TOPS Home E-Zine
Issue #24 - February 2004
February 2004: Inside TOPS Home
1)
Welcome to TOPS Home!
2)
Turn Your Web Site into a Revenue Stream
3)
Talk About A Bright Idea!
4)
Online Payments Now Available
5)
New Features on Your Web Sites
6)
Premier Community Management
7)
Place Your Own Real Estate Listings
8)
Vendor / Job Bids
9)
Managing Your Hot Links
Read this issue and archived issues of the TOPS Home E-Zine online at:
http://www.topshome.com/topshome/Administrators/TOPS_Home_ezine.htm
Welcome back to TOPS Home, the web site e-mail magazine (e-zine) for the TOPS Community Web Site Service.
February always seems a little rushed to me, maybe because it is a few days shorter than the rest of the months. This year has been no different. We have been working like crazy to release all of the new stuff that we have been working on for web sites. One really big release that we are making by way of this issue is the new online payment interface that allows homeowners to pay their current dues balance, special assessments, clubhouse rentals, and whatever else you can think up, online. Cyndi Sanders tells us more about that in the Newsworthy section. Additionally, we have both applications for this service and a new board flyer on the service available in the downloads section of our web site.
In addition to this big release, we have added a number of new features, including a new 'moving?' link that allows home buyers to manage the setup for all of their utilities from the community web site. Read more about this and other additions to the sites in the What's New section.
Of course, we don't stop there. We have a number of other informative articles for you this month, all of which I just know you are going to find helpful. So let's get to it! 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@topshome.com.
TOPS Web Support (800) 899-5689 WebSupport@topssoft.com.Turn Your Web Site into a Revenue Stream
I've been meeting with owners of management companies and General Managers of Self Managed communities. The purpose of these meetings was to brainstorm ways the TOPS web site service can add revenue and decrease costs to these entities. One revenue stream to explore is to contact your existing vendors to ask if they have an interest in advertising on your site.
One management company had such a great idea, we just had to share it with you. Over a three month period, each time a bill is paid on behalf of an association, the accounting department includes, with the check, an invitation to advertise on their web site and an internet advertising contract agreement. Clients have asked for a sample of such a contract so we've made it available in the Administrators portion of our www.topshome.com web site.
Speaking of which, if you don't visit this site on a monthly basis and take a peek at the Board Flyer created by our Internet Sales Manager, you're really missing out. I actually use these in my own marketing of the service and the response is tremendous! We're always happy to customize them to your specifications and even print them for you so take a moment and check them out. Last month's flyer called "What's Cooking" was a huge hit! So many associations are interested in accepting online payments and now we offer that service and have even integrated it with our TOPS accounting module!
Our Sales Team is going to be in Ohio mid-March and in Arizona at the end of March. If you're interested in having an onsite demo of the association web site service for your managers or any clients, please contact websales@topshome.com or call us at 1-800-556-7852 to arrange a meeting time. If you're an existing TOPS client, we'll even bring fully assembled Sales Kits for each of your managers so they're prepared to answer any questions about the association web site service. Looking forward to seeing you soon!
Talk About A Bright Idea!
This month, we have created a flier in MS Word that you can customize, print out, and distribute to community officers at board meetings. The flier is called "Talk About A Bright Idea!" and explains the new online payment feature from a board member's perspective. The new handout is located in the downloads section of our web site: www.topshome.com/topshome/Administrators/downloads.htm.
To customize the handout, simply download and save the MS Word document, find and replace the words 'Your Management Company" with your company's name, and VIOLA! Instant marketing materials to hand out at this month's round of board meetings.
Online Payments Now Available
TOPS now offers the ability for clients to accept online payments on their company and community web sites! You'll be able to collect association dues, payments for renting the clubhouse, fees for clubs and social events, and even payments from vendors for classified ads!
The system accepts ACH/E-Checks and Visa/Master Card, and is accessed through a secure server to protect the homeowner’s privacy. The payment system will interface directly with your TOPS 2000™ software, so payments can be easily loaded into the TOPS 2000™ Accounts Receivable module. This service is offered in partnership with eRentPayer and has no set-up fees, no monthly fees and no minimum amounts that have to flow through the account.
Once an application is signed with eRentPayer – it takes about two weeks to process it and get set up. When the application is approved, TOPS takes care of adding a payment interface to the client web site. This agreement will establish a merchant account for your company or association. What is nice about this application is that there are no personal guarantees needed!
