SurgeTK News Center

A faster way to work with accounts, richer Value Add pages, and a more polished experience everywhere

This release is one of our biggest yet, focused on making everyday workflows faster and giving you more context and control over your household data.

All-new account details experience

We've completely redesigned how you view and edit accounts. Click any account row to open a new unified panel with everything in one place:

• Seven organized tabs: details, billing, one-time transactions, beneficiaries, history, and more, all in a single view
• View and edit in one place: see account information at a glance, then switch to editing without losing your spot
• A cleaner history: account changes now display as an easy-to-read timeline, so you can see what changed and when
• Assets, liabilities, and insurance too: those records now share the same streamlined panel design, so everything works the same way across the platform

Annotate your Value Adds

You can now click directly on items in your Value Add reports to add notes and context:

• Annotate individual accounts, assets, liabilities, and insurance policies right on the page
• Edit report-level details inline, including titles, household display names, disclaimers, and rates
• See exactly how RMD figures are calculated with a new calculation breakdown
• Switch between Value Adds with a redesigned, faster switcher

Account exclusions

A new Exclusions tab lets you control which accounts are included in Value Add calculations, so your reports reflect exactly the picture you want to present to clients.

Know where your data came from

Accounts, assets, liabilities, and insurance records now show a source indicator, so you can see at a glance whether a record came from a CRM sync, a file import, or was entered manually.

Household page improvements

• Advisor assignments now live in their own dedicated, easy-to-use dialog
• Client member cards have a clearer edit option
• A refreshed client info dialog with live photo preview and support for photo links
• Manage unlinked clients more easily, including the ability to remove them in bulk

Polish throughout

• Smoother, more consistent menus and dropdowns across the entire platform
• A redesigned advisor filter that's cleaner and easier to scan
• More compact buttons and toolbars so more of your data fits on screen
• Fixed an issue where the account history tab displayed allocation percentages as dollar amounts

The Import History table now shows all imports made by anyone on your team, not just your own. Each row displays who ran the import so your team has full visibility into data changes. Import reports and original file downloads remain restricted to the person who ran the import and firm admins — broad visibility without unexpected access to sensitive artifacts.

We’ve released a refreshed SurgeTK app experience with cleaner, more consistent screens across key workflows.
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You’ll notice smoother loading states, more consistent buttons and forms, improved spacing, cleaner tables and modals, and better responsiveness across areas like Households, Imports, Reports, Billing, Settings, Integrations, Onboarding, Surge, and Value Add workflows.

We also improved how Value Add reports reflect active household and account information after updates, helping reports stay clearer and easier to review.

This release focuses on speed, polish, and behind-the-scenes reliability work.
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Highlights

Surge generation is significantly faster. We parallelized how value-add reports render inside a surge run, delivering up to a 4x improvement in throughput on larger batches. Surge previews also load more reliably across environments.
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Improvements

The Settings page now loads faster — we removed redundant lookups that were running on every page open.
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We refined the slider input behavior in settings so changes are tracked correctly when typing values directly into the field.
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Fixes

Resolved a small inconsistency in the surge preview loader.
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Under the hood

We reduced the number of background connections SurgeTK opens to its job queue, which improves stability under load and lowers the chance of throttling during peak surge runs.

Added a lightweight uptime endpoint so our monitoring can detect and alert on availability issues faster.
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Platform and security updates

Routine upgrades to core libraries that power our API, database driver, PDF generation, real-time updates, and background jobs. These include several security patches and keep SurgeTK on currently supported versions.

This release includes a set of reliability improvements to household creation, contact imports, and the Reports page.

What's new

You can now update households via spreadsheet without including client details. Upload a spreadsheet that contains only Household IDs and household-level fields like Lead Advisor or Marginal Tax Bracket, and SurgeTK will update those households — no Client ID or client name needed in every row. Useful for bulk advisor reassignments and quick household-level field updates.

