Evaluating a change
Changing the software your practice runs on
Most Australian practices evaluating software already run something. This covers what to ask before you move, and what Souffle can take in.
The market you are choosing from
Australian advice software is concentrated. Industry reporting puts Iress Xplan at roughly 62 per cent adoption for planning and modelling and about half the market for client relationship management, with Morningstar AdviserLogic and Midwinter each near 9 per cent and Plutosoft around 5 per cent. Roughly 15,100 advisers sit on ASIC’s Financial Advisers Register, so this is a small market in which most practices are comparing a known incumbent against a challenger.
Those are third-party survey figures, reproduced here for orientation. Souffle has not been benchmarked against any of these products, and nothing on this page claims it performs better than one. See Money Management and Adviser Ratings for the underlying research, and each vendor’s own site for what that product claims to do.
What follows is the part we can state from our own codebase: what Souffle can take in, and what to settle before you move.
What Souffle can take in
Migration runs on CSV. There is no direct connector to another vendor’s system, so what you can bring across is bounded by what your current provider will export.
Clients
Client records import in bulk from CSV, or can be created one at a time. A record carries personal and partner details, family members, addresses, employment and the advice relationship.
Entities
Companies, trusts, partnerships and SMSFs each import in bulk from CSV as well, and each keeps its own financial position alongside the individual it is linked to.
Leads
Enquiries in progress import from CSV with their status, source and estimated value, so a pipeline mid-flight does not have to be rebuilt by hand.
Financial position
Assets, income, expenses, liabilities, goals and protection are entered against the client or collected through the pre-meeting form. Confirm the position data you hold today, and how you intend to bring it across, before you commit to a date.
Four questions to settle first
1. What does your current provider let you export?
This decides your options, not the new vendor's import feature. Ask for the export formats in writing, covering client records, file notes, documents and any historical advice records — and ask before you give notice.
2. What has to arrive on day one, and what can follow?
Active clients, live enquiries and upcoming reviews usually have to be there. Archived files and long-closed records are often better left in an export you retain and can search.
3. Who does the work, and when?
Migration lands on the same administrators who are running the practice that week. Agree the scope, the sample to check first, and who signs off that a record came across correctly.
4. What breaks in the meantime?
List the systems that touch client data today. Souffle publishes no integration inventory, so treat any connection you depend on as a question to settle in the demo rather than an assumption.
Take the long version with you
The software evaluation checklist covers eight areas to test in a vendor demo, with the evidence to ask for in each. It applies to every vendor on your shortlist, including this one.
Common questions about switching
Does Souffle import directly from Xplan or AdviserLogic?
There is no direct connector to another vendor's system. Clients, leads, companies, trusts, partnerships and SMSFs import in bulk from CSV, so a migration runs on the export your current provider gives you.
Can we run both systems side by side for a while?
Nothing in Souffle prevents it, and a period of overlap is a common way to check a migration before committing. Your existing contract and its notice terms, rather than the software, usually decide how long that overlap can run.
What happens to our data if we leave Souffle?
Ask for this in writing from any vendor, including this one, and settle it before you sign rather than after. It is on the evaluation checklist for the same reason.
Is switching advice software worth it?
That depends on what is not working now and what it costs you. Bring a real workflow to a demo, run the same scenario with each vendor, and compare what was demonstrated against what needed a follow-up answer.
Get started
Bring your current setup to the demo
Tell us what you run today, what your export looks like and which workflows have to survive the move. We will walk through the ones that matter to your practice.