This is one of those applications that I use almost everyday.  If I’m not looking something up, I’m updating the data that I’ve already entered.  If you haven’t considered Safekeeping, I encourage you to have a look at the information on our website.

We will be uploading a video that provides an overview of Safekeeping in the next week or so and that may make it even easier to determine if you need Safekeeping as much as I do.

If you’re like me, you’ve got important information in a variety of places.  I’m not talking about client information, I’m talking about YOUR private information. Such as bank accounts that you have.  I know what you’re going to say.  Well, all I have to do is look at the bottom of my checks or a recent statement to see what the bank account number is.  That’s not exactly what I’m thinking, but let’s say you have just 3 bank accounts in three different banks.

To start with, that’s 3 different account numbers, three different bankers (along with all the contact information), and three different websites (for online banking).  So, where do you keep this information so that both you and you’re wife (assuming you’re married) can find it?  Safekeeping is the answer to this, and many other similar questions.

At this point, you’re probably going to say that you could do this in a spreadsheet or other document and I would certainly agree with that.  But if you do, then who ever has access to it (besides you) also needs to know how to use that application.  They also need to know the name of the file that contains the information they are looking for.  Oh, and they also need to know where that file was saved.

It doesn’t take long before you begin to see what Safekeeping can do for you. It’s a storehouse for those important pieces of data that you want to centralize instead of putting here and there.

Safekeeping comes with 21 pre-defined categories to make it easy to start using it immediately.  The built-in categories are as follows:

Bank Accounts – enter all your checking, saving, and other bank accounts.

Brokerage Accounts – enter your brokerage accounts and other investment accounts.

Collectibles – if you have a valuable collection of stamps, paintings, chess sets, etc., you would enter them here.

Credit Cards – enter credit cards here.

Dates – enter any important dates here, such as birthdays, anniversaries, etc.

Domains – in this electronic age, everybody owns a domain, or perhaps a lot of domains.

Emails – This is not for emails you send to, but emails you have.  After all, who has just one?

Firearms – Own a firearm or more than one, enter them here.

Insurance Policies – enter the policy information here.

Miscellaneous 1 – customizable category for data that doesn’t fit anywhere else.

Miscellaneous 2 – customizable category for data that doesn’t fit anywhere else.

Miscellaneous 3 – customizable category for data that doesn’t fit anywhere else.

Miscellaneous 4 – customizable category for data that doesn’t fit anywhere else.

Miscellaneous 5 – customizable category for data that doesn’t fit anywhere else.

Networks – Think computers, such as wireless networks, virtual private networks, and servers.

Partnerships – Got an investment in a partnership, now you can track your payments to and payments from the partnership so you will always know where you stand.

Recipes – Everybody has a recipe that they want to share, enter in Safekeeping and you can email it to a friend with ease.

Software – Keeping track of software that you purchase can be a real hassle, but not any more.

Vehicles – What’s your VIN and license number?  Now you’ve got a place to keep track of it in the event it gets stolen.

Websites – Got a website that you visit frequently that requires authentication?  Or more likely, you’ve got tens or hundreds of them and keeping track of user names and passwords can be a real hassle… till now.

There are 21 pre-defined categories and 5 of them are customizable for your special needs.

By the way, Safekeeping is password protected so that only those you want to have access can see your data.  You can also encrypt your data for added protection.

Since I started using Safekeeping, my life has become much simpler because I’ve only got one place to enter, update, or more importantly, find the data that I always seem to be looking for.  One side benefit is that you’re family will only have one place to look in the event of an emergency.

If you haven’t started securing and centralizing this kind of important information, isn’t time you did?

We’ve also been working on some new applications that we feel will be very well received.  All of the new applications that we release will be cross-platform and capable of being run on a Mac or on Windows.  I’ll address the reason for this in a future post.

We are planning on releasing three new applications this fall.  The first one will be coming out in the next few weeks.  I don’t want to spoil it for you, but it’s one of those applications that everyone has a need for, but manages to scape by inventing their own way of managing this data.  We think we’ve got a better way and we also think you’ll find it indispensable in your day-to-day activities.

There will be more information about all of these applications on our website as soon as they are released, but checking this blog is the best way to keep up with new releases.

The following is a list of the enhancements that will be added in Version 5.

File Selected Screen – The main menu, which is the initial screen displayed when starting QTB, provides information about the most recently selected file.  We will be adding new features to this screen including a list of the most recently selected files and a quick reports section.  For those who are unfamiliar with Quick Reports (which is was added to Asset Keeper in Version 25), this feature allows you to assigned your most used reports to links that appear on the file selected screen.  This is similar to creating a toolbar of your favorite reports for quicker access.

Default Sort – Currently, all reports in QTB are sorted by Account Type and Account Number.  This ensures that accounts are properly grouped even when accounts numbers are NOT numerically assigned.  There will always be those users who prefer to have their accounts in account number order even though this may mean that an asset account may be listed between two liability accounts.  We will be introducing an option in V5 that allows you to specify if you want accounts sorted as they currently are or in account number order.  What this will actually do is sort the balance sheet accounts in account number order and sort the income statement accounts in account number order.  This allows accounts to be sorted in account number order and still be separated between the balance sheet and income statement.

Department Numbers – In V5 you will be able to identify a segment of your account number as a department number.  For example, if you created a mask for your account number as 9999-999 where the last 3 digits is a department number, you will be able to specify this in your client information.

All reports, where appropriate, are being modified so that when you elect to print departmental breakdown, a report for the company will be printed as well as a report for each department.

