Category: What’s New

Jessica Lantz

•

Oct 09, 2026

For many advisors, the hardest part of estate planning is getting the first conversation going. Without a simple way in, plenty of plans stall before they ever begin. National Estate Planning Awareness Month is underway, which makes right now a natural moment to start thinking about your strategy for approaching these conversations.  This is exactly why Estate Health Check is getting a major enhancement. It’s been redesigned to get those planning conversations off the ground, and to make it easy to take action on any planning gaps. First impression Here's how it works: you send a personalized link, your client...

A finalized estate plan isn't a done deal. Until it's signed, witnessed, and notarized, it's still a draft, and getting there is often where things stall. Coordinating notary appointments around bank hours, or a trip to a retail store, is a friction point that can sit between "finalized" and "funded" for weeks. Vanilla has partnered with Snapdocs to close that gap. Mobile Notary gives Vanilla advisors' clients access to a nationwide network of 140,000+ credentialed, background-checked notaries, available in all 50 states with support for more than 70 languages, who come to the client instead of the other way around....

Jessica Lantz

•

Sep 30, 2026

With Estate Planning Awareness Month just around the corner, now is a natural time to bring estate planning into more client conversations. September's releases help you get there faster, starting with a new way to build balance sheets using AI.  AI that elevates you Use AI to build a balance sheet in Vanilla The challenge: Data entry is one of the most time-consuming parts of getting a new client plan underway, and one of the least valuable places for you to spend your time.  The solution: Upload a PDF of your client's financials, and Magic Balance Sheet (powered by VAI®)...

Jessica Lantz

•

Sep 23, 2026

Update: As of 9/30/26, the Magic Balance Sheet is now live in Vanilla! Data entry is one of the most time-consuming parts of getting a new client plan underway, and one of the least valuable places for you to spend your time. Every hour spent transcribing information is an hour not spent on strategy. We're tackling this problem by introducing the Magic Balance Sheet, powered by VAI® - a new way to turn a client's financials into a fully populated balance sheet without requiring manual data entry. From PDF to populated in minutes The Magic Balance Sheet turns what has...

Jessica Lantz

•

Sep 03, 2026

In case you missed it, two of our recent product updates at Vanilla give you more room to model the sophisticated plans your most complex clients bring to the table. Here's a look at what’s new: Fund subtrusts with remaining GST exemption, and model GST status across subtrusts For high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients, documents often fund subtrusts with the remaining Generation-Skipping Transfer (GST) tax exemption. Getting that figure right usually means calculating it by hand, entering a fixed dollar amount, and redoing the math every time the numbers move. Now, when building out estate plans in Vanilla, the remaining GST...

Jessica Lantz

•

Aug 26, 2026

August's release adds real depth for your most complex clients, and gives you more ways to turn planning work into something tangible you can hand across the table. Here's what shipped, and what's coming next. Confidence at every client conversation Model your most sophisticated estate plans in one place The challenge: For high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients, sophisticated plans often fund subtrusts based on remaining Generation-Skipping Transfer (GST) exemption. Calculating that by hand, and redoing it every time assets or assumptions change, is slow and easy to get wrong. The solution: GST exemption as a funding option: Fund subtrusts using remaining...

Jessica Lantz

•

Aug 10, 2026

Great planning conversations depend on trust, and trust depends on being able to show your work. If a client can't see how you got from a total estate to what's actually going to them, to charity, and to taxes, the numbers become something to take on faith rather than something to build a strategy around. That's exactly the gap we closed with our latest updates to Vanilla Scenarios. When you walk a client through a strategy, every number needs to hold up in the moment — where it came from, how it was calculated, and how it ties back to...

Jessica Lantz

•

Aug 06, 2026

Estate planning is a critical component of comprehensive financial planning. For most RIAs, it's also the hardest part to operationalize, because the financial data lives in one place while the estate work is done somewhere else entirely. The disconnect can be costly: manual data entry, version control problems, and siloed estate planning conversations (or no estate planning conversations at all). In 2024, Vanilla became the industry’s first estate planning solution to bring together AI-powered estate planning and leading financial planning capabilities when we launched our integration with eMoney, a collaboration designed to help advisors offer a more holistic approach to...

Jessica Lantz

•

Jul 31, 2026

July brought the heat, and a full slate of updates to match. From a clearer client-ready Personal Financial Statement, to expanded branding options in reports, and easier-to-follow scenarios, here's what's new: Confidence at every client conversation Open every Personal Financial Statement with the big picture The challenge: A client's financial picture holds a lot of detail. When you're walking them through it, the story of the estate is easier to land when it's summarized up front. The solution: Estate at a glance: A new overview page leads the Personal Financial Statement (PFS) with the story of the estate — how...