What's Under Construction at TOPS Software

TOPS provides the most widely used application for the management of condominiums and homeowner associations. One reason for our success is that most of our staff has come from the management industry and we know what our customers need from their software. We use this background along with suggestions and feedback from customers we when plan new capabilities.

Our customers know they can rely on us to continue enhancing TOPS to give them new capabilities and efficiencies, so our customers have the tools they need in a competitive environment. We have a plan for where TOPS is going both short term and long term. We thought it might be interesting and helpful to share those plans with you so you know where TOPS is heading too.

Short Term projects
(available now or in next 6 months):

• TOPS MaintCo™ – Announced in another article in this newsletter - TOPS MaintCo™ allows a management company to maintain a maintenance division. The program may be run within TOPS 2000™, or stand-alone.
  Available Now.
• Utility Billing module – Track individual unit billing from meter readings for associations with shared utilities. The program can even handle the complex charges that coincide with utility charges. The module is fully integrated with the owner’s account and the general ledger in TOPS 2000™.
  Available Now.
• Online AP Bill Approval – If you have a TOPS community web site, AP Bills can be entered in TOPS and uploaded to the community web site where they can be reviewed and approved by community officers, which then releases them for payment in TOPS. This may eliminate the need to get officer signatures on checks—a real time-saver.
  In beta test now.
• Custom Report Export Utility – Create custom reports with your favorite report writer, including MS Access, Excel and Crystal Reports. Includes the General Ledger, Owner Database, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, and Check Reconciliation modules, and will be offered free of charge to customers via the Internet Updater.
  In beta test now.
• Phone Messenger – Take phone messages inside TOPS 2000™. Full interface with homeowner data. Create Service Requests and issue Work Orders from the phone messages (Work Order module required). Keep a phone history log by community.
  Under development now.
• Calendar/Organizer – Each user can keep a calendar or appointments, reminders and a “to do” list. It will interact with some of the TOPS modules to pull in scheduled events.
  Under development now.
• More Email Capability – option to email notices rather than print. Also, email statements of accounts to homeowners. More email capabilities throughout TOPS.
  Under development now.
• PDF Reports – Print all key financial reports to a .PDF file so they can easily be emailed to community officers and others.
  Under development now.
• Better Import/Export – More interactivity with Excel, Word and other popular software.
  Under development now.
• New Additions to Job Streaming – Add the ability to globally print bills, statements and coupons. Also post recurring transactions, then auto close the fiscal period.
  Under development now.
• And More – this is only a list of some of the highlights. Version 3.2 will be released after the first of the year with hundreds of program changes and an all new way of tracking owner balances. A fresh overall look to TOPS, but with the same familiar way of working, will be part of this new release.

Longer Term projects:

• TOPS is undergoing a complete rewrite, which has already started, so that our customers can elect to use TOPS as a hosted internet application on a TOPS server or as it works currently, as a distributed application loaded on your computers. It will be your choice which way makes best sense for your organization to use TOPS.
  
  The rewrite will include all the great features you have come to rely on in TOPS 2000™ plus many new “state of the art” capabilities which will put TOPS way ahead of the pack. Our programmers have already made a number of significant leaps in technology, and we know you are going to be blown away by the new program. Stay tuned for more on this. Meanwhile, we will continue to enhance TOPS 2000™ as the rewrite progresses.

Our competition has become very aggressive of late and is spreading a lot of misconceptions about TOPS. They do this for one simple reason: the only way one can sell an application costing 5 to 10 times more than TOPS is by undermining the confidence of potential customers by hammering at the point that “If we charge this much more, then there must be a lot more our software does than TOPS does”.

The fact is, TOPS matches up very well with our higher priced competition, and by my sharing some of our future development plans I think you can see that TOPS offers the most value, and will continue to be the best software you can buy for condominium and homeowner association management.

For more information, please contact our sales department at 1-800-760-9966 or via email at sales@topssoft.com.

Jeff Hardy is the President of TOPS Software.