SurgeTK Release Notes - August 24, 2026

This release includes a brand new Value Add! It also adds a lifecycle to your book. Households you no longer serve can be archived instead of deleted, accounts can be closed and reopened, and your CRM syncs can mark records closed instead of removing them. Alongside that, the Welcome page now carries product update videos, household totals agree everywhere they appear, and spreadsheet imports and CRM syncs can no longer run over each other.

Everything below is live for every firm. Nothing changes on its own: archiving, closing, and the new CRM behaviors are all actions you take or settings you choose. Items that need you to turn something on are marked Optional.

Roth Conversion Letter

A new one page client letter that turns a filed tax return into a conversion conversation. Optional. Turn it on in Settings, Value Adds.

• What it is. A client facing tax strategy letter built from the household's filed tax year. It recaps the client's taxable income, tax bill, marginal rate, and long term capital gains rate, then states in plain dollars how much more taxable income they could take next year before crossing into a new bracket. It follows the Tax Strategy Review letter advisors have mailed for years, with the math and the mail merge done for you.
• The figures come from the Taxes tab. Filing status, adjusted gross income, taxable income, tax after credits, and the recorded Roth conversion all come from the household's stored tax year, so nothing is typed twice. Editing tax data marks the letter stale, and it regenerates with the corrected figures.
• The bracket math backs the conversion out. Next year's headroom is worked out from taxable income with the one off conversion removed, so a client who converted last year is not told they have less room than they really have. The letter reports the room left inside the current bracket, and separately the full width of the bracket above it for firms that want to show the aggressive option. Rates come from the IRS tables for the relevant year.
• Every word is yours. Settings, Value Adds, Roth Conversion Letter holds the title, salutation, opening paragraph, education bullets, the consider callout, closing paragraph, sign off, and disclaimer. Edit any of them once and every household's letter follows.
• Seventeen data points drop into any sentence. Household name, firm name, advisor name, tax year, letter year, filing status, AGI, taxable income, tax bill, both conversion amounts, marginal rate, that rate written in cents, long term capital gains rate, bracket headroom, next bracket rate, and next bracket room. Place any of them anywhere in your wording and they resolve per household.
• A sentence that cannot be true is never printed. A bullet whose figures do not resolve for a household hides itself. A client already in the top bracket never sees the next bracket line. The conversion sub bullet appears only when that household actually recorded a conversion that year. The salutation hides entirely rather than open the letter with a stray comma.
• The conversion suggestions can be switched off. One toggle removes the whole consider callout, which leaves a clean tax recap with no conversion recommendations. On by default.
• You can review any year. The letter opens on the household's most recent stored tax year, which is what surge packets and saved copies always use. A dropdown on the letter page lets you look at an earlier year, with a banner saying which year you are viewing. Those views are ad hoc and never save over the household's copy.
• A household with no tax data says so. Instead of a letter full of blanks, the page renders a clear "Tax data needed" state and flags the value add.
• Edit it from the letter itself. Annotation cards on the letter open the salutation, intro, and closing for firm wide editing, and the tax data card opens that household's Tax Year modal so you can correct a figure without leaving the page.
• It joins surge packets only when you say so. Unlike older value adds, a missing setting is never treated as on. The letter is in a packet only after your firm turns it on.