Bug fixes

• Manual household IDs now work with imports. When you create a household manually, the Household ID shown on the details page is now a copyable, full identifier you can paste into a spreadsheet to update that household. Previously the displayed value couldn't be matched by the importer, so update attempts ended up creating duplicate households.
• Reports page search now matches client names. The Households view on the Reports page now searches against the head of household's first or last name in addition to internal IDs. Typing a partial name like "smith" returns matching households.
• Imports no longer create empty households. When an import row would create a brand-new household but is missing client name or Client ID, that row is rejected with a clear error message — instead of silently creating an empty household with no client attached.
• Advisor auto-linking now respects the Lead Advisor role. The contact import only auto-links the Advisor column to team members who are classified as Lead Advisors. Team members with other roles (Admin, Assistant, etc.) are no longer attached to households as the Lead Advisor on import. Their imported names appear in Settings → Team Members → Unlinked Imported Advisors for an admin to reconcile manually.
• Demoting a Lead Advisor properly cleans up linked references. When you change a team member from Lead Advisor to a different role, the platform now also clears their links from imported advisor records and any related advisor fields. Previously some of these references persisted and could resurface on a later import.

Value-Add Reports now stay current automatically — no need to click "Refresh" before viewing them.

What's new

• Always current data. Whenever you update an account, owner, beneficiary, insurance policy, liability, or asset, the Beneficiary, Buckets, Guardrails, Net Worth, Homework, and 1099 reports recompute automatically the next time you open them.
• Owner changes picked up instantly. Re-link an account to a different client or set a missing owner, and the Beneficiary Report reflects the change the moment you view it.
• Unlinked accounts now visible on the Beneficiary Report. Accounts that aren't linked to an owner now appear under a clearly labeled "Unlinked Accounts" section with a warning, so you can spot data that needs cleanup at a glance.

Manual Value Add Creator (New Feature)

You can now create Value Adds manually for any household — no automated calculation required. This is ideal for one-off scenarios, prospect meetings, or cases where you want full control over the inputs.

Four Value Add types are supported at launch:

• Guardrails
• Buckets
• Net Worth
• Beneficiary

Cleaner, More Reliable Surge Output (Improvement)

Surge packets now consistently reflect the most current Value Add data. We've also refined PDF rendering for manually-created Value Adds so layouts stay clean and properly spaced across page breaks.

Settings Updates Apply Immediately (Improvement)

Updates to company information and Value Add settings now take effect across the platform right away — including in the sidebar — without needing to refresh the page or sign back in.

Account Imports — Foundation for What's Next (Enhancement)

We've reworked the account import pipeline behind the scenes to make it more reliable and easier to extend. You shouldn't see any change in day-to-day import behavior, but this sets the stage for upcoming import enhancements.

Platform Stability (Behind the Scenes)

• Modernized the database connection layer for improved long-term reliability.
• Added isolated review environments for new changes so every update can be fully validated before it reaches your firm.

This release ships a set of reliability fixes for household imports and manual household creation, polish updates to the Guardrails and Buckets value-add reports, and a few small usability fixes on the Household Details page.

What's improved

The Guardrails and Buckets comparative tables now lead with Monthly Income above Distribution Rate. Reading the table top-to-bottom, Monthly Income — the figure most clients ask about first — now sits directly under Portfolio Value, with Distribution Rate as the supporting detail beneath it.

Empty cells in the Distribution Rate row of the Guardrails and Buckets tables now display as clean blank space instead of bordered empty boxes. The Upper Guardrail and Lower Guardrail cells in this row are intentionally blank by design — guardrails define thresholds on portfolio value, not on rate — and they previously read as if data had failed to load.

Disabled Value-Add cards on the Household Details page (cards for Value-Adds your firm has turned off in Settings) no longer navigate when clicked. The "turned off in Settings" tooltip continues to appear on hover, but now after a subtle half-second pause rather than instantly, so it doesn't fire while you're moving past the card.

