Join us for a Webinar on December 17

TEA 10 Overview

CommonGoals Software is pleased to announce that we are conducting free TEA 10 webinars to provide a one-hour overview of the new application and some of the key new features you can expect. The purpose of the webinar is so organizations can understand some of the new features and the new capacity they will provide for your organization. We are very excited about the new product and we are confident you will really appreciate the changes we have made. During the webinar we will highlight new features such as:

• Enhanced Activity Management (Scheduler, Activities)
• Account-Centric Structure (Individuals, Business)
• Integrated General Ledger/Accounting
• Credit Report Integration
• Integrated Loan Application module
• New User-Interface and Grid structure
• Enhanced Reporting module (drill-down capabilities)
• Several major changes in Loan and Project modules

Please take the time to join us for a preview of the many great new things to come in TEA 10!!

Title: TEA 10 Overview

Date: Monday, December 17, 2007

Time: 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM EST

Space is limited.
Reserve you Webinar seat now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/411822329

Commitment Transaction

TEA 10 now allows you to create transaction-level Commitment transactions. We have added a new transaction type to facilitate the recording and management of committed or approved funds. By recording the Commitments in the transactions, general ledger integration is possible. This significantly enhances fund management as all the reporting and transactional information is contained in one table. Additionally, by recording Committments in the transactions, you will have the ability to deallocate committed funds and assign them to the approriate funding pool or source. As well, undisbursed amount are tracked at a transaction level and can easily be reported on by date.

Commitment transactions will be added to loan transactions during the conversion process. For each Term record with a New amount, a Commitment transaction will be inserted in the appropriate location based on the date of the Term.

Financing Projects

TEA 10 now provides the ability to create and manage Financing Projects. A Financing Project allows organizations to create single or multiple financing instruments (loans, grants) under a single entity. This method provides a new tier in the process for managing loans or grants and the purpose is to provide a central point to manage Financing Projects and core metrics related to the project.

For example, an organization may approach you to develop a facility or housing project that requires multiple phases of financing and different financing instruments for project completion. Typically, each financial instrument would have a separate record (loan, grant, etc.) and they would be associated to the borrower. Though each loan is directly associated to the borrower, this method does not allow for a project entity or for the centralization of project information. Each loan provided captures specific metrics and data regarding the impact of that loan but no cumulative data is rolled up at a project level. In some cases this can cause duplication in recording social metrics and outcomes. For example, if you provided a term loan and a line of credit for an individual project, which investment is responsible for creating jobs or leveraging funds? You could potentially split between the two investments but that becomes confusing and creates data integrity issues. Financing Projects solve this problem by allowing you to record those metrics in one place regardless of how many financing instruments exist for the project.

With the addition of this module or view in TEA 10, you can create a financing instrument and then associate it to a specific project. Financing Projects are not mandatory, so based on the nature of your organization and lending activities, you can use this feature optionally. If your organization requires the tracking of outcomes and outputs you will need to implement Financing Projects into your process.

As outlined above, the Financing Projects module boasts most features that all the core modules have in TEA 10. This includes the ability to create Activities (Tasks/Appointments), Activity Logs (Time Allocation/Activity Outcomes), Notes, Attachments, Groups, User Defined Fields (240) in addition to tracking multiple addresses, Jobs (Created/Retained), Leveraged Funds, Incurred Expenses and Use of Funds.

Grouping in TEA 10

Many analysts currently using TEA categorize records into groups that are unique to their organization. This grouping feature aids in the management of records throughout the various modules within TEA. For example, in the Persons module, an analyst may create a group named ‘Volunteers’. As new Volunteers are added to the database, they can be associated to the volunteers group.

The main advantage of grouping is the ability to break down the list of records within a module into smaller, more manageable lists. In addition, TEA reports, merge letters, labels and bulk e-mail may be generated for a specific group. For example, if your board requires a report on total volunteers, you may create a group for these records, allowing you to easily print any report for only those records within that group.

TEA 10 has enhanced this already valuable feature:

Sub-Grouping
Not only can you create a list of groups within each module, but in TEA 10, you now have the ability to create sub-groups within a group or even sub-groups within a sub-group. The value of this enhancement is the ability to further organize records. For example, in the Persons module, you may have a main group named ‘Volunteers’ that includes every volunteer member of the organization. Within that group, you may create a sub-group for each specific committee or project the volunteer is assisting with. By creating the specific sub-groups, you can easy drill-down to the desired list of persons or objects in any module.

Organizing Groups
The grouping feature has become more flexible and allows users to easily modify the layout in which the groups are organized. By simply using the mouse, you are able to drag and drop groups and sub-groups into the desired position on the group navigation tree. This gives you complete control over the location of each group.

In addition to drag and drop capabilities for the positioning of groups, you also have the capacity to drag and drop selected records directly into groups. The drag and drop feature gives you the option to place the records into an existing group, or easily create a new group for the records.

As well, changing the name of an existing group is now simply a matter of selecting that group and assigning a new name to it. All the records associated to the original group will remain associated after the name has been modified.

Referral Management

One of the mandates of your nonprofit or microlending organization is to provide a comprehensive system of information and referrals to your clients. To do that, you must first be aware of all agencies and resources available in the community, then find out what services are offered and what their limitations are. Referrals are an effective way to combine and leverage resources in your community.

In order to make and receive optimal referrals, it is vital to evaluate a referral service to ensure that it can serve your clients competently, but it is equally important that you make your own services known to other agencies and organizations that can refer clients to you.

Tracking Referrals

Once a referral network has been established, referrals must be tracked and monitored to maintain adequate documentation and to evaluate both the effectiveness of the assistance provided and the ongoing needs of the clients. Each referral should be recorded so that your organization can track the frequency of referral from each source and ensure timely follow up. The tracking is especially important in identifying the value generated or received from referrals. As well, it can show if preferred referrals are occurring between partners and in what proportions.

In TEA 10, you can manage both incoming and outgoing referrals by:

• Populating the referral data (Date, Source, Person being referred, Direction of referral, i.e., incoming or outgoing, and Channel) into the database;
  
  
• Updating the data as it changes;
  
  
• Retrieving the data quickly and accurately; and
  
  
• Tracking the referral results.

Referral Services

Another important piece of information to track about referrals is the list of services offered and received. The services list within a referral record is a high-level or marketing list of services that your organization and your partner organizations provide to clients. This list is not a detailed or comprehensive list of the actual activities and services used for tracking purposes, but rather a high level generalization of these services.

During the process of creating a client referral record in TEA 10, you can select the referral services tab and select all the services of interest to the client.

TEA 10 makes referral tracking and management easy, and it will also allow you to quantify the effectiveness of your referral programs and report on those results to your funders and partners.

Activity Management

Activity Management in TEA 10
Managing your organization's activities is a critical step in understanding how your internal resources are being utilized and for determining how to allocate resources in order to achieve your organizational goals and mission. Many organizations fail to track how internal human resource time is allocated to the specific activities that achieve the goals of the organization. As a result, there is no quantifiable data to make accurate decisions for human resource requirements, for the allocation of overhead to programs or departments, and for key decisions surrounding growth.

Client Relationship Management (CRM) seems to be a buzz word in many organizations but the reality is most organizations fail to implement key systems to monitor and maintain client relationships. Whether you are a not-for-profit or a corporate entity, it is imperative to operate under the customer service principles that dictate success and that means you must understand your clients, set aggressive goals to meet their expectations, and most importantly, set key metrics and monitor your performance in achieving these goals. Unless you manage your activities effectively, this data is a “best guess” which ultimately is very subjective and