Issue #54
- New Lockbox Cash Applications Table
- Eve 'n You can Help Us Help You
- TOPS Interactive Web Site Training Camp 2007
- Using TOPS Web Sites to communicate in an emergency
- An important note about collecting credit card info on your web site
08/17/07 CAI Gold Coast Chapter Expo (West Palm Beach, FL)
08/22/07 TOPS U presents ACCNT-210 The Budget Cycle
09/12/07 TOPS U presents: ACCNT-400 Reconciling the Financials
09/18/07 TOPS U presents: CCR-101 Setting up the CC&R Module
09/19/07 TOPS U presents: CCR-102 Using Form Letters in the CC&R Module
09/20/07 TOPS U presents: CCR-103 Managing Violations in the CC&R Module
09/21/07 TOPS U presents: CCR-201 Advanced Features of the CC&R Module
09/26/07 TOPS U presents: ACCNT-301 Adjusting AR Owner Balances
10/17/07 TOPS U presents: NCS-101 New Community Setup
10/20/07 CAI New England Conference & Expo (Burlington, MA)
11/14/07 TOPS U presents: ACCNT-110 Being Prepared for Year End
12/19/07 TOPS U presents: GLB-101 Global Reports
04/30/08 - 05/02/08 CAI's 57th National Conference and Exposition (Orlando, FL)
Best Fit Solutions, LLC provides TOPS v3.2.1™ training & accounting services. On-site or Internet-based training services available. Learn more at www.bestfitsolutions.net, or call 281-870-0404.
Use www.ReadyDOCS.com to sell documents online and turn Process into Profit. Contact us at (888) 497-8832 to find out how!
ReadyCollect integrates with TOPS Software to provide a complete collections process when accounts are turned over to your attorney. Visit www.ReadyCollect.com for more information on this money-saving program.
The TOPS Internet Backup Service allows you to automatically back up your important TOPS Community Data from right inside TOPS v3.2.1™! For More Info, see www.topsbackup.com.
TOPS University is a new TOPS Internet
training program, which offers all TOPS users the chance to learn the
ins and outs of the TOPS modules and functions. See our course schedule
in this issue of the onTOPS Ezine, or check out the web site:
www.topsuniversity.com
If you have not yet checked out TOPS'
Online Customer Care Center, do it today! You can purchase
add-ons, see your current support usage minutes, review past tickets,
see what tickets are open for your organization, and even pay your support
bill online! All you need to do is know your TOPS Client ID and fill in
a one-time sign-up form.
TOPS
v3.2.1
TOPS On-Site
Internet Backup
TOPS Web Sites
Web Site Support
TOPS Corporate
Customer Care Center
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The onTOPS Ezine is published by TOPS Software, LLC., 364-C Christopher Avenue, Gaithersburg, MD 20879.
Copyright© 2001-2007, All rights reserved. Articles
may be reprinted with permission from the publisher.
Welcome to onTOPS!
Welcome to the onTOPS Ezine, an email publication from TOPS Software. All of the articles in the ezines are stored in the articles section of our corporate web site, www.topssoft.com.
We hope you enjoy reading this issue. Please send your feedback to: insider@topssoft.com
Sizzling Summer Savings
August Association Blowout!!!
Come join the craziness as we are putting up for sale our association
"blocks". For the month of August...
Global Module Mania!!!
The Global module for TOPS v3.2.1™ is a high powered tool designed
to streamline operations from self-managed associations to management
companies of all sizes...
[More]
TOPS Comes to You!
By Bruce Gran CMCA, AMS, PCAM
CACM Expo - "A Fair to remember"
I had the pleasure of exhibiting, along with about 140 other community
association service providers, at this exciting CACM annual event, held
at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, CA...
