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This is information we discovered during the course of competitive analysis in 2001-2003 regarding software solutions for property management. BOOKMARK THIS PAGE NOW.
- Asyst Data Group -- Accounting
ASYST data group is an accounting system that was created with the help of CPAs.Furthermore, they have at least 25 modules to make a suite of software solutions for property management. Association Management Company in Sacramento uses it, and they are ASYST's largest northern California customer as of September 5th, 2002. However, NONE of their customers use all of their modules.
- AVGAR -- Accounting
On December 12, 2001; AVGAR costs $1200/seat for 2-9 seats, and the modules are extra $300-$500/user/module. 10-24 users cost $1000/seat. 25-49 users cost $850/seat. Support costs 3% of total costs per month for 2-9 users and 2.5% of total costs per month for 10-24 users, etc. Avgar is an accounting solution, at this point it's focused on Association management, and they have a new "assessment collections" module or what I gather is a violations letter feature. They also advertise a Utility tracking module -- which keeps track of assests. They promise a CC+R package by Feb. 2002 and a work order feature by August 2002. The demo install took many steps, was difficult to follow, and it was unclear when or if I was done with the installation. This was because of a general lack of regard for user experience, old documentation for the install which was written for older versions of Windows, and the need to install database, products, the extra modules, and the ODBC driver. Also, each module and the demo required a 30 digit serial number, plus another 30 digit "product code", which took time as well. Once in the demo, there are hardly any keyboard shortcuts and the interfaces seemed, at times, counter intuitive. The sales guy said that he will add some keyboard shortcuts soon. AVGAR UI has three sections -- AR, AP, and General Ledger -- plus a new tab for each module that you purchase. It features a very flexible Cash or Accrual from AR --> GL or AP --> GL for each Association. Each association had it's own Chart of Accounts, and it was possible to copy one Chart of Accounts to a new Association if you wanted to copy them as a template. Avgar Violations module uses ODBC drivers to interface with Word97/2000 -- the ODBC drivers that come with Word only work well for Microsoft products like Outlook and SQL. I couldn't see the violations feature because my machine had driver issues -- which I needed to install new drivers but was unwilling to do so at the time. The violations letter feature basically takes care of writing and documenting violations letters by taking information from the database to insert into doc file templates. It also had the ability to easily print out each letter that was sent to be included in board meeting packages. There are 6 additional modules for AVGAR -- violations, utility tracking, collections, work order, job cost, and CC+R.
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