Buyer's guide
Financial planning software in Australia: a guide for advisers
Who uses what, the categories of product on the market, what the vendors publish about cost, the regulation that is changing the feature list, and how to evaluate a shortlist. Third-party figures are cited to their source; no product here has been benchmarked by Souffle.
Published 23 September 2026 · Facts last reviewed 23 September 2026
About this guide
Australian financial advice runs on a small number of software suites and a long tail of specialist tools. If you are choosing software for a practice, the first job is to understand which category each product sits in, because a product comparison across categories is rarely useful — a client portal, a paraplanning service and an all-in-one suite answer different questions.
This guide sets out the market as it stood in September 2026: who uses what, the categories of product, what the vendors publish about cost, the regulation that is changing the feature list, and how to run an evaluation. Third-party figures are cited to their source. Souffle has not benchmarked any product named here, including its own, and nothing below should be read as a ranking.
The market
The market in numbers
Every figure names its source. Follow the link before you quote one; several are updated annually.
| Measure | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Advisers on ASIC's Financial Advisers Register | 15,146 | |
| Practices using Iress Xplan for planning and modelling software | 62% | Netwealth AdviceTech research, as reported by Money Management, 2024 |
| Practices using Xplan as their CRM | 51% | Netwealth AdviceTech research, as reported by Money Management, 2024 |
| Planning software share of AdviserLogic, Midwinter and Plutosoft | 9%, 9% and 5% | Netwealth AdviceTech research, as reported by Money Management, 2024 |
| Advisers working in privately owned licensees | More than 75% | |
| Investment platforms used per adviser | 2.0, down from 2.6 in 2021 | Investment Trends 2025 Adviser Technology Needs Report, July 2025 |
| Technology spend per practice each year | About $38,000 | Investment Trends 2025 Adviser Technology Needs Report, July 2025 |
| Advisers already using AI tools | 61% | Investment Trends 2025 Adviser Technology Needs Report, July 2025 |
| Median ongoing advice fee | $4,668, up 18% in a year |
Adoption surveys differ in sample and method — Netwealth's and Investment Trends' figures are not directly comparable — so treat them as direction rather than measurement. The register count is a point-in-time figure that moves every week.
The landscape
The categories of product
Each product is described in one line from its own vendor's website as read in September 2026, and listed alphabetically within its category. Nothing here is a ranking.
All-in-one advice suites
The systems a licensee expects a practice to run on. Each combines a CRM with a client-completed fact find, modelling, template-driven advice documents, compliance records, platform data feeds and a client portal. They are quoted privately, usually per user and per module.
- Fin365Fin365 Pty Ltd
- A CRM and practice-management suite built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 and installed into the practice's own Microsoft 365 tenant, with platform data feeds and revenue tracking; modelling and advice documents come from integrated partners rather than the product itself.
- Iress XplanIress Limited
- A modular, fully hosted platform spanning client records, fact find, cash-flow and retirement modelling, advice document merging, product research, portfolio administration, revenue management, a client portal and a large integration ecosystem. The most widely used planning software in Australia on the survey figures above.
- Midwinter AdviceOSBravura Solutions
- A cloud suite with CRM, a client-completed dynamic fact find, strategy and multi-goal modelling, product and insurance comparison, Statement of Advice and Record of Advice generation and a client portal, sold alongside a separate digital advice product for superannuation funds.
- Morningstar AdviserLogicMorningstar
- A cloud suite combining CRM, risk profiling, projection modelling, document generation and compliance tools, with Morningstar research and data embedded and a Zapier connector for other systems.
- PlutosoftPlutosoft
- An Australian CRM and advice-production platform organised as an Adviser Hub, a Client Hub and a Licensee Hub, with a branded client portal, platform data feeds, product research and an AI advice agent announced for September 2026.
- intelliflo officeintelliflo
- A suite of UK origin with an Australian edition covering onboarding, a client portal, cash-flow modelling, product research and documentation, with trust and SMSF modelling added in 2025.
- DASHDASH Technology Group
- Financial planning software sold together with the vendor's own investment platform, digital advice journeys and a marketplace of partner tools.
Practice CRMs and client engagement tools
Products that manage the relationship and the practice rather than produce the advice. Some practices run one of these beside a suite; others pair one with a paraplanning service and stand-alone modelling.
