Editing my plan preferences does not change my individual account level settings. Why?

Q - I've edited some the default savings and investment growth rates in the Plan Preferences (to the right side of the Preferences screen) but the growth rates on the individual savings and investments in plan remain unchanged. Shouldn't these adjustments to the defaults in preferences affect the growth rates applied to the items in my plan? 

A - There are several things that might prevent edits to default savings and investment growth rates from actually being applied to the accounts in your client case.  For example, 
once you set an assumption differently at the item level, it overrides any changes to the preferences. In other words, if I edit the growth rate or asset allocation for an individual investment, it will stay edited, no matter what I do at the preference level. 


ISSUE 1: Are your updates to the growth rates preferences disregarded for ALL of the accounts in your client case? 

1) Check at least a couple of the accounts on the Savings, Investments, or the Pensions > Money Purchase or Drawdown Pensions screen. 

- If you find that "Use Asset Allocation" (or for savings accounts, the "Use 100% Cash Allocation") check box is ticked, asset allocations are being used to derive the growth rate for each account from market assumptions rather than a using a fixed growth rate. 

Changes to the default Savings or Investment Growth Rate % in on the Preferences screen would not affect the growth rate applied to these accounts since an asset allocation is being used to determine this. 

You can view this asset allocation under Advanced Settings > Asset Allocation or for Savings, the assumption will be that of a 100% cash asset allocation. 

If you try to untick the Use Asset Allocation option and are not allowed to do so, an additional growth related preference is likely set to grow all accounts using asset allocation. You can find and disable this preference, if necessary, on the Preferences screen in Plan Preferences, to the right side of the screen, under Calculation Settings. Untick Grow [All] Accounts Using Asset Allocation. By unticking this preference and then clicking Apply (bottom-right), you will be given the option to grow accounts using either a fixed growth rate or an asset allocation. 

NOTE: Unticking the Grow [All] Accounts Using Asset Allocation preference will deactivate asset allocation based growth rates for all of the savings, investments, money purchases, and drawdown pensions (current or future) in the client case. If you switch off this preference, please be sure to review all of the accounts in your client case to verify whether the growth settings, as found under Advanced Settings > Growth (or Growth & Yield), are set appropriately. 

2) When editing the default Savings or Investment Growth Rate % in Preferences, be sure that you are making edits in the Plan Preferences, to the right side of the screen. The System Preferences, to the left side of the screen, are only using going forward, when creating new client cases. 


ISSUE 2: Updates to the default growth rates preferences are only being applied to some but not all of the savings and investments in the client case. 

If you or anyone else has at some point edited the growth rate for an account at the account level -- in the Advanced Settings > Growth panel -- this will override the default preference going forward. Any future changes that you make to default growth preferences will not affect the growth rate for that particular account. 

If you have at some point edited the growth rate at the account level and want to revert the account back to use of the default growth rate, open Advanced Settings > Growth, clear the Growth Rate % field (leaving it null), and click Update. This will clear the edited growth rate, which will then be replaced by the original default growth rate.