Archiving Households

• Archiving keeps everything. Accounts, value adds, saved reports, surge packets, tax years, and history all stay reachable. The household simply stops counting: it leaves the household list's default view, the banner statistics, and new surges skip it unless an admin includes it deliberately. Restoring takes one click and puts everything back exactly as it was.
• Archive from the row menu or in bulk. Pick a reason, add an optional note, and choose whether to capture final value add snapshots. Every archive and restore offers an immediate Undo in its toast.
• The household list understands Archived. A new Active, Archived, All view sits above the list. Archived households show a muted row and an Archived chip carrying the reason and date in its tooltip.
• The household page says so plainly. An archived household's page carries a banner naming when and why it was archived, with a Restore button in it. Edit and add actions are visibly disabled with an explanation instead of failing silently.
• Archived households are read only. Every write path is blocked on the server across 61 routes: editing members, adding accounts, changing advisors, generating value adds. The block answers with a clear message telling you to restore the household first.
• Value adds freeze at the moment you archive. Archiving saves a final dated copy of every value add your firm has enabled, including ones nobody had opened for that household yet. Opening a value add on an archived household shows the values captured at archive time, clearly labeled, instead of recomputing numbers that drift as rates and settings change. This is the compliance record of what the client was shown. If one value add fails to render during capture, the archive still completes and says so, for example "Household archived, 6 of 7 value adds captured", and the affected tile reads "Not captured" with the explanation in its tooltip.
• Archived households stay findable. Global search still returns them, marked with a chip, so a compliance lookup never comes up empty. The surge composer gains a Household Status filter so admins can include archived households deliberately, and any that are skipped are reported in the run detail as Skipped rather than disappearing.
• Deleting a household with saved reports warns first. Deleting is permanent and always was. If a household still holds saved value add snapshots or surge packets, the delete now stops, tells you how many records would become unreachable, and offers archiving instead. You can still delete deliberately.
• Exports and reports say what they include. Exports gain a Household Status column and an Exclude archived households toggle that remembers your choice.
• Peripheral surfaces respect it. Surge meetings can no longer be scheduled on an archived household, and bulk advisor assignment skips archived households instead of silently editing them. Undoing an accidental restore keeps the household's original archive date.

Closing and reopening accounts

An account that has closed stays on the household as a record instead of disappearing.

• Close with a reason and an optional backdated date, and reopen at any time. Closing keeps the account's last known value and full history: that record is the compliance answer to "what did this account hold when it closed". A closed account immediately leaves the household's total investable assets, and reopening puts it back. The household total in the header updates the moment you close or reopen, with no page reload.
• The Accounts tab shows the state. Closed accounts appear muted with a Closed, Transferred, or Inactive chip and the close date in the tooltip. The row menu offers Close account, with a required reason and optional date, and Reopen.
• The account modal edits it. The Details tab shows status, close date, and close reason, with a Closed chip in the title bar. You can close, reopen, or correct the date and reason of an account that is already closed. Corrections are audited the same way as the original close.
• Every transition is traceable. Each close and reopen writes exactly one audit row and one account history row, so the change is always attributable to a person and a moment.
• Closed accounts can be hidden without being deleted. Optional. A Hide closed accounts preference keeps closed accounts off the household account list by default. The list says how many are hidden, and one click shows them again, so a closed account is always reachable if you need to reopen it or check its history.
• Closed accounts can be exported. The accounts export gained optional Account Status, Date Closed, Close Reason, and CRM Status columns, so you can pull everything that closed in a quarter with dates and reasons. Existing exports are unchanged unless you add the new columns.

Value adds and closed accounts

A closed account is treated by period, not by blanket.

• Balance sheet reports drop closed accounts outright. Net Worth and investable totals leave them out, because money that left is not on the balance sheet.
• Homework and the 1099 Letter ask a better question. Both report a period, so they ask whether the account was closed before the period began. An account closed during the tax year still counts for that year's distributions, RMD, and 1099, because the client still receives a 1099 for it. An account closed before the year began is out.
• Every figure on the Homework sheet follows the same rule. The RMD table, the Cash Flow tiles, the prior year AGI, and the Net Worth line now agree with each other and with what the account's Exclusions tab says.
• The exclusion report explains the year rule. A closed account excluded from Homework or the 1099 Letter now says why in period terms, for example "Closed before the 2026 tax year began", instead of a bare "Closed account". An account with no recorded close date is excluded and the report says exactly that, rather than guessing a year. A manual include override on the Exclusions tab still beats the closed rule.

Household totals

One rule, so the same household shows the same number everywhere.