Bug fixes

• Spelling fix on the Guardrails report. The "CURRENT DISTRUBUTION" label under the value bar was misspelled. It is now correctly spelled "CURRENT DISTRIBUTION".
• Households export search matches Head of Household names. Searching your Households export by name now matches against the Head of Household field, aligning with the column most users expect to search.
• Manual household IDs are portable to CSV imports. When you create a household manually and later reference it by ID in an import, the ID format is now consistent with imported households. Previously, manually-created household IDs could cause import-update operations to miss those records.
• Imports with missing household names are rejected up front. Rows that don't include a household name are now blocked at validation rather than creating partial or unnamed records.
• Refined how Lead Advisor role changes propagate across household assignments and permissions. (Users may need to log out and back in once for permission changes to take effect.)
• Permissions are correctly applied when a user is promoted into or demoted out of the Lead Advisor role, including their access to household data appropriate to the new role.
• CSV import rows that only update household-level fields process correctly. Previously, import rows containing only household-level updates (without accompanying client or account changes) could be skipped or misprocessed.

Behind the scenes

This release includes upstream dependency patches across our third-party integrations. No user-facing behavior change — we're keeping dependencies current and patched against known CVEs.

This release includes a set of accuracy and reliability improvements to the billing page, the plan-change drawer, and the Unlinked Accounts modal.

What's new

The plan-change drawer now updates in real time. As you adjust the number of seats, switch billing cycle, or apply a promo code, the order summary updates immediately with credits for unused time, prorated upgrade charges, due-today amount, and next-charge amount — all sourced directly from Stripe.

Bug fixes

• Seat counter floor now uses Lead Advisor count. The minimum number of seats is calculated from your firm's lead advisors and non-advisor team members (each seat covers 1 lead advisor + 2 non-advisors).
• Active coupons are honored across the entire plan-change flow. If your subscription has a coupon attached, the Current Plan line, prorated charge, due-today amount, and next-charge amount all reflect the discounted price. Previously some lines showed the pre-discount amount, causing the math to look inconsistent.
• Seat counts now reconcile against your Stripe subscription at checkout, ensuring the final quantity matches before the charge completes.
• The plan-change drawer opens to a clean "no changes" state. Opening the drawer without changing anything now correctly shows "No changes to your current plan" with the Confirm button disabled. Previously stale proration math could appear before any change was made.
• The promo input is locked when a coupon is already attached. Re-applying or stacking coupons on an active subscription is prevented at the UI layer with clear messaging. Contact support to change an active coupon.
• Unlinked Accounts modal lets you link multiple accounts in a row. After linking an account to a household, the remaining rows' client search dropdowns continue to work. Previously they degraded to plain browser dropdowns and the modal had to be closed and reopened between each link.
• Billing tab visibility for team members with admin permissions. A team member whose role-specific permission level is set to Admin will now see the Billing tab in Settings. (Users may need to log out and back in once for new permissions to take effect.)

We updated the math behind the Guardrails and Buckets Value-Add reports to align with the Kitces methodology and the Matthew Jarvis spreadsheet conventions used widely in the industry. This update was deployed to production on April 16, 2026.

What changed

Guardrails income bands are now anchored on the client's current monthly income (±10%), rather than derived from a portfolio-based ratio.

Guardrails portfolio thresholds use the Kitces formulas: Upper Portfolio = annual income ÷ lower rate; Lower Portfolio = annual income ÷ upper rate.

Buckets calculations brought to full parity with Guardrails.

Why this matters

In cases where a client's actual withdrawal rate was meaningfully below your firm's available rate, the previous math could produce a lower-guardrail income figure that didn't behave as the methodology intends. The updated calculations resolve this.

If you generated Guardrails or Buckets reports before April 16, the numbers may differ if regenerated today. Existing saved snapshots retain their original values; new generations use the updated math.

Other updates

Settings UI: rate inputs now accept 2-decimal precision.

New default rates for new firms: upper 6.48%, lower 4.32% (±20% of 5.4%).

Portfolio amounts now round to the nearest $10K; available monthly income rounds down to the nearest $10.