12 Sales Department

Highlights from Our 1st National TOPS User Group

TOPS Software hosted out first ever National TOPS User Group on September 15, 2005 at The e^deltatorium, a state of the art facility in Atlanta, Georgia.

Facilitating the User Group were Jeff Hardy, President; Ryan Allen, VP of Technical Services; and Bruce R. Gran, CMCA, AMS,PCAM, Director of Sales. The guest speakers were Pete Dutton of Association Ready, and Susan Sanders of AtHomeNet.

The interaction of over 50 attendees in the open forum session is exactly the kind of fuel that helps drive our development efforts at TOPS Software. Participants shared some great ideas and best practices with each other and offered a lot of good suggestions for improvement.

The strength of our product comes from listening to our clients. Therefore, we would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who participated in the first TOPS User Group. Here are some of the highlights of the meeting:

One of the topics that generated lively discussions in the morning session was how to best utilize TOPS 2000™ for electronic payment processing. Some companies were using the lockbox and direct debit capabilities built-into TOPS 2000™ for maximum efficiency, others were not utilizing these capabilities to the fullest in TOPS 2000™. Several companies were still manually entering cash receipts.

Attendees shared their good experiences with lockbox and direct debit processing, encouraging the others to move in this direction. Representatives of SmartStreet also offered some perspective into automating payment processing from a bank's point of view. It was an informative exchange of information for everyone involved.

Another hot topic was TOPS v3.2.1™. A number of the new capabilities were shown. The ones that generated the most interest from the attendees were:

• Enhanced scrolling capabilities in the Owner Maintain screen.
• Document management, particularly the new capability to attach and store printed letters, such as delinquency letters and CCR correspondence.
• The new Form Letter program with the ability to import letters from MS Word®. The attendees were also excited about the new spell checker feature.
• The new printing functions particularly the ability to print a report in PDF or export a report into MS Excel® maintaining column alignment.
• The new Phone messenger system for logging incoming phone calls caused a lot of excitement and several suggestions to expand the capabilities.
• Property managers especially liked the new capabilities in the CCR module including the batch entry for creating new CCR violation records, and the new global violation action.

Susan Sanders from AtHomeNet spoke on how community web sites can benefit a management company. One benefit, it helps communicate information to the community. Another popular benefit is the close integration of the web sites to TOPS Software; homeowners not only have access to their information 24/7, but a conduit to communicate to the management office too.

Pete Dutton from AssociationReady demonstrated ReadyCollect, the online attorney collection application that interfaces with TOPS 2000™. Many of the attendees immediately saw the time-saving benefits of ReadyCollect and wanted to know what attorneys use it in their area. Pete also discussed AssociationReady's other Plug-ins, ReadyDocs, a document resale service and ReadyResale, an online resale service. Both of these services make money for the management company with little or no involvement from the management office.

The next TOPS User Group will be held in the Phoenix area in early 2006. Please stay tuned to our newsletter and the onTOPS e-zine for details as they become available.

Bruce Gran is the Director of Sales for TOPS Software

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