CAI – Gold Coast CA Day, August 17, 2007, West Palm Beach, FL. If the hurricanes do not make an appearance, I certainly will! I will be exhibiting at this event along with presenting a 2 hour session for FL CAM continuing education, "Tools of the Trade – What Today’s Manager Needs". I will go over all the technology tools necessary to perform our functions with best practices in mind. I will go over the hardware, software, communication, security and other technology related topics that are needed to perform our jobs keeping in mind cost effective options, with an eye toward service improvement!
CAI – NE Conference and EXPO October 20, 2007, Marriott Hotel Burlington, MA. Come join Nicole and Carl Beal to see the latest TOPS has to offer. Nicole comes from the portfolio side of the industry having been the IT/office manager for a substantial FL management company. She brings much direct community association experience, in addition to her TOPS knowledge! She is currently helping our development team build the new TOPS Mobile Manager, which she will be showing at the show. Carl comes from the Internet world; he builds, supports and secures the internal networks for TOPS along with helping clients navigate various network situations via the Internet. They both will show the next generation of TOPS Software, our Viper project, please come and take a look for yourself!
[More]
September Courses at TOPS U
By popular demand, TOPS University is expanding our course offerings to provide more online training opportunities each month. In September, we will be offering three courses through TOPS U.
ACCNT-400 Reconciling the Financials
Our first course for September will be ACCNT-400 Reconciling the Financials.
This course will cover the steps needed to reconcile the Accounts Payable
and Accounts Receivable Sub-Ledgers to the General Ledger. At the end
of the course students should have an understanding of how to make sure
that their financials are accurate...
CCR/ACC Enforcement Series
The second course in September will actually be the entire four course
CCR/ACC Enforcement series. We will be offering this series one class
a day at 2:00 PM EDT, for four consecutive days, beginning September 18th...
ACCNT-301 Adjusting AR Owner Balances
The third course in September will be ACCNT-301 Adjusting AR Owner Balances.
This course will provide an overview of adjusting owner balances using
the Add/Waive and Pay Adjust functions...
[More]
Class size is limited, so sign up early! Visit our web site www.topsuniversity.com for registration information and more details.
A Letter from the President
Training: the key to your success!
TOPS Software's programs are designed to be easy to understand and use. Learning any new program, however, can overwhelm new users. Training for new users is imperative to shorten the learning curve and eliminate start-up mistakes. This is the reason we created TOPS University - to provide a resource for our customers' continuing education needs...
[More]
New Lockbox Cash Applications Table
Several states now have laws in place which restrict
associations from applying cash to certain types of charges except as
specifically noted by the home owner. Unfortunately, the old Lockbox program
in TOPS v3.2.1™ was not designed to take this into consideration
when posting cash and it was time consuming for customers with more than
one community to process the lockbox receipts as un-posted cash batches.
We had a number of customer requests to provide a way to control how lockbox
transactions are posted to home owner accounts; and we are very excited
to announce the release of our newest update to TOPS v3.2.1™ - The
Lockbox Cash Application Table (LBCAT). The LBCAT allows an automated
process to control how monies received through the lockbox interface will
be applied to charge codes, and how remaining money will be applied by
selecting new prepaid codes that override the default cash application
table for a community.
[More]
Eve 'n You can Help us Help You
audience participation at its finest
How many of you are "American Idol" fans???
Show of hands???
OK fine, what about "Next Food Network Star"???
Or..."So You Think You Can Dance"???
You probably know that there are a lot of new trendy television shows out there that rely on viewer participation in order to crown a winner. If they didn't have people calling or web-voting, there would be no winner chosen by the public. We would all be mindlessly yelling at our TV as a panel of dumb judges picks a winner in the end, and usually NOT the one we wanted...
[More]
TOPS Interactive Web Site Training Camp 2007
TOPS Interactive Web Sites kicks it into high gear with our annual training camp on the afternoon of Thursday, September 20, 2007 in Duluth, GA. This year we are taking everyone from web site novices to online veterans to boot camp with a wealth of training and information designed to maximize your web site expertise...