How it works:
Anyone can pay you by going to your web site and clicking on the Make Payment link. They will then be prompted to create a profile. As part of their set-up, they'll be prompted to enter information such as their address and what credit card / bank account they'll be using to pay their bills. They can enter more than one account so they'll have flexibility in making payments and even have the ability to sign up for recurring charges!
They will also enter in an email address because each time they use the system, they will receive a transaction confirmation via email.
You are notified of transactions by:
- logging into your eRentPayer account and viewing history
- email each time a transaction occurs
- itemized direct deposit statements for reconciliation
- electronic delivery of “lock box” style transaction file
Pricing:
- Set Up Fee: $0
- Monthly Maintenance Fee: $0
- Minimum Monthly $ Amount of Transactions: $0
- Transaction Fees: (can be charged to payer or absorbed by company/association)
- ACH / Direct Debit - $2
- Credit Card - $2 plus 3%
If the monies need to be paid to an association bank account, (i.e., clubhouse rentals, dues, etc.) then in addition to the management company, each association needs to fill out an application so they too can have a merchant bank account set up. To sign up now, contact us at websales@topshome.com or fill out the applications, located on our downloads page:
www.topshome.com/topshome/Administrators/downloads.htm.New Features on Your Community Web Sites
Changes Made to TOPS Web Program Files
- We have a brand new scheduler for the TOPS Internet Services. This scheduler is so smart; you can program it to update your TOPS Community Web sites, backup your data using the TOPS Internet Backup Service, upload data to CondoCerts, or update your TOPS 2000™ program files automatically. With the new scheduler, if you don’t want to upload the data for all of your associations in one shot, you don’t have to. You can schedule which associations’ data gets uploaded on which dates and times. You can even use the scheduler to reboot your computer between uploads, or at a certain time every night!
- New uploader gives better reporting and keeps logs of the files.
- Upload options have been made simpler and easier to manage (more user friendly).
- Added the ability to define a separate IP address for each community.
Changes Made Online
- New "Moving?" link added to all web sites. This link allows new residents to sign up for utilities such as electric, cable, phone, etc. online, directly from your web site. This feature takes a load off your company by eliminating the calls to your office from new residents looking to handle their move. It also makes moving less of a hassle for the new owner by putting all of their setup needs in one easy to access location. If you do not wish to keep this feature on your site, please email your removal request to websupport@topssoft.com.
- Now the "Hide Phone Number from Address Book" selection in the User Profile hides ALL phone numbers instead of just the home phone. This includes work numbers, home number, cell number and "other" number fields.
- The recent addition of logging email Bulletins to the Announcements feature was modified to only log Bulletins sent to "All".
- The Homes for Sale and Homes for Lease features now show a small picture icon next to listings that have pictures included.
- If a user profile has the same email address listed for both person 1 and person 2 it will no longer send 2 copies of email bulletins to that email address.
In addition to the updates listed above, we have also upgraded the rich text editor that appears in feature descriptions, email bulletins, and several other features. Here is a list of those updates:
- Added a totally new image manager. You can now upload up to 5 images simultaneously. The actual layout of the image manager has also been redesigned, and is more user-friendly, including an automatic preview feature, and additional image settings.
- Added an advanced color picker. The 'More Colors' button allows you to choose colors from an RGB color palette, similar to Windows. You can also define colors as RGB or hex values, if you know the color you wish to use.
- The help section of the editor has been improved, explaining each function in more detail and with clearer examples, and illustrations.
- Made improvements to the clipboard routine so pasting text from MS Word is more intuitive.
Premier Community Management; Tarpon Springs, Florida
Premier Community Management was created to provide a full slate of services to the Association Industry. Premier provides Management, Server based Accounting, Consulting and Web site development, Real Estate sales, Mobile Home sales and Seasonal Rentals. Premier specializes in providing these services to Common Interest Developments. Our primary growth has been specializing in Cooperatives i.e.: resident owned retirement communities.
There were numerous reasons for choosing the TOPS web site service. For example, the format is easy for the customer and the staff to learn and navigate within the site and provides them with the tools to make changes and keep the web site current without waiting for a web-master to make the requested changes. Some of the more valuable features include the residents account history and balance information, CC&R violation records, Architectural approval requests and the various e-forms have assisted us in reducing overhead and improving efficiency in the community operations.
