Orion Planning spent the last few months quietly making big moves to make your life, and the lives of your clients, easier and more intuitive to plan and maintain. We’ve been busy refining workflows, enhancing flexibility, and responding to advisor feedback with practical updates that can bring real value to your day-to-day. Whether you're running retirement projections, modeling equity comp, or helping clients visualize charitable legacies, these enhancements are designed to support your planning strategies and simplify your tech experience. 

Below is a countdown of the top 10 enhancements from the past year. You can also check out these new features in action by watching our full video update.

 

10. Windfall What-If 

Sudden liquidity events can be hard to model, so we’ve made it easier. The Windfall What-If scenario gives advisors a quick and accurate way to reflect future lump sums, like inheritances or payouts, directly in a plan. You can control tax status, timing, and ownership, and the system will handle how the windfall flows through taxes, net worth, and estate. This replaces the need to manually simulate these events using workarounds or secondary goals. 

Want to find it in planning? Follow these clicks!  
Orion Connect > Orion Planning > Proposed Plan > Profile > What if I experience a windfall event? 

9. Behavioral Finance Without Full Planning 

You can now engage clients with Orion’s BeFi tools without requiring a full financial plan. Advisors can explore client psychology using PulseCheck or 3D Risk Profile tools as standalone experiences, making them even more ideal for building a strong foundation in early-stage relationships. This opens the door to deeper conversations sooner and makes it easier to personalize the planning experience from the start. 

Wondering where it lives in Planning? Click this way. 
Orion Connect > Orion Planning > Plan Access > Behavioral Finance (set financial planning to “false”) 

8. Enhanced Equity Compensation Modeling 

Planning around RSUs, ISOs, and NQSOs just got a lot smarter. You can now specify grant, vest, exercise, and sale timing and let Orion Planning apply the correct tax treatment automatically, including qualifying ISO dispositions. You no longer need to track these events outside the plan, which helps ensure tax logic and projections are more accurate. 

This update also includes better tools for modeling ISO and NQSO expirations. New fields let you define exercise and expiration years, improving accuracy on balance sheets and cash flow models. 

Want to try it out yourself? Start with these steps. 
Orion Connect > Orion Planning > Profile > Equity Compensation 

7. Custom Deferred Compensation Payouts 

Deferred comp plans rarely follow simple linear patterns. Now, you can create custom year-by-year payout schedules with full control over timing and dollar amounts. You’ll also see the simulation year and client age during setup, making input more intuitive. 

Advisors can choose to include deferred comp balances in net worth reports with a single checkbox, no more manual tracking or clunky workarounds. 

Need to track it down? Here's the path inside Planning. 
Orion Connect > Orion Planning > Profile > Other Assets > Deferred Compensation 

6. Default Distribution Order Controls 

Control the sequence of account withdrawals; firm-wide, advisor-level, or within a specific plan. This update makes it easier to model decumulation strategies that align with your clients’ tax preferences or income goals. Firms can set global defaults, but advisors can override them for flexibility when building plans. 

Here’s how to find them: 
Orion Connect > Orion Planning > Application Settings > Default Distribution Order 

5. Invest Saved Cash with Custom Allocations 

Now, advisors can assign custom asset allocations to surplus cash instead of defaulting to a basic cash return. This better reflects how advisors handle cash in the real world, ensuring excess income is put to work and integrated into broader investment strategies. Set it once at the firm or advisor level and let the system take it from there. 

Make these enhancements by following this path in Planning. 
Orion Connect > Orion Planning > Application Settings 

4. Unequal Ownership Modeling 

Split accounts and assets between spouses, trusts, and entities using custom ownership percentages. This enhancement is ideal for blended families, business ownership, and estate planning scenarios. Unequal ownership impacts are reflected in both net worth and estate calculations, helping you model community property and separate ownership with precision. 

Get more precise with your ownership options. 
Orion Connect > Orion Planning > Accounts/Other Assets > Owner 

3. Streamlined Charitable Giving Workflow 

You can now model QCDs, DAF contributions, and outright gifts using a dedicated charitable giving workflow. The tool integrates tax calculations, estate impact, and planning goals in one place, simplifying the conversation and making charitable planning more accessible. 

Support your charity-conscious clients by following this path. 
Orion Connect > Orion Planning > Add Goal > Charitable Giving 

2. Longevity Analysis for Retirement Plans 

Longevity assumptions are built right into retirement simulations, which means no more external lookups or static estimates. The tool uses gender-based (or uniform) life expectancy tables and shows clients their survival probabilities, retirement status, and Monte Carlo outcomes all in one view. That means better context and smoother conversations. 

Find it in the Retirement Planning section by following these clicks. 
Orion Connect > Orion Planning > Retirement Planning 

1. Enhanced Net Worth + Estate Summary Reporting 

Net worth reports now bundle balance sheets and estate summaries into one cohesive deliverable. You can select which layers to include, such as net worth, estate, or entity summaries, and the system dynamically creates a client-friendly PDF. It’s a faster, more intuitive way to tell the full financial story. 

See the enhanced reporting here.
Orion Connect > Orion Planning > Generate PDF > Net Worth 

Bonus Round Updates! 

While they didn’t make the top ten, these enhancements might be worth a look: 

  • Push notifications to clients when files are added to Vault 

  • Default investment settings for new accounts 

  • Estate enhancements like custom heir pathways and DOB entry for beneficiaries 

  • Custom Monte Carlo confidence ranges 

  • Improved Roth phaseout and student loan deduction handling 

See it for Yourself 

Want a visual walkthrough of these features? Check out the full Top 10 Enhancements Video from our Orion Planning team. 

These updates are designed to help advisors build plans that feel more realistic, more personalized, and more aligned with the way real clients live their lives. Whether you're managing compensation packages, modeling legacy goals, or simply helping a client understand how long their assets might last, these tools are here to support that mission. 

Keep exploring. Keep building. And stay tuned for more enhancements coming your way.