• The details header, the households list, and the export now agree. All three previously worked the total out differently: two recomputed it fresh and left out closed and cash accounts, while the stored figure behind the export was a running total that included everything and was updated by eight different parts of the app in eight slightly different ways.
• The rule. Closed accounts and cash equivalent accounts (checking, savings, money market, CDs) are left out, and anything you have set by hand on an account's Exclusions tab wins either way.
• Totals that had drifted are corrected in one pass. Because the stored figure only refreshed when someone touched an account, households nobody had edited kept an old number indefinitely. A one time correction runs with this release. On a book of 1,563 households, 475 had a stored figure that was wrong, most of them showing nothing at all against a real balance.
• Closed accounts no longer count as net worth. A closed account holds nothing, so it no longer counts toward a household's monthly net worth snapshot. Cash accounts still do: a checking balance is net worth even though it is not money under management.
• A household whose accounts are all closed no longer shows a distribution. The details header worked out investable assets one way and monthly distribution another, so a household holding only a closed account could show no assets and a monthly distribution at the same time. Both figures now come from the same accounts.
• One export column renamed. "Total Account Value (all accounts)" is now "Total Account Value", because it is no longer a different number from the one on screen.

CRM syncs

Your decisions outrank the CRM, and a sync can now mark records closed instead of deleting them.

• A sync no longer overwrites an account status you set. When you close or reopen an account by hand, or through a previewed import, that decision outranks Redtail and Zoho. Previously a sync could write its own status straight back over yours. The rest of the account, its value, holdings, and owners, keeps syncing as before. Nothing changes for accounts whose status comes from the CRM.
• The account row tells you when the CRM disagrees. An account whose CRM record disagrees with the status you set carries a "CRM: Closed" or "CRM: Active" chip, and the tooltip shows the CRM's own wording. You find out on the row instead of finding out from a report that dropped the account.
• Sync history reports what a sync left alone. The drawer counts the accounts whose status the sync declined to overwrite, next to the existing count of accounts it declined to delete, and gains a Household lifecycle card showing what each run evaluated, archived, and restored.

Redtail

• The Closed Account Filter can mark instead of delete. Optional. Instead of removing an account the moment Redtail marks it Closed, Transferred, or Inactive, the sync can keep it and mark it closed. A closed account leaves your total investable assets and every value add, but its balance history, transactions, and beneficiaries stay on the household as a permanent record. Firms using the delete behavior today keep it until they choose the new mode in the Sync Filters modal.
• The sync now finds real close dates. Redtail reports that an account is closed but its main account record carries no close date, so closed Redtail accounts had no date on file and date based value add rules had to leave them out. The sync now asks Redtail's account detail endpoint for the close date whenever it sees a closed account without one, so Homework and the 1099 Letter can place the account in the right year.
• Reopening an account in Redtail clears its close date. A sync could add a close date but never remove one, so an account reopened in Redtail kept its old date and stayed out of totals and value adds while the account list showed it as active. A sync that reports the account as Active now clears the date. Only Active clears it: a label the sync cannot recognize, such as your own "Liquidated" or "Under Review", leaves the date alone.
• Contact statuses can drive household lifecycle. Optional. A new section in the Sync Filters modal maps each of your Redtail contact statuses to what it means: still a client, no longer a client, or deceased. On top of the map, you choose what the sync does when every member of a household is deceased or no longer a client: nothing, suggest archiving, or archive automatically. Suggestions appear on the Households page with the reason, and applying one opens the normal archive dialog with the reason filled in. Dismissing a suggestion is remembered. Automatic mode captures final value add snapshots as it archives, never touches a household you archived or restored by hand, and restores a household it archived if the contacts become active again in Redtail.
• Contacts you already imported keep updating even when filtered. Contact filters now gate new imports only. Previously, a contact whose Redtail status changed to one your filter excludes stopped updating entirely, which meant the exact changes worth knowing about, such as a client passing away or leaving the firm, were the ones that never arrived. An already imported contact keeps receiving updates, including the date of death and termination date Redtail carries, which SurgeTK now stores on the client.
• Every contact's accounts refresh on every sync. Account balances and holdings now refresh for every contact on each sync, not only for contacts changed since the last sync. Custodian feeds update accounts without touching the contact record, so the previous incremental pass missed those updates. The contacts stage stays incremental.
• Closing and reopening from Redtail is on the record. The account records that Redtail made the change and when, and the activity log gets one entry per change plus one summary per sync. Steady states write nothing: an account that stays closed sync after sync does not fill your log. Sync history shows how many accounts each run marked closed, reopened, and found close dates for.