[More]
Using TOPS Web Sites to Communicate in an Emergency
If you live in an area of the country affected by high winds, floods, tornadoes or even hurricanes, we suggest a TOPS Community Web Site with a Storm Center as a valuable tool for communication and a great way to get a handle on emergency issues. Here are a just a few of the ways communities use their Interactive Web Sites to share information with residents, helping them get through some very anxious times...
[More]
An Important Note About Collecting Credit Card Info on your Web Site
Information security has become one of the foremost concerns for today's society, especially to those who need to provide users with information-sharing capabilities across the Internet. The TOPS Web Site Service shares the same values and therefore does not allow or assist clients who wish to capture or store Credit Card information through our standard web site features, including eForms...
[More]
TOPS v3.2.1™>
- Global, NEW! There are a few exciting updates to Lockbox: You can now control how monies received will be applied as well as which bank account to post to. Please see this month's Products article for more details.
- AssociationReady, Resolved multiple community upload issue.
- Group Owners, Resolved issue with Group Owners assignment concerning Developer resales. Responding 'Yes' to the 'Set Previous Owner as Group Owner' prompt will keep the Group Owner assignment.
- AssociationReady, Resolved issue with older program file community settings.
- Bills & Coupons, Added functionality for Bills & Coupons to print for previous owners.
- Group Owners, Enhanced Group Owners save process.
- Group Owners, Owner resale will prompt to keep the previous owner in the owner group.
- Group Owners, Group Owners will prompt for owner or previous owner.
- Form Letters, Resolved issue with multiple attachments.
- AssociationReady, Added new functionality to upload selected communities.
- AssociationReady, Modified to include all community insurance information.
- AssociationReady, Added Property Manager information.
- AssociationReady, Updated several fields for AssociationReady.
- AssociationReady, No longer have to rebuild the access database community owners to show.
- Resolved logic for using GetDocsNow and ReadyResale.
- AssociationReady, Resolved field name issue showing code instead of data.
- AssociationReady, Modified the Miscellaneous Charge Codes frequency.
- AssociationReady, Corrected for occasional issue where data would not populate the screens for select communities.
- AssociationReady, Modified the navigation.
- AssociationReady, Corrected issue when clicking Upload Data Now, generating path error.
- AssociationReady, Updated the data loading process.
- AssociationReady, Modified community type window.
- AssociationReady, Made several screen modifications.
- AssociationReady, Scheduling job is now performed via the TOPS Scheduler.
- AssociationReady, Modified save location for data files.
- AssociationReady, Modified steps to display owners.
- AssociationReady, Corrected occasional error when adding new communities during setup.
- Report Defaults, Enhanced network vs stand-alone functionality for settings files.
- Report Defaults, Modified to accommodate Report Defaults with only 1 report in them.
TOPS MaintCo>
- Resolved error generating report for scheduled jobs.
BETA Products >
Calendar
- Now accommodates lower display resolution settings.
- Items set to remind "At TOPS Login", when user logs on to TOPS, Reminder window will display both open past due and current until midnight.
- Removed remind "At TOPS Logoff" option.
- Reminder will look for latest past or current un-executed auto run task(s) to pop up and run every 60 seconds it's been displayed. Only the latest missed tasks will be displayed and taken care of.
- AutoRun list now displays last run date and time the task was executed.
- For TOPS Function items, added a pop up confirm message to make user aware of the task that is about to be run. If user clicks Yes, the item will run and be removed from AutoRun list. If user clicks No, the item will remain on AutoRun list until user takes further action.
- Past due items on both AutoRun and Reminders list will be bold.
The above products are available in Public Beta format for our customers. If you are interested in testing a new TOPS product, please complete the sign in form here.
TOPS Interactive Web Sites>
- In Documents and Modules, communities can now turn off the "Adobe download" link completely if desired. Please contact support to assist you with this.
- The user interface in Reservations has been enhanced with new buttons for easier navigation and functionality.
Software Sales
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Web Site Sales - 800.556.7852
Tech Support - 800.899.5689
Web Support - 800.556.7852
Billing Questions - 301.869.8144