The web sites have improved our ability to communicate to the residents and are an important service for the seasonal residents to stay informed about current events within the community and to voice their opinions while they are away. We have found the web sites are another effective way to create more involvement in the community thru the various features that are available to the residents through the web site.
The web site service is assisting in the growth of the company by enhancing our image and providing us a competitive advantage in the marketplace as well as demonstrating our commitment to provide state of the art services to our customer base.
Would you like your web site to be spotlighted in the TOPS Home E-Zine? Send us a two or three paragraph email. Be sure to include a description of your community, tell us what led you to getting a Community Web Site, and let us know what features you like best. Send your spotlight to websupport@topssoft.com.
Keep Them Coming Back!
Many associations publish a community newsletter for their residents on a regular basis. In this section of the TOPS Home Ezine, we'll provide an article each month that you can publish in your newsletter (or in an email bulletin) to help promote your web site and let your residents know just how great their web site is, and how easy it is to sign on and get informed! Just customize the article by inserting your community web site domain name and cut and paste it right into your newsletter! If you have an article or idea you'd like us to pass on to other community web site administrators, please let us know--we get many of our best ideas from you!
Note For Administrators: Before we start this month's article, I wanted to warn administrators to check your site to see if this option is available to your residents. While we do allow residents to add their own property for sale or lease in the real estate section by default, this setting can be changed when the sites are set up. If your residents do not have access to add their own listings, and you wish to enable that functionality, please email your request to websupport@topssoft.com.
Place Your Own Real Estate Listings
Are you trying to sell or rent your home? Have an empty lot in our community you would like to offer for sale? You can place your listings on our community web site for free! Every month, prospective homeowners come to our web site to find out information on our community, and see what homes are available. To place your free listing, follow these simple instructions:
- Go to our web site at www.communitysite.com
- Log on to the site using your unique log in name and password. (If you own more than one lot in the community, you will need to log in to the property you are offering for sale or lease.)
- Click on the link for the type of entry you wish to make (Homes for Sale, Homes for Lease, or Lots for Sale)
- At the bottom of the page, click add, edit, delete Homes for Sale. (Or whichever you chose.)
- Click Add.
- Add information about the home or lot. You can include pictures and detailed descriptions, or simply fill in the fields for number of rooms, etc.
- Click Save New.
- Click the link at the bottom labeled 'click here to continue'.
Please note that this is a service for homeowners only. If you are a real estate professional, developer, or other and wish to place a listing in our real estate section, please contact the web site administrator at: webadmin@emailaddress.
If you have a method of drawing visitors to your site that has been successful for you, please take a moment to share it with your fellow community web site administrators. You can send your tips to websupport@topssoft.com.
Vendor / Job Bids
There is a great feature of the TOPS community web sites that can be very useful to property managers and board members. It is the Vendor / Job Bids feature, and if you are wondering why you had not noticed it before - it is because it must be specifically requested in order for it to appear on your TOPS community web site. This is because we want to make sure that the security levels on this feature are set correctly for your community association.
The purpose of the Vendor / Job Bids feature is to allow managers and board members a centralized resource where they can manage their list of vendor contact information and send these vendors notifications on job bids in an organized manner. It does this by maintaining a database of vendors, each with their individual contact information. Each vendor can be associated with multiple vendor categories, as well.
There are actually 2 main components of the Vendor/Job Bid feature: the vendors and the jobs. The most powerful functionality of this feature is how the 2 components interact.
Vendor Functionality
While this information does not currently pull from your AP vendor database in TOPS, that functionality is in development and will be available within the next few months. In the meantime, we will manually load your vendor database for you. Simply export the file from TOPS, and email it to websupport@topssoft.com.
For the vendors component, you can:
- Add, Edit, Delete Vendors
- Search for Vendors
- Enter Notes and Ratings for Vendors
- E-mail Vendors
- Print/Display Vendor Lists
- Add, Edit, Delete Vendor Categories
These are just the functions that deal only with the vendors. The first 2 are fairly self-explanatory. The third function allows board members and administrators to share notes about vendors for reference when considering job bids. The e-mail vendors function lets you send the same e-mail to multiple vendors. This is useful for general announcements to vendors from the community. The Print/Display Vendor Lists lets you generate a report of all vendors for a particular category. Finally, the Vendor Categories lets you organize vendors by the type of service they provide.