Zoho

• A sync no longer clears fields you did not map. Every sync used to blank an account, asset, or liability field that had no Zoho column mapped, so a custodian, 1099 form, or close date typed by hand was wiped on the next run. Unmapped fields are now left alone. A mapped column that is blank in Zoho still clears the SurgeTK value.
• A client you marked Deceased stays Deceased. When no Zoho life status field is mapped, the sync no longer resets a client you marked Deceased back to Living on every run.
• Excluded households can be archived instead of deleted. Optional. The Household Sync Filtering card has a new choice. Instead of removing a household, with all its accounts and history, when its client type matches one of your excluded values, the sync can archive it. Final value add snapshots are captured as it archives. Households you archived or restored by hand always win over the sync.
• A Zoho status field can drive household lifecycle. Optional. A new Household Status Mapping section lets you pick any Zoho picklist field on your households module and map each value to Active or Archived. Values you leave unmapped change nothing.
• Closed accounts can be kept instead of deleted. Optional. Close out Filtering has a new Closed Accounts choice, on both Investable Assets and, for the first time, Bank Accounts. The sync can keep every closed account, marked closed with its close date, rather than skipping and deleting accounts closed before the cutoff year. In this mode the cutoff year controls display: accounts closed before it are hidden on the household account list, with a one click reveal. The mapping modal states in plain words which behavior is currently active.
• The closed account cleanup only deletes what is provably Zoho's. For firms that keep the delete behavior, the cleanup now requires the SurgeTK account to actually be linked to Zoho before deleting it. Previously it matched by account number alone, so a hand entered account that happened to share a number with a closed Zoho account could be deleted. Accounts spared by this check are counted in sync history. The cleanup also removes the deleted accounts' one time transactions, which previously stayed behind pointing at nothing.
• Accounts that vanish from Zoho are flagged on the household. When the stale record check confirms an account is no longer in your feed, its row carries a "No longer in Zoho" chip with the date. If the account was closed in Zoho, the row menu's Close action is one click away, and the chip retires once the account is closed.
• Closing and reopening from Zoho is on the record. The account records that Zoho made the change and when, and the activity log gets one entry per change. Steady states write nothing.

Imports

Imports and syncs take turns, and an import can now set account and household status.

• A spreadsheet import and a CRM sync can no longer run at the same time. Both write the same account and household records, so running them together could silently drop one side's changes. Whichever starts first holds the firm's slot, and the other is turned away with a clear message naming what is currently running.
• Imports can close and reopen accounts. The account import gains three optional columns: Account Status, Date Closed, and Close Reason. A row saying Closed, Transferred, or Inactive closes the account with the date and reason from the file; a row saying Active reopens a closed account and clears its close date. A blank cell always preserves what is stored, an unrecognized value warns and writes nothing, and an account missing from the file is never touched. Nothing is inferred, and a close set by hand or by import outranks CRM syncs.
• Imports can archive and restore households. The contact import gains a Household Status column with a reason and date. An import row that touches an archived household still applies, because backfilling records is legitimate, but the run warns you and counts those rows in the report.
• The import warns before money lands on a closed account. A row that gives a closed account a new value, and a one time transaction import that targets a closed account, warn in the report and in the preview. The value still applies, because backfilling history is legitimate, and the account is never reopened by accident.
• Imports tell you what they closed. The live progress panel says "3 accounts closed", and the count stays visible after a refresh while the undo window is open. Each closed or reopened account gets a proper activity log entry, the same way a manual close does, and the activity log gained Close and Reopen filters.
• Insurance imports understand Policy Status. The insurance import gains a Policy Status column. Recognized values, now including Paid Up, Pending, Matured, and Terminated, are stored; an unrecognized value warns instead of being silently dropped.
• Contact imports accept more spellings of Living and Deceased. A cell such as "deceased", "Yes", "D", or "dead" used to fail the whole row with a validation error. The import now normalizes it. A blank or unrecognized cell leaves the client's existing value unchanged and never fails the row.
• Templates include the new columns. The downloadable account, insurance, and contact templates carry the new status columns, plus a second sheet listing the accepted values.

