PensionSoft's DBPXL Formula Writer allows users to write formulas that will calculate actuarial factors in Excel using a user-friendly interface. By clicking OK, a formula is placed into the currently selected cell in your workbook.

• What are you calculating?: choose what it is that you want to calculate in Excel from the drop-down list of possible choices.
• How are you calculating it?: select whether to calculate by age or date.
• Actuarial Equivalence: select from the available Actuarial Equivalence Definitions. You may need to create your own here if the one you are looking for does not exist.
• Payment Form: choose from the list of underlying payment forms.
• Final Payment Form: (only applicable for conversion factors) choose from the list of payment forms, the payment to which you are converting when calculating a conversion factor.
• Participant Mortality: specify Participant (default) or Beneficiary to specify the participant mortality column to use.
• Beneficiary Mortality: specify Beneficiary (default) or Participant to specify the beneficiary mortality column to use. Note that this is only applicable to forms of payment that pay some portion of benefit to a beneficiary.
• Calculation Date: type or choose the calculation date.
• Participant Age/DOB: area to specify participant age or date of birth.
• Beneficiary Age/DOB: area to specify beneficiary age or date of birth (only if payment form is Joint & Survivor).
• Payment Period Overrides: area to override the underlying payment start age, certain period, or temporary payment period (versus the underlying Payment Form Definition) for this Excel formula.
• Interest Rate Overrides: area to override the interest rate/rates to use (versus the underlying Actuarial Equivalence Definition) for this Excel formula.
• Payment Overrides: area to override the payment timing, frequency, COLA, as well as benefit fractions.
• Preview: shows the underlying formula selected based upon the inputs. You can toggle between the formula parameters and values resulting from the selected inputs using the Formula and Result radio buttons.
• Input Buttons: Next to many of the inputs in the Formula Writer, there is a button that allows you to make a selection from your workbook as opposed to explicitly specifying inputs.