The Inputs page is a numbered stepper of eight steps: People, Accounts, Income, Expenses, Real Estate, Tax Strategy, Cash Flow, and Parameters. Click any step to jump straight to it, or walk them in order with the Prev / Next arrows. Each step feeds the simulation engine; together they describe a household, its assets, its money in/out over time, and the assumptions that shape the projection.

What a simulation needs before it will run

• At least one person with a birth year
• At least one account, each with a balance and an allocation
• At least one Brokerage Account
• A Retirement Year and a Final Year on the Parameters step
• An explicit leftover cash choice on the Cash Flow step: save it or spend it

Living expenses and income are not on that list. A plan with neither will run, it just will not tell you much — so the plan checklist below asks you to review both before you read the first result.

The plan checklist

One button at the top of the left sidebar, just above Home, tracks all of this for you: Plan checklist · N/6. It turns red whenever something is stopping the plan from running. Clicking it slides a panel out over the sidebar, so it never covers the form you are filling in. It opens by itself the first time you land on an empty plan; after that you decide when to look. Because the button lives in the sidebar it follows you across every screen, not just Inputs.

The panel is a single list of six rows, one per thing a plan needs:

1. Add your household
2. Add your accounts and allocations
3. Set retirement and final years
4. Choose what happens to surplus cash
5. Set living expenses
6. Review income

Every row shows its state and a one-line summary of where it stands — “2 issues to fix”, “Retirement 2040, 30 years” — so the whole list reads at a glance without scrolling.

Rows that are stopping the plan from running open by themselves, with the detail and the fix button already on screen. Rows that are merely optional, and rows that are finished, stay shut behind a chevron; click one to see the full explanation and its buttons. A finished row has no chevron at all, because there is nothing behind it. If a row you closed breaks later, it re-opens on its own — a warning behind a collapsed header is a warning missed.

The states are the whole vocabulary: To do (not started), Attention (started, and something is wrong), Optional (living expenses and income — the plan will run without them, it just will not tell you much), or complete. A row's button opens the ordinary editor for that input; there is no second form to fill in.

Accounts is the one row that can carry several problems at once — one per field per account — so it lists them underneath itself, each with a button that goes to the exact account and field. Everything else says what is wrong on the row itself.

Once every row is done and nothing is blocking, the sidebar button steps aside rather than sitting there forever. The checklist moves to the Inputs screen, as a green Plan checklist button next to Help for this tab, so you can always go back and look. The moment anything breaks, the red button returns to the sidebar on every screen — there is exactly one way in at a time, and never none.

Where each input lives

• People. Names, birth years, birth months
• Accounts. Account types, balances, allocations, fees, ownership
• Income. Jobs, Social Security, pensions, and every other money-in adjustment
• Expenses. Base spending plus every money-out adjustment
• Real Estate. Owned and rented homes, rental properties, and HELOCs
• Tax Strategy. Roth conversions and 72(t) SEPP schedules
• Cash Flow. Order Cash Flow Priorities through deposits and contributions, and decide whether leftover surplus is saved in the brokerage or spent as discretionary cash
• Parameters. Simulation length, retirement year, inflation/returns mode, withdraw order

Putting your lists in your own order

Participants, dependents, accounts, income, expenses, real estate, and tax strategies each carry a small up/down chevron pair on the right of every row. Click either half - or focus it and press Enter - to swap that row with its neighbour. Focus stays on the row you moved, so you can press Enter repeatedly to walk an item all the way up or down. The order is saved to your plan and comes back on your next visit.

The chevron pointing off the end of the list is greyed out rather than hidden, so a row at the top or bottom still shows you where the control is.