Welcome page

Product updates now live in the app.

• The Welcome page leads with what is new. Once your firm has finished its setup tasks, the latest update video is featured with its title, date, and a short description, and every earlier update sits in a library below it. Selecting any update plays it in place. Firms still setting up keep the setup tasks at the top, with the updates underneath.
• New updates are flagged until you have seen them. An update published since your last visit carries a New chip, and the Welcome item in the sidebar shows a small dot until you open the page. Updates older than 30 days are never flagged, so a new user does not see a wall of New chips.
• Setup tutorials stay one click away. For firms that have completed setup, the task list and the intro video move behind a Tutorials button in the page header. Replayable workflows and tours work exactly as before.

Surge packets

A packet run survives a dropped connection, and a broken page never reaches the client.

• Progress survives a closed laptop. Surge and sync progress are now saved as the run proceeds and replayed when your browser reconnects, so a network gap or a sleeping laptop no longer leaves the progress overlay stuck or skips the download at the end.
• A broken value add page no longer ships as a PDF. If a value add fails to render during a surge, it is now recorded as failed and the run continues. Previously the error page itself was converted to PDF and packed into the client's packet.
• Surge warns when every account is closed. A household whose accounts are all closed carries an "All accounts closed" warning in the composer, so an empty looking packet is explained before it is sent. Warnings no longer count closed accounts, so a missing withdrawals warning cannot be masked by a closed account's leftovers.

Households and billing

• Households show an effective rate beside Annual Billing. The household details page now shows what your annual billing works out to as a percentage of the household's billable assets, with the calculation explained in the tooltip and written out as a receipt row in the billing breakdown modal. Billable assets are the accounts that count toward AUM, less employer sponsored plan types (401(k), 403(b), 457(b), Pension, Profit Sharing, Keogh, TSP, Deferred Comp), because those are typically not billed. The dollar figure beside it is unchanged and still matches recorded billing exactly. The rate does not render when billing is not recorded or billable assets are zero.

Value add settings

• The Guardrails and Buckets distribution rate cells can be shown again. Optional. Settings, Value Adds gains a checkbox for each of the two reports that restores the Upper and Lower Guardrail distribution rate cells, which have been blank since they were removed. When turned on, both cells show your firm's available rate to one decimal, and the cells regain their borders. A small preview in the settings panel shows exactly what each state looks like. Off by default, so nothing changes unless you turn it on. The manual value add creator honors the same setting.

Smaller corrections

• Select all across pages follows your current filters. On the Households page, ticking "Select all N households" and then deleting or assigning advisors used to act on every household in the firm. It now acts only on the households matching the search text and advisor filter you are looking at, which is what the count in the toolbar already promised.
• The household import walkthrough covers the whole wizard. The guided tour never learned about the Choose Your Client Import Type screen, so it ran one screen ahead, and picking Household Taxes mid tour left you stranded. Both paths are now covered, and the final step says Import instead of Done, matching the button.
• Dialog and toast polish. Confirmation dialogs drop the decorative icon, single line notifications no longer render with an empty body, and a delete dialog dismissed quickly can no longer leave the page locked behind an invisible backdrop.