Advantos Newsletter - March 2006 Volume II

Welcome to volume two of the Advantos Systems, Inc. newsletter. This newsletter is designed to provide information to all current and potential Advantos System clients. In addition, we want to provide access to other interesting information. So, check out our links area.

Recently, Advantos Systems, Inc. has learned our clients using the Hometastic web sites are able to increase revenue and reduce costs by 10 percent. This figure comes from numerous clients who tell us the Hometastic sites reduce calls from owners, who can now access their accounts directly and report needed repairs, by 25%. In addition, board members can access critical reports, like bank accounts and delinquent agings, which reduces time-consuming calls and the attendant management company resource allocation required to support such calls. In addition, management companies can charge for these additional value-added services which allow management companies using the Advantos property management software suite to offer more during the bidding process.

The Paul Miller Company is located in Chula Vista, CA. The Paul Miller Company focuses on Association and single family home management in the Chula Vista, Ca area.

Don't forget, Advantos help is accessible in three different ways:

• within each field enter [?] or press the [F10] key
• at any Advantos menu enter [?] or press the [F10] key
• access administrator help by accessing the Advantos help web page

Technical support is constantly updating the help for all our ASP clients and the Administrator help web site available to all of our clients.

Advantos maintains both a bank account file and a general ledger file for cash in bank. The financial statements contain the value for cash in bank as passed through your books. The bank account is a separate accounting for particular bank account transactions. Both the bank account and the books need to balance, and there are balancing procedures, both internally and externally, to accomplish this. Normally, all financial transactions that affect a bank account are automatically posted both to the general ledger and to the bank account system. However, system administrators can post directly to general ledger, by making journal entries, while NOT updating the bank account system. In addition, bank account transactions can be entered directly, rather than accompanying a financial transaction (like a journal entry).

What is the process that allows me to load G/L data into a 12 month spreadsheet?

This is a general ledger miscellaneous option and only a few users have the privilege to use this process. The primary purpose is to build a 12 month spread of a new client financial statement for the current fiscal year. Often, when a new client signs a management contract they do so in the middle of their current fiscal year. If they want the current fiscal year's financial information printed on current Advantos financial reports then the current fiscal year data must be "loaded" into the Advantos financial records.

This process allows raw data entry with no business rules applied. It is essential the person entering data here makes sure each monthly account totals to zero! This includes the profit and retained earnings G/L accounts.

Because of the lack of business rules being applied here, remember, any cash postings DO NOT update the bank account; this will have to be handled separately. It is not possible to build bank accounts for prior periods without assistance from Advantos support. Normally, the client will be fine with creating the bank account with a balance forward or with creating a balance forward transaction in the current monthly period.

Most Advantos fields that will allow data to be deleted respond to the [Del]ete key. The standard Advantos key sequence to emulate the [Del]ete key is ".D". Normally, using either the wIntegrate terminal emulator or the AccuTerm terminal emulator will allow you to use the [Del]ete key, if this key is programmed correctly. Use the Advantos "CHAR.TEST" utility from TCL to test what key your terminal emulator sends by pressing the [Del]ete key at the "Input Character(s)---:" prompt. If ".D" is not the characters contact Advantos support for a new emulator configuration file. If you cannot use the [Del]ete key you should then make sure the same character sequence exists in the terminal emulators Keyboard configuration located in the emulator's keyboard configuration or settings menu.

John Holloway of Holloway Association Management, Inc. in Huntersville, NC tells us he has a number of unique letters he sends out to her clients. The letters are built in Microsoft Word and Advantos data is extracted and made available to a standard Word "mail-merge". Says John, "here's how I do it:"

• Create a Word document with the standard tags for data replacement (see the Walk through process on the Microsoft web site). The trick here is to first build a tab-delimited file using AccuTerm or wIntegrate. Then create the form letter and select the data fields to insert into the letter. Then save the letter and save the AccuTerm or wIntegrate query.
• Build a datasource from the Advantos application
  • From any Advantos menu press the [F9] key
  • Use either the wizard or the query designer to select the data you want and save it to a tab-delimited file on your Windows workstation (your client computer). This becomes the "datasource" for Word to use.
• Next open the form letter in Word. This will usually alert you the data list will be used; this is ok. When the letter appears, simply click on Tools > Letters and Mailings > Mail Merge. This will allow you to alter the letter directly.
  

One of our favorite links is to the astronomy picture of the day web site. If you click on the "Discover the cosmos!" link you have access to their archives. One of the great aspects of this site is you can end up at all kinds of sites that provide background information for the content you're reading. Another great sight is how stuff works. There is all kinds of useful information located here.