- AstuteWheelAstute Wheel Pty Ltd
- Client engagement tools — a financial health check, questionnaires, live calculators, strategy papers and a client portal — with published per-adviser pricing.
- myprosperityHUB24
- A white-labelled client portal and mobile app with a live balance sheet from data aggregation, a document vault and e-signature, priced per practice.
- MoneysoftMUFG Pension and Market Services
- Account aggregation and cash-flow coaching for clients, with a two-way synchronisation into Xplan.
- PractifiPractifi
- A practice CRM built on Salesforce, with AI agents added in 2026, and operations now centred in the United States.
- Salesforce Financial Services CloudSalesforce
- A general-purpose CRM configured for financial services, used by some Australian advice firms and priced per user per month on the vendor's public price list.
- WorksortedWorksorted Pty Ltd
- A practice CRM organised around jobs and templates, with an audit trail, ongoing-service and consent tracking, revenue, billing and adviser remuneration.
Advice production, product comparison and file review
Tools that sit inside or beside a suite to produce the advice document, compare products or check the file. Several of them plug into Xplan, intelliflo or Midwinter rather than replacing them.
- AsendiumAsendium
- Automated fact finds, strategy papers, file notes and Statements of Advice built from a library of strategies, with product comparison across platforms.
- Fourth LineFourth Line RegTech
- Machine-learning review of advice files for licensees, used for pre-vet and post-vet checking.
- OmniLife and the Omnium APIOmnium Technologies
- Life insurance premium comparison and needs analysis across Australian insurers, with published per-adviser pricing; the same engine powers the insurance comparison inside several suites.
- PaduaPadua Solutions
- Paraplanning as a service alongside an advice-generation portal for discovery, comparison and recommendation, plus advice file audits.
- ProductRexARdata (Adviser Ratings)
- Superannuation, pension and investment product comparison in a form ready to paste into a Statement of Advice, offered free to advisers and embedded in other vendors' products.
AI assistants built for advisers
The category that appeared between 2024 and 2026. These turn meeting recordings into file notes, pre-meeting briefs and first-draft advice text, and most publish per-adviser monthly pricing. Check where each one hosts data and what its terms say about training on your clients' information before you trial one.
- AdviseWellAdviseWell
- File notes, Records of Advice and Statements of Advice drafted from meetings, with checks the vendor describes against ASIC regulatory guides, and a free tier.
- AlcovaAlcova
- An AI assistant and an operator for Statements of Advice, reviews and email compliance, connected to Salesforce, Dynamics 365, HubSpot and Microsoft 365.
- ClarasKnkt Digital Pty Ltd
- Meeting recordings turned into file notes with compliance flags and pre-meeting briefs, integrated with Xplan, Microsoft 365, Salesforce and Zoom, with Australian hosting stated on the vendor site.
- MarlooMarloo
- Meeting capture, advice documents, PDF form filling and email summaries, integrated with the main calendar and video-meeting tools.
- ParadinoScale Up Platform Solutions Pty Ltd
- File notes, paraplanner requests, strategy papers and Record and Statement of Advice drafting, with connectors to intelliflo office, Worksorted and ProductRex.
SMSF administration, portfolio and platform data
Not advice software, but the systems an advice suite is expected to take data from. Ask any vendor on your shortlist which of these it connects to, in which direction, and how often the data refreshes.
- BGL Simple Fund 360BGL Corporate Solutions
- SMSF administration software which BGL says is used for more than half of all self managed super funds, with a free open API for partner software.
- ClassHUB24
- SMSF, trust and portfolio accounting with data feeds and registry connections, and partner integrations into the advice suites.
- HUB24 and NetwealthHUB24 Limited; Netwealth Group
- Investment platforms whose daily data feeds reach Xplan, AdviserLogic, Midwinter and Plutosoft, and, in Netwealth's case, a public API offered through its business development managers.
- SharesightSharesight Ltd
- Holdings, performance and capital gains tax reporting for off-platform assets, with a REST API and a business plan priced per portfolio.
Specialist tools
Bought, not built, by every suite: e-signature, identity verification, open banking, estate planning and aged care. A practice that runs on a lighter system usually adds one or two of these.
- Aged Care Steps and Aged Care GurusAged Care Steps Pty Ltd; Aged Care Gurus
- Aged-care advice generators covering accommodation payments, home care and Centrelink treatment, with Word advice documents; neither lists an API for other software.
