TOPS Home: TOPS Home E-Zine

Welcome back to TOPS Home, the web site e-mail magazine (e-zine) for the TOPS Community Web Site Service. This month, we have released the new 12-month account history feature, and we are very excited! You will find out more information on this in the Feature Teacher article. We are also thrilled to announce the ability for you to customize your upload settings on a per community basis. Read this month's tutorial for help on customizing your uploads. In addition, we have some exciting announcements in the Sales article, a great web site in this month's spotlight, and a great new document in this month's download. Read on for all of the goodies in this issue!

As always, enjoy your reading, and if you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us. We look forward to speaking with you!

TOPS Web Sales: (800) 556-7852 WebSales@topssoft.com.
TOPS Web Support (800) 899-5689 WebSupport@topssoft.com.

by Andrea Drennen

Web Site Sales

CAI National Trade Show (Texas)

Bruce Gran, TOPS National Sales Director, and I will be speaking at the CAI 52nd National Conference in Dallas on May 1st about ''Using Technology to Streamline your Association Business''. This concept can really be exploited by existing TOPS clients just by using the tools made available through the various TOPS modules and services offered to our valued TOPS clients. If you're interested in getting a copy of our Power Point Presentation sent to you, just email us at websales@topshome.com!

Free Link to Your Management Company Web Site!

If you're a portfolio manager interested in increasing your exposure, be sure to visit our web site and fill out the request to be added to the TOPS Management Company Locator! If you're an existing TOPS web site client, the service is absolutely FREE so you should definitely be taking advantage of the offer. In fact, we've decided to double the goodness -- all TOPS web site clients listed in this Management Company Locator will also be listed on AtHomeNet's ''Looking for a Manager'' page. Each of these sites gets thousands of visitors each month so it will be well worth it! Just click on the following link and increase your Internet exposure! http://www.topshome.com/topshome/Administrators/MgmtCoLocatorForm.htm

Customized Marketing Materials

Our amazing Graphics and Support teams are working on customized cds for each management company to use as part of your presentation package. These are great for showing your clients the benefit of signing up for an association web site through your company or when trying to wow a new client with how you are so technologically superior to your competition. If you'd like to be sent these cds, please contact us at websales@topshome.com and we'll move your company up to the top of the list.

Web Site Sales have been absolutely amazing during the first quarter of 2003 so if you're thinking about starting the service, don't hesitate! It has such a positive impact on your client base that you'll be happy you did it! Contact us at websales@topshome.com for more information.

Susan Sanders

News Worthy

New Property Management Demo Site

To better showcase how you can use your TOPS Management Company Web Site to improve your employees lives, and impress prospective clients, we have updated our management company web site demo. The new demo utilizes both public and private sides of the management company web site. Many of the features on the new site were modeled on actual usage by our various management company customers. Even if you are already using the internal side of your management company web site, you should take a look at the new demo site to get a better idea of ways that you can improve. A link to the new demo site is available at www.topshome.com under Mgmt Demo.

Andrea Drennen

What's New

New Features on Your Community Web Sites

Added ability to upload 12-month Account History for each owner from TOPS 2000™. Read the Feature Teacher in this issue for more information.
Added ability to activate or deactivate upload settings on an individual community basis. See the Tutorial in this issue for more information.
Added the ability to ''Subscribe'' to the Message Board and the Board Message Board. Once subscribed, owners will automatically receive an email containing each new Topic or Message that is posted.
Added ''Total Logins'' and ''Number and Percentage of residents who have logged in'' to bottom of Login Statistics page.
Removed the display of ''When'', ''Where'' and ''Contact'' labels from the Volunteer Needs feature if these fields were not filled in.
Set ''Description'' as a required field in Volunteer Needs.
Resolved issue where Lots for Sale was not showing all four pictures if they were loaded.
Corrected issue with users and passwords that, for some customers, resulted in a ''file not found'' error when attempting to upload data.

Programming Department

Feature Teacher

12-Month Accounting History

Our most recent addition to the TOPS Community Web Site Service is the 12-month accounting history for residents. This feature displays each owner's AR owner balance history for the past 12 months (from the time of upload).You may also optionally upload owner history notes as well. The 12-month accounting history is a wonderful feature that is very useful both for the property manager and for the owners, allowing them to lookup someone's account status online. What's more, the file recreates itself each time you upload, updating the 12 month record to the time of the upload.