Visual Trial Balance – A number of improvements and enhancements will be made to the Visual Trial Balance.  The following is a list of the changes being made to the Visual Trial Balance.

Filter -  You will be able to filter the list of accounts displayed in the Visual Trial Balance based on a number of different options, including, Account Types, Group Codes, or a keyword contained in the account name, for example, all accounts that contain the word “depreciation” in the account name.  This will be extremely useful to review accounts that are being grouped for income taxes for financial statements without requiring you to view or print a report.

Journal Entries – Currently, you can adjust accounts selected from the Visual Trial Balance screen, but you can not edit or view them once entered.  In V5, you will be able to both edit, view, or select from a list of journal entries that have been entered for an account.

In prior versions, the screen used to add a journal entry from the Visual Trial Balance screen was different from the one selected from the toolbar or menu.  We have now combined features from both screens into a new one that is used regardless of the method selected to add or edit journal entries.

Archived Journal Entries – Most journal entries entered year-after-year are in many cases repetitive.  To make the it easier to enter these repetitive journal entries, when resetting for the next year, journal entries will be archived.  When adding a new journal entry, you will be to select from all archived journal entries that will be used as a template for the new entry.  We think this will be a huge time saver when performing your year-end procedures.

I think you will agree that these features should make QTB even more useful and productive for year-end client work.  If you have any comments about any of these enhancements, we’d love to hear from you.

Fortunately, we have a very vocal user base and as soon as we announce a new feature, we get feedback about how a user wants it to work or look. This kind of information is extremely valuable to us since we our software is user-centric and user-driven. I’m always amazed by the number of users who offer feedback on the way our software works.

Here is a summary of the new features. During the next few months, I’ll be adding more information about each of these so that by the time you get Version 2011, you’ll feel like you’ve already been using it. More importantly, you’ll be as excited as we are about some of the new features being added.

AFY Comparison Report – This report was designed to show you the amount of bonus that could be claimed depending on the rate selected. Since you can now only select 100% (there was a time when you could select 30%, 50%, or none at all), we’re going to make this report more useful based on the current bonus provisions. In V2011, you’ll be able to see exactly what the effect bonus depreciation has on your deduction on a class by class basis.

Report Writer – We are going to add some of the asset tracking fields to the report writer so that tracking information can be included in your custom reports.

Print Reports to Excel – This has been a problematic area because our reports are so precisely formatted that when they are exported to Excel you end up with an ugly mess. It’s not really Excel’s fault, but then, our reports are very concise and finely formatted so that when they are exported to Excel, it just doesn’t work very well. To work around this issue, we will be exporting a slightly altered formatted report to Excel for selected reports. This should help quell the storm of voices who want to export reports to Excel.

Personal Property Reports – Including the ability to generate personal property reports in Asset Keeper is a HUGE win for our users and the number of states AK can generate reports for continues to grow. This year we will be adding California, Montana, and another one for Oklahoma.

Asset Tracking Fields – Some of our reports allow you to replace fields with other information that is more pertinent to your needs. We will be adding asset tracking fields to the list of fields that you can include on these reports.

File Selected Screen – The file selected screen is displayed in the middle of the screen when you start AK. There’s also a Quick Reports section on this screen that allows you to select from your favorite reports. We are going to enhance this screen to also include a list of the most recently selected files that you can quickly select. The most recently selected files will be removed from the bottom of the File menu to eliminate any redundancy.

More Sort Code Fields – If there is one request that we have heard more than any others over the last few years, it’s the need for more sort code fields. This is a very complicated process, but we are going to add 4 more sort code fields. We are also going to redesign the General page of the Add / Edit screen to make entering data into these sort code fields easier.

New Include Options – In almost all cases, when printing reports there is an “Include” option that allows to you filter the content of your report based on the include option selected. We will be adding two new include options that allow you to include ONLY assets that bonus depreciation was claimed or include only assets that are qualified for bonus but no bonus was claimed.

Attached Documents Location – AK also allows you to add a photo to each asset. In the Client Information, you can specify a photo directory where the photos are stored for that client. The advantage of this is that when you add a new photo, it will always look in the folder. We are going to add a “document” folder to the Client Information so that AK will know where to find the documents for each Client.

This may not look like a lot of new features, but many of these features affect a very wide spectrum of the existing features in Asset Keeper. For example, adding 4 new sort code fields affects data entry, almost every report (of which there are about 100 reports), export, import, merging, unmerging and many more. This is not unusual for a mature application like AK, but it something we’ve been dealing with for many years.

If you have any comments about any of these options, please post your comments here or send us an email. We love hearing from our users.

One of our cardinal rules when reviewing potential candidates for inclusion in our software is that it must result in greater productivity for the end user. We are very conscious of “feature bloat” and don’t want to add features just to meet a quota.

Just as I did last year, I will provide details of the new features being added as we move towards release at the end of the year. If you have feedback as these features are disclosed in this blog, by all means post your comments here.

Development of the new features begins in earnest on Monday, June 6th, 2011.

Here’s an interesting article discussing this.  Click here.

Show below is the Report Search screen before any search criteria has been entered.  Note that you can also just scroll through the list of reports and double-click on any of them to jump to that report’s specification screen.

Report Search screen without search criteria.

On the following screen shot, we entered “Monthly” in the search criteria.  The results of the search are shown.  You can then double-click on any of the reports shown to jump to that report’s specification screen.

Report Search - with search criteria.