ProjectionLab v5 Early Access Guide

We’re excited to open Early Access and get your feedback.

For this release, we rebuilt much of ProjectionLab’s backend and infrastructure and gave the app UI a major redesign. ProjectionLab is now easier to use and more capable, while still feeling familiar.

There’s a lot to explore, and your feedback will help us get it ready for general release. Before you start testing, work through this guide to make sure your plans are set up correctly.

For a full overview of the update, see What’s New.

Review your plan after migrating

1. Confirm your Main Plan

Use the plan selector at the bottom of the left sidebar to choose the plan you want to review.

Every profile now needs a Main Plan. To confirm or change yours, select All plans, open the three-dot menu on the plan you want, then select Set as main plan.

Because Fixed Date plans have their own starting conditions, they cannot be your Main Plan. If you previously used only Fixed Date plans, you may see a new plan named My Plan.

2. Existing Fixed Date plans

Starting Conditions no longer has its own page. To review or edit the starting accounts, assets, and debts for an existing Fixed Date plan, select that plan and edit Net Worth.

To update current balances or account history, select your Main Plan or another plan that starts now and uses today’s Net Worth, then edit Net Worth.

3. Your Household

Open Household and review each person’s Life Expectancy. This can affect when the plan ends and the timing of inheritances, survivor benefits, and filing status changes.

4. Check accounts that need attention

All accounts now live in Net Worth.

If an account previously existed only inside a plan, it could not be carried over automatically. The same applies to any related contributions or transfers.

On Home, check Refine your plan. If you see Review this plan’s accounts, select Review to see the affected accounts.

For affected accounts:

1. Open Net Worth and select Add Account. A zero balance is fine for a future rollover or transfer destination.
2. Open Flows and recreate any related contribution or transfer. Review Pay From, Send To, and the conversion source where applicable.

Once you select Got it, the list of affected accounts cannot be reopened.

5. Net Worth and account history

Open Net Worth and make sure your totals, accounts, assets, and debts look right.

Check Owner for accounts associated with a child or other related person. The owner determines whether an account is included in your household’s Net Worth. For education accounts, also confirm the Recipient.

Account history is now tracked at the account level. Because the previous version tracked progress categorically, ProjectionLab estimated how your historical totals were divided among your accounts. Select Edit history in Net Worth to review or change those estimates.

Within each account, asset, or debt, Details contains its current information. Plan contains what happens later, such as growth, fees, contributions, and withdrawals.

If you use rental depreciation or an offset account, review Initial Building Value on the property and Offset Accounts on the loan under Settings.

6. Liquidity and withdrawals

If you customized when an account can be used, open it in Net Worth and select Settings.

Review Liquid, Qualified Age, Early Withdrawal Penalties, and Penalty Rate where shown. These settings now come from Net Worth and apply across plans by default.

If you previously used different Qualified Age or penalty settings in different plans, select each plan, open the account’s Settings, and use Override for this plan beside the field.

Within the account, open Plan, then Withdrawals. Confirm whether it should be Always, When Liquid, or Never.

7. Tax workarounds and integrations

If you manually modeled the Child Tax Credit, Credit for Other Dependents, Deductible Self-Employment Tax, or QBI Deduction, review those workarounds. These are now calculated automatically for US plans, so a manual adjustment may count the same item twice.

SEP IRA, Solo 401k, and Roth Solo 401k now have dedicated account types and contribution Flows. If you previously modeled one using a workaround, review whether you want to replace it.

Plugins and integrations need to be updated for this release. Some may not be ready for Early Access yet, and their developers may need time to update them.

8. Explore the update

With the migration checks out of the way, use ProjectionLab as you normally would and explore what’s new.

Share feedback

Join the Early Access discussion in the ProjectionLab Discord. We also added a new Feedback page to the left sidebar, so give it a test.

As always, you can email us at support@projectionlab.com.