To see this feature, owners can click ''Account Info'' on the left menu. Then, at the bottom of the Balance/Payment Info, ''Click here for Account History''. This will display assessments, payments, late fees, any credits, and the balance forward for the owner's account. Administrators with a security level of ''1'' may view owner's 12-month history by going to the Address Book, opening an owner's record, clicking ''View Account Info'', and then clicking on ''Click here for Account History''.

The 12-month History feature will display a full A/R History for each owner in the community. You may choose to include owner history notes as well.

The way this feature works is that when you upload owner data for a community, TOPS 2000™ will also copy some of the information from the AR module and put it into a file called acc1yr.web. If you notice, this is the new file that recently has begun to upload along with the other owner information files: acc_ccr.web, accnt.web, update.web, and workordr.web. There is nothing to edit about the account history feature, since all data for this is pulled from TOPS 2000™.

To enable the new feature, you will need to check for new web files. See the Support Tips later in this issue for more details on using this program.

What do you think of the new 12-month accounting history? Try it out and let us know at websupport@topsoft.com

Brandon Kelley

Customer Spotlight

T.W. Finnerty Property Management

Tom Finnerty runs one of the premier management companies in Staten Island, New York: T.W. Finnerty Property Management. When Tom made the decision to put his company online, he did not go about it halfway. His web site, www.twfinnerty.com, is a testament to the level of management services provided by T.W. Finnerty Property Management.

One of the most innovative features on the web site is the communities module. Instead of using the default "communities" feature (a simple table of links to community web sites), Tom has created a custom "Communities" module that contains a link to each community that he manages, along with a photo and description of that community. Communities listed in bold have community web sites, which are linked to directly.

As you will see from the classified section, Tom has managed to turn his management company web site into a moneymaker through the sale of classified ads to his vendors. Tom has also made good use of his scanner! Take a look at any of the hot links and you will note the accompanying pictures with every entry.

Tom has also taken advantage of the ability to use community web site features on his management company site. Through use of the events calendar, he is able to inform visitors of company events, and the photo gallery shares photos of people and happenings in his communities.

All of this hard work on his management company site has paid off for Tom Finnerty by presenting a personable face to the people visiting www.twfinnerty.com. Be sure to check out the web site and maybe get some ideas for your own management company site!

Andrea Drennen

Tutorial

Customizing Upload Settings on a 'Per Community' Basis

Another new feature that has been added this month is the ability to customize the upload settings for each community that has a community web site. This feature was added in response to many of our customers' requests to be able to choose which data will upload from TOPS 2000™ for each community web site.

You may already be familiar with step four of the web wizard (Internet, Web Wizard in TOPS 2000™), which allows you to define which data will upload from TOPS 2000™ to your web sites. The options here include:

Accounting Information - This includes current balance, last payment date, amount, and check number.
One Year History - This includes the A/R history for each owner for the previous 12-month period.
Include History Notes - If the One Year History option is selected, you may opt to include any notes in the owner history file.
Work Orders - This includes the full work order history for this owner
CC&R Violations/ACC Requests - This includes a full history of violations and architectural requests.

The settings that you define in step four of the web wizard are your default upload settings for every community. However, with our new Upload Options program, you can now customize these settings for individual communities. Here's How:

First, define your initial default settings for all communities by using the web wizard. Click close after step four.
Next, in TOPS 2000™, go to Internet, Setup Options, and select "Upload Options" to custom define settings for a specific community.
Click on the community you wish to customize and make the desired changes. You may change the default login name and password scheme for a community, and check or uncheck options that you wish to include in the data upload.
Once you have customized any communities you wish to change, click Done to save your changes.

Important Notes:

You can only define settings for communities that have already been selected! If you need to add another community to the list, you should go to Internet, Setup Options, Communities, add the new community, and then go back to the Upload Options to define specific settings for that community.
We highly recommend against making changes to a community's login and password scheme if owner data for this community is already online. Making this change could result in owners being unable to login with their old login name and password.
When you run the web wizard, the settings that you define in step four apply to EVERY community that is selected. Thus, if you run the wizard after changing the upload options, all of the communities will reset to the settings in the wizard. So you should only use the web wizard to define your initial settings. If you do run the wizard again at a later date, you will need to go back to the Upload Options to reset your specific community options.

