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You put work into your firm’s base template, so you need to know which Client personas will pick it up.

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Follows base, or Customized

Follows base

No design of its own, so the persona uses your firm’s current base design, live. On the Plan design card the blueprint is drawn faded, a Follows base badge sits beside the heading, and the line under the strictness control reads “This persona follows the base template”.

Customized

Its own design replaces the base, so base-template changes do not reach this persona. The line under the strictness control reads “Customized”, and a Re-sync from base button appears below it.

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Where your firm starts

The three personas your firm arrives with each ship with a plan design of their own, so all three read Customized before you touch anything. The left nav of Settings → Planning shows it: under Plan templates, the subtitle beneath Base template reads “No persona follows it right now”, and the base pane’s Used by card is hidden entirely. A persona follows the base when you create it with Starting template: Base template, or when you re-sync one of the three.
A plan for a household that matched no persona uses the base design, and every persona you create from Base template starts on it.

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What gives a persona its own design

A persona takes its own copy on the first change to its design:
  • Editing a block on the Plan design card: When it appears, Instructions to Hazel, or the condition for leaving the block out.
  • Changing Strictness on that card.
  • Saving in the layout designer, which you open with Design layout. Adding, removing, reordering, and the fields in the settings rail all count.
On the Plan design card the change lands as soon as you make it, because Planning settings autosave. A notice appears the first time, reading “This persona now has its own plan design.” and “It no longer follows the firm’s base design. Re-sync from base any time.” In the layout designer nothing is committed until you save, and that first save asks you first: a dialog says the persona currently follows the firm’s base template and that saving gives it a design of its own, with Keep editing and Save design as the choices. The header chip reads Follows base template before that save and Customized from base after it.

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What does not follow the base

Hazel instructions. A persona’s instruction list is its own from the moment the persona exists: creating a persona from Base template copies your base instructions across once, and later edits to the base list do not follow. A house instruction you rely on has to appear on each persona. Assumptions. The planning figures live on two firm-wide screens, Solver assumptions and Market assumptions, and personas inherit them value by value: a persona carries only the values that differ for it, so changing a firm figure reaches every persona that does not set that value. The never-do rules on your base template apply to every plan too, and nothing on a persona loosens them.

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Re-syncing

Re-sync from base sits on the persona’s Plan design card, under the strictness control, and only while the persona reads Customized. It puts the persona back on your current base design and keeps it there until the next change. A confirmation dialog headed “Re-sync from base?” comes first. Re-sync discards rather than merges: anything the persona’s design carried that your base does not have goes with it. Instructions and assumption values are untouched, since neither lives in the design.
Move anything you want to keep into the base template before you re-sync. There is no undo for it.

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When to re-sync

  • You improved the base and want this persona on the new shape.
  • The persona’s design has become a pile of one-off edits rather than a shape you chose.
  • The persona took its own design by accident.
Leave it customized while its design is doing real work, or when you want one thing from the base and nothing else: make that change on the persona directly.

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If a base change did not reach your plans

1

Which persona the plan used

Open the plan’s Appendix and read the Applied settings block: it names the persona the plan was built from, or shows none.
2

That persona's Plan design card

If it reads Customized, your base change never reached it. Re-sync it, or make the same change on the persona.
3

Whether the plan predates the change

Settings changes apply to plans Hazel builds from then on. A delivered plan keeps the design it was built with until you rebuild it with Regenerate, in the top bar of the household’s Financial Planning tab.

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Where to go next