Last reviewed: November 2026.

Guardrails and Buckets are available on every plan and are turned on by default. This article answers the common questions about the "Monthly Income" figure and the "Current Distribution" rate on those two reports.

From the systematic withdrawals recorded on the household's accounts. SurgeTK adds up the withdrawals on every account the report includes and converts each one to a monthly amount. Nothing else feeds this figure: not client income, not one-time transactions, not tax withholding.

The current distribution rate is that monthly figure × 12 ÷ the unrounded value of the included accounts. It prints with two decimals.

Monthly amount = amount × payments per year ÷ 12. Payments per year: Monthly 12, Quarterly 4, Semi-annual 2, Annually 1, Weekly 52, Bi-weekly 26, Semi-monthly 24. Guardrails, Buckets, Homework and the household's "Monthly Distribution" all use this table.

Example: a $3,000 quarterly withdrawal and a $500 monthly withdrawal give $1,000 + $500 = $1,500 a month.

The report prints 0.00% and $0 when no included account has a systematic withdrawal that counts. It does not fall back to the Available rate. Check these causes:

With no withdrawals, the Upper Guardrail and Lower Guardrail columns are built from the portfolio value multiplied by the Available rate, so those columns still print numbers.

Only accounts the report includes. An account is included unless it is closed, holds exactly $0, is a cash type, is an education or custodial type, has no account type, or is excluded by hand on its Exclusions tab. Read Why a Client or Account Is Missing From a Report for the full rules and for the Exclusions tab.

The hint on the tab reads "Recurring distributions taken from this account. Guardrails and Buckets use these to calculate income." In view mode the tab reads "No systematic withdrawals." when the account has none.

A withdrawal whose frequency SurgeTK cannot read is saved with the frequency left open. The Withdrawals tab shows that row's frequency as "Unknown — choose". The withdrawal counts $0 toward Monthly Income and Current Distribution until a frequency is chosen.

The Guardrails and Buckets pages show an alert headed "No payment frequency set", for example "1 systematic withdrawal totaling $2,000 per payment is not counted in current income. Set the frequency on the account." The printed report carries a footnote in the same words, naming the affected accounts by their last four digits. The Monthly Income annotation card explains the $0 the same way.

To fix it, open the account, click Edit on the Withdrawals tab, choose the frequency on that row and click Save Changes. Then click Refresh on the report.

Redtail and spreadsheet imports. "Annually", "Yearly", "Semi Annually", "Twice a year", "Every six months", "Every other week", "Every two weeks", "Fortnightly", "Twice a month", "Every three months" and similar spellings map to the matching option. A keyword with numbers beside it still maps by the keyword, such as "Monthly on the 15th" or "Quarterly (Q1)". "Bi-monthly" is not read, because it means every two months to some and twice a month to others. A count tied to a period, such as "every 4 weeks" or "2x per year", is not read either.

Redtail transactions. When SurgeTK infers a systematic withdrawal from a pattern of Redtail transactions, a weekly or bi-weekly pattern is recorded as that frequency.

Zoho. A distribution frequency is read from Zoho's exact frequency codes only (weekly, biweekly, fortnightly, semimonthly, monthly, quarterly, semiannual, annual and the like). Free text is not read from Zoho.

No. The income figure uses only the amount and the frequency of each systematic withdrawal. Tax withholding, scheduled months, tax status, holdings and the one-time transactions on the Transactions tab are ignored. The Buckets Monthly Income card does show the taxes withheld. See the next question.

Click "Monthly Income" on the Buckets report. The card lists each included account's withdrawal as a monthly figure, then ends with three rows: Gross, Taxes withheld (shown as a negative amount) and Net to client.

Taxes withheld adds up, per included account, the federal and state withholding of its withdrawals: the dollar amounts set per payment when they exist, otherwise the account's federal and state percentages. Each is converted to a month the same way as the gross. Federal and state withholding percentages on a withdrawal or an account are read as percentages from 0 to 100. A stored 1 means 1%. It is the same withholding figure the Homework sheet uses, so Buckets and Homework agree.

With no systematic withdrawals the card reads "No systematic withdrawals are set up on any included account."

The "Monthly Distribution" figure in the household header counts withdrawals on every open account with a value, including cash accounts, education accounts, blank-type accounts and accounts you excluded by hand. The report counts only included accounts. So the header can be higher than the report. Both leave out closed accounts and open $0 accounts.

No. The "Income" line in the Homework Cash Flow box comes from the clients, not from withdrawals. When any living client has a "Monthly Income" above $0 on their client record, Homework prints the sum of the living clients' Monthly Income. Otherwise it prints the figure typed on the worksheet. Deceased clients are not counted. Read Meeting Worksheet (Homework).