Andrea Drennen

Support Tips

Staying Up to Date with Web Updates
How to use check files to stay current

Are you having problems with resale owners? Can you not see the new 12-month accounting feature? These are issues that we at TOPS Software have resolved, but your software may not know it yet. With the latest release of TOPS 2000™ v3.10, we have included a useful new utility called CHKFILES.EXE, but more commonly referred to as Check files. This program will check with our company's server to see if there is a new web-related program file for TOPS. Keep in mind that the only files that are updated are files that relate to creating, managing, and uploading data to the community web site. It will not modify any data files.

To keep your web-related files up-to-date, in TOPS 2000™ you can go to the Internet menu and toward the bottom are two features, "Check For New Web Files" and "Auto Check For Web Updates". "Check For New Web Files" runs the check files program right then. If you select "Auto Check For Web Updates", putting a checkmark next to it, the software will automatically run check files before any data upload. To insure problem-free uploads, we highly recommend having a checkmark here at all times. However, it is possible to receive error messages when running check files. This is because TOPS 2000™ cannot update a file that is currently open. The following is a sure-fire way to make sure that you don't receive error messages while running check files.

First, if you receive the following window, this means there are files to update: The "Files to update: 0 of 8" message at the bottom indicates that 8 new files were found on our server. Before you begin downloading the new files, however, you must make sure that all TOPS-related files are closed. First, the TOPS 2000™ window is still probably in the background. Close it for now (but leave the web updates window open).
Next, you must also make sure that the TOPS Community Web Utility is closed. This is the program that automatically uploads to the web site based on the schedule. This one is harder to find, but it's in the system tray area in the lower right corner of your screen (): Right-click on the TOPS icon surrounded by a red circle, then select Quit. To make absolutely sure that it is closed, you can press Ctrl-Alt-Delete simultaneously. If you are running Windows 95/98/ME, look for TOP2000.EXE or TOPSCommunityWeb.EXE in the list, and end that program. If you are running Windows 2000/XP, click on Task Manager, then go to the Processes tab and look for TOPS2000.EXE or TOPSCommunityWeb.EXE and end those processes. It is now safe for you to begin updating your web files.
There are some circumstances where you may still receive errors during the update. If this happens, you are probably in a client-server environment. Since all the files are running off the server, closing it on your own computer may not be enough because someone is still running the program elsewhere in the office. Make sure that everyone is closed out of TOPS 2000™, then go to the server computer. Make sure that both TOPS2000.EXE and TOPSCommunityWeb.EXE are closed on the server before running the web update. If closing TOPS 2000™ is too intrusive on your office operations, then arrange to do it at the end of the day after everyone is out of the software. If some files fail to update properly because it's running, don't worry - the rest of the files will update fine, and you can run the web update again later to get the files that received errors before.
Finally, if you use the automatic scheduler to upload data or internet backups, make sure to run through the web wizard (you don't have to enter any new information, just keep clicking on Next until you get to the end, then click Finish). This will run the Web Community Utility in the system tray again, making sure that any schedules updates happen on time.

Making sure to update your web files will not only let you see all the latest features of TOPS community web sites, but also prevents owner access data from having errors. Good luck!

Brandon Kelley

Download of the Month

Making the Smart Choice

This month, we have created a document in MS Word that you can customize, print out, and distribute to community officers at board meetings. This new document is a great way to sell your board members on why they should select a community web site powered by TOPS 2000™. The document is called "Making the Smart Choice" and is located in the downloads section of our web site: www.TOPSHome.com/topshome/Administrators/downloads.htm

Andrea Drennen

Did you know that TOPS Software will provide you with a free
community web site CD demo? Follow this link to apply for your free demo today!

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About the Authors

Susan Sanders is your Community Web Site Sales Representative
Matt Hardy is your TOPS Community Web Site Support Representative
Brandon Kelley is your TOPS Community Web Site Support Representative
Andrea Master-Drennen is the Director of Publishing and Standards at TOPS Software

TOPS Home E-Zine

Issue #14 - April 2003

Experience TOPS Interactive Web Sites for Yourself!