- AnnatureAnnature
- Australian e-signature with identity verification and AML screening, priced per envelope and per check, and built into Xplan.
- BasiqBasiq Pty Ltd
- Consumer Data Right accredited account and transaction data for pre-filling a fact find, priced per user per month with a platform fee.
- Inherit Australia and YodalInherit Australia; Yodal Pty Ltd
- Adviser-led estate planning routed to a panel of lawyers, with a client document vault; Inherit publishes per-plan and monthly pricing.
Names you will still see on old lists
Older “alternatives” articles keep circulating products that have been renamed, absorbed or withdrawn. As checked on 22 September 2026:
- Advice Intelligence
- Absorbed into GBST's advice solutions after GBST acquired it in 2023; the original domain no longer resolves.
- Lumiant
- The vendor's home page states the product is currently unavailable to the public.
- CCUBE and AdviserNETgain
- Neither site serves a product page any longer.
- Xeppo
- Now Netwealth Unify.
- Advice Revolution
- Now elemnta, and no longer a digital fact find product.
- Moneysoft
- Owned by MUFG Pension and Market Services, not by Iress.
What it costs
Almost no Australian advice suite publishes a price. What the vendors do say, and the one independent measure of what practices actually spend:
- Iress Xplan, Midwinter AdviceOS, Morningstar AdviserLogic, Plutosoft, intelliflo office and Fin365 all quote privately. Midwinter's pricing page describes pricing per team member by module — a base CRM plus product, insurance, strategy, portal and data-feed modules — without figures.
- The AI note-taking and drafting tools are the exception: Claras, Paradino, AdviseWell and Alcova publish per-adviser monthly prices on their sites, broadly between A$50 and A$350 a month at September 2026, several with a free tier.
- Client engagement tools such as myprosperity and AstuteWheel publish per-practice or per-adviser monthly pricing on their sites.
- Investment Trends puts technology spend at about $38,000 a practice a year (July 2025). Set against a median ongoing advice fee of $4,668 (Adviser Ratings, August 2025), that is a meaningful line in a small practice's accounts, which is why the software's effect on hours matters more than its list price.
- Souffle is quoted per practice after a demo and does not publish pricing. The same rule applies to us as to everyone else on this page: get the quote in writing, itemised by user, module, implementation and any data feed.
The rules
The regulation shaping the feature list
Four pieces of regulation decide what advice software has to do in 2026 and 2027. Each moves; check the linked source before relying on it, and treat none of this as legal advice.
Ongoing fee consent has replaced the fee disclosure statement
The first tranche of the Delivering Better Financial Outcomes reforms is law. For ongoing fee arrangements entered since 10 January 2025, and existing arrangements from their first anniversary after that date, the fee disclosure statement is abolished and a single written consent covers renewal and deduction from the product account. Software that still centres on FDS production is describing the old regime.
The Statement of Advice is still required
The second tranche, which would replace the Statement of Advice with a Client Advice Record, was released in draft in March 2025 and the Government announced in August 2026 that it would proceed. No bill had been introduced as at 23 September 2026, and the new record would start twelve months after any Royal Assent. Vendors are handling it as template updates; ask how a product would render the new record from the same client data.
Advice records must be kept for seven years
ASIC's record-keeping instrument for personal advice was extended in 2024 and runs to 2029. Advice documents, file notes and consents have to be retrievable per client with evidence of who changed what, which is why an audit trail is on every licensee's due-diligence list.
AML/CTF customer due diligence changed on 31 March 2026
AFS licensees giving advice are reporting entities, and new initial customer due diligence obligations apply from 31 March 2026. Identity document capture alone is no longer the whole job; ask how a product records verification and risk.
Source: FAAA AML/CTF hub
Automated decision-making disclosure from 10 December 2026
Under the 2024 Privacy Act amendments, a privacy policy must from 10 December 2026 disclose the kinds of personal information used by computer programs that make or substantially assist decisions significantly affecting a person. Any AI feature that shapes a recommendation is in scope, so ask an AI vendor how it supports that disclosure.
Source: Norton Rose Fulbright summary of the Privacy Act amendments, December 2024
How to run the evaluation
Four habits that separate a good evaluation from a set of vendor demos:
- Decide the category first. If your practice needs advice document generation, product comparison and platform feeds in one system, you are choosing among the suites; a CRM or a portal is an addition to that choice, not an alternative to it.
