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Newsletter Archive

March 2005 

Non-Profit Housing and Accounting Software
By David Robertson, CA

Non-profit and co-operative housing providers are beginning to look to more sophisticated software to suit their needs now and in the future.

 For more than 20 years, many non-profit and co-operative housing providers in the Greater Toronto Area have been using NewViews successfully.

In spite of its DOS platform and its obvious age, NewViews continues to outperform, at least in the non-profit housing sector, many low-end Windows accounting applications.

However, the life of any DOS product appears limited given the new Windows platforms. NewViews continues to work with Windows XP but with some difficulties. Printing is becoming even more of a challenge.

Where do we turn?

NV2, the Windows version of NewViews, indicates they will be shipping new product in the next couple of weeks.  We will wait patiently for this to happen.

The NV2 conversion software has been tested and we know it works. We have also looked at beta versions of NV2.  It will probably be able to do the job but there will be a fair amount of training to get converted.  It looks and functions quite differently from the DOS version.

PYC will provide training but we are going to wait until the summer.  By then we will have learned NV2 ourselves and will have an indication of how many of our clients will be staying with NewViews.

There is a new player in the software game for non-profit housing software.  Yardi has come out with a new product called Yardi Genesis. This product has most of the features of conventional Yardi without the big price.

Similar to NV2, it will operate as stand alone software on your PC.  It has most of the functionality of the DOS version of NewViews but runs as a multi-user on a Windows operating system.

PYC has viewed demos of both Yardi and NV2. We believe that the non-profit housing sector will probably use both products.

We have been in discussions with Yardi and we will be learning Yardi Genesis this spring. We will offer training sessions on Yardi Genesis starting this summer.

We will be attending the Co-op Housing Federation of Canada AGM in June 2005 where we will be on a panel discussing Yardi Genesis.  NV2 will probably be discussed as well. We will be in a better position at that time to give a better comparison of the functionality of both Yardi Genesis and NV2.

Pricing is different for the two products. NV2 is priced at $495 for an upgrade from NV1 and $595 for new product. Support is $195 annually. Yardi Genesis is priced at $750 per user per year. There is a discount of 20% in the first year. Yardi Genesis is more expensive but is housing specialized. Both are multi-user.

You can check out features of both at their respective websites:

Yardi - http://www.yardi.com/genesis.asp?navloc=2

NewViews - http://www.qwpage.com/ then click on NV2 for Windows

Making a Change?

We recommend that those wishing to make the change before the summer be prepared to do so without a lot of assistance from our office. We will not be doing any training or installations until we have fully trained staff.  That will be happening in the next four months.

We also recommend you give serious consideration to converting on the first day of your new fiscal year. This will leave the old year intact in one system and the new year fully in the new system. If you wish, run parallel for a month or so but switch at year-end.

PYC will be setting up training sessions for our clients starting in the summer. The sessions will be first-come, first-served for audit clients only.  Non-audit clients will be accommodated only when all audit clients who wish, have been scheduled. When the schedules have been established the price will be announced and the times, locations and registration details will be posted on our website.

Stay tuned!