Jobs Functionality
There are also functions for the jobs component:
- View Open Jobs for Bid
- Add, Edit, Delete Jobs for Bid
- Notify Vendors of a Job Bid
View Open Job Bids displays a list of all current open job bids. At the bottom of that page is a link called Edit Job Bids that does the exact same thing as Add, Edit, Delete Job Bids. The third function listed here, Notify Vendors of a Job Bid, is the one that most directly uses the interaction between the vendors and the jobs for bid. This will let you select a job to notify vendors of, then select which vendors to notify about the job. Once you click on Notify Vendors, it will send an e-mail to each of the vendors you selected notifying them about the job bid.
The Vendor / Job Bids feature is primarily a communication and decision-making conduit for board members and property managers. It allows them to manage their contact list for vendors while simultaneously allowing them to communicate with the vendors and communicate with each other about the vendors. If you would like the Vendor / Job Bids feature enabled on your site, please let us know who you want to have access to the feature for security reasons (25 is the default level for board members, 1 is the default level for administrators). If you have any more questions about the feature, please contact us at websupport@topshome.com.
Is there a feature that you would like to learn more about? Send an email to websupport@topssoft.com with your suggestions for our next Feature Teacher.
Managing Your Hot Links
The Hot Links feature is very popular as a way to link to professional organizations such as CAI, and also to link to local vendors, services, and contractors. Hot Links is a great way to share other web sites that may be of use to your residents without mucking up your feature descriptions with that information. Hot Links can also be used as a source of income to your community by selling link space to community vendors and local businesses.
The Categories
Like many of the web site features, Hot Links are first divided up into categories to help sort the links into relevant categories. One of the more common mistakes administrators make is to make the category names more specific. For example, if you call your category CAI, you have forced a category that can only have links related to one organization. If, on the other hand, you name the category 'Professional Affiliations', you can include links to CAI in addition to the other organizations to which you belong. The sky is the limit when it comes to the categories that you can add, but here are a few that we recommend:
- Recommended Vendors - Here is where you can sell link space to your vendors. This works in conjunction with your classified ad section, and can even be included in the cost of the ad, or offer it for a small additional fee.
- Professional Affiliations - This is where you can link to any organizations of which you are a member. This is often more appropriate for management companies than communities but could apply to both.
- Resident Links - Give your residents a place to link to their own personal web sites. People love to see their own name in print, and they will likely provide a link back to the association web site from their own sites.
- Local Governments - Link to the various government web sites for the city(ies) in which your community(ies) is/are located. This is a very useful resource for homeowners needing to get information on local ordinances, directions, and more.
- Local Attractions - Link to the local areas that may be of interest to your residents. More than just the big theme park 20 miles away, this is a great place for those hard to find local color spots such as the Civic Center, YMCA, Boys and Girls Club, dance studios, art galleries, and anything else that may enrich your resident's lives and bring your community closer together.
The Links
Within each category, the links are listed with both a notepad icon and a globe icon next to each link. The globe icon will take a user directly to the web site being linked to, but if a user clicks on the name of the link, it will give them a more robust description of the link. This is the part of Hot Links that really distinguishes it from other web sites' links feature.
A Hot Link item has 5 main parts to it:
- Name - This is the title the link item is given in the list of links.
- Full Description - Here, you can add a more robust description of the link to describe it to the user.
- Web Site Link - This is the web site address that the link will point to when it is clicked.
- Map Link - Here, you would add a link to a mapping web site such as Yahoo Maps, Map Blast, or Map Quest to show the geographical location of the linked.
- Picture - You have the option of uploading a picture to accompany your description.
Many web sites have a banner that they prefer other web sites use if they are linking to it. These banners are ideal for the picture component because they are a relatively small size but still convey the logo of the site to which you are linking.If you have any questions about the Hot Links feature or need help getting a map link into your Hot Links, please contact us at websupport@topshome.com.
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!~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~
Here is a list of some of the most common contact data for TOPS Software:
Department
Contact
Phone
Software Sales
Nicole Sezov
800-760-9966
Web Site Sales
Susan Sanders
800-556-7852
Technical Support
Jeanne Plennert
800-899-5689
Web Site Support
Brandon Kelley
800-899-5689
Accounting
Cande Estrella
301-869-8144
Designed by TOPS Software, LLC. Copyright© 2001-2004 TOPS Software, LLC, 364-C Christopher Ave, Gaithersburg, MD 2879. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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