- Bring the same fictional household to every demo — a couple with an SMSF and a trust is a good test — and record which steps were demonstrated, which needed an integration and which needed a follow-up answer.
- Ask for the export before you ask about the import. What your current provider will hand back decides the migration, whatever the new vendor's import tool can read.
- Get pricing itemised and in writing: per user, per module, implementation, data feeds, support and the terms for leaving.
The long version
The software evaluation checklist covers eight areas to test in a vendor demo with the evidence to ask for in each, and the switching page covers what to settle before you move.
Our place in it
Where Souffle fits
Souffle is Australian advice practice software, not a full suite. Placed in the categories above it sits between the practice CRMs and the suites, and it is fair to say exactly where.
What it has
One client record with partner, family, employment, identification, file notes and the advice relationship, plus SMSF, trust, company and partnership entities as records in their own right, each with its own financial position
A lead pipeline with a branded pre-meeting fact find, six financial position dashboards with reports, and a questionnaire builder with adviser and client comments
Tasks with reminders and recurrence, kanban boards from reusable workflow templates, appointments the client confirms by link, email templates and bulk email
Superannuation and investment projections on practice-level assumptions, fifteen calculators including stamp duty, land tax and income tax, and ASX and exchange-rate market data
A branded client portal where clients add their own entries, complete questionnaires and read documents; hosting in AWS's Sydney region; CSV import for every record type
A public directory of every adviser on ASIC's Financial Advisers Register, which no suite offers
What it does not have
Statement of Advice or Record of Advice generation and a merge engine
Platform data feeds, portfolio performance reporting and product or insurance research
A fee-consent workflow, an audit trail and a compliance checklist inside the document build
Third-party e-signature, calendar or mailbox synchronisation, and accounting integration
AI note-taking or AI-drafted advice text
If your practice produces its advice documents in Word and holds research elsewhere, Souffle can run the client, entity, fact find, workflow and portal side today. If those four gaps are conditions of your licence or your workflow, say so at the demo and we will give you a straight answer about fit. The Xplan alternative page sets the same comparison out against one product.
Questions advisers ask about software
What software do most Australian financial advisers use?
On Netwealth's AdviceTech research as reported by Money Management in 2024, about 62 per cent of practices use Iress Xplan for planning and modelling software and about 51 per cent use it as their CRM, with Morningstar AdviserLogic and Midwinter AdviceOS each near 9 per cent and Plutosoft around 5 per cent of planning software. Survey figures differ by sample, so treat them as direction rather than measurement.
What does financial planning software cost in Australia?
The full suites quote privately, usually per user and per module, and none of Iress, Midwinter, Morningstar, Plutosoft, intelliflo or Fin365 published a price list at September 2026. AI note-taking and drafting tools publish per-adviser prices broadly between A$50 and A$350 a month. Investment Trends puts total technology spend at about $38,000 a practice a year. Souffle is quoted per practice after a demo.
Is there free financial planning software?
No full advice suite is free. ProductRex offers product comparison free to advisers, several AI tools have a free tier, and Souffle publishes free public calculators for compound interest, mortgages, savings goals, budgets, take-home pay, superannuation and salary sacrifice. None of those replaces a practice system.
Should a practice choose an all-in-one suite or best-of-breed tools?
Investment Trends' 2025 report found 23 per cent of advisers prefer one end-to-end system, 22 per cent prefer an open architecture of connected tools and 36 per cent are agnostic, and that advisers now use 2.0 investment platforms on average. The practical test is integration: list the systems your data has to move between and ask each vendor to demonstrate the movement, not describe it.
Will the Client Advice Record change which software I need?
Not yet. The Client Advice Record was released in draft in March 2025 and the Government said in August 2026 it would proceed, but no bill had been introduced as at 23 September 2026 and the new record would start twelve months after Royal Assent. The Statement of Advice remains the legal document. Ask any vendor how it would render the new record from the same structured client data, so the change becomes a template update rather than a migration.
Is Souffle a full advice suite?
No. Souffle covers client, lead and entity records, the fact find, tasks and workflow, modelling, calculators, document templates and a branded client portal. It does not generate Statements of Advice, take platform data feeds, compare products or connect to an e-signature service. The Xplan alternative page sets out the difference in detail.
Get started
See where Souffle fits your practice
Bring the same fictional household you take to every demo. We will show what Souffle does with it and say plainly where another tool would have to take over.