectively, allowing you to better work with clients in LivePlan without sacrificing a branded experience.
You work hard to make LivePlan’s forecasts and reporting valuable for your clients, and we want your practice to shine.
Clear accounting connection
Using accounting data is crucial for your strategic advising work. LivePlan’s accounting connection is used to create new forecasts, bring in updates to LiveForecast, and ensure correct data is displayed in the Dashboard and Benchmarks sections — truly everywhere you do strategic advising. One piece of feedback we regularly received was that it was difficult to find the “connect to accounting” and “sync” button, making this necessary function a potential roadblock.
The new UI update brings the QuickBooks and Xero connection front and center. It will always be at the top of your screen, no matter where you are currently working in LivePlan. You no longer have to go hunting around for the option to connect. It also showcases how your accounting data can be used outside of the reporting Dashboard when comparing industry Benchmarks and to enhance your Forecasts with LiveForecast.
Explore unique scenarios
Exploring forecasting scenarios is a vital part of helping your clients anticipate potential issues and opportunities. It helps them explore and understand the health of their business based on different decisions and the impact on their financial results. In short, you’re helping them be prepared for whatever comes their way.
In LivePlan, this Forecast Scenario feature has always allowed you to adapt a financial forecast to explore potential results without disrupting the original forecast. You can run multiple forecast scenarios while still retaining your previous work in your original forecast. Similar to connecting to QuickBooks and Xero, this is an incredibly valuable feature that was previously difficult to find.
To make it more accessible, the Scenario dropdown menu has been renamed and simplified. It now makes Forecast Scenarios more prominent and simplifies your ability to showcase changes to their strategy and business operations, whether it’s hiring a new employee, opening a new location, or finding a way to cut expenditures.
LiveForecast additions
We introduced LiveForecast™, a one-click button that displays actual results for completed periods right into your forecasted Profit and Loss statement, earlier this year. We’ve been incredibly excited about the feedback from strategic advisors and how they’re leveraging this new feature to upgrade their forecasts.
From the start, LiveForecast was designed to evolve over time. LivePlan’s new navigation introduces the first of these updates by making the forecasting area larger.
You will now see more monthly columns of data in one adaptive view. You can even turn on or off which months utilize the LiveForecast results, creating even more accurate cash and profit projections to enhance your advising capacity. This is just the first step in making your LiveForecast more useful and easier to review.
We truly believe in how powerful financial forecasting is for small business success and you can expect more updates to LiveForecast and other LivePlan forecasting tools in the near future.
Room to grow
The LivePlan team continues to explore new opportunities to engage with our community and customers. This new visual overhaul and accompanying features have all been driven by your feedback and support. As you begin exploring your updated version of LivePlan, you may notice some blank space at the bottom of the app.
We see the need to better engage within the app itself and are looking for opportunities to bring more direct messages, instructions, and announcements right to you. Webinar announcements, direct access to help center articles, recommendations, and exclusive offers are just a few of the things we’ll be showcasing moving forward.
Of course, we still want your feedback to make the most of this new communication space. Let us know what you’d like to see and if there are any specific resources that will help you and your business grow.
Let us know what you think of LivePlan’s new look
We know that you want to find better ways to strategically guide your clients’ business efforts. Our team is dedicated to making continued improvements that help you do just that. This UI refresh not only streamlines and highlights the most useful features in LivePlan but makes it easier for us to bring you new and exciting updates moving forward. LivePlan’s new look sets the stage for the future of better business management and strategic advising.
For current LivePlan advisors, please reach out to our team of customer advocates and let us know about your experience and if you have any feedback. We look forward to continue improving the forecasting and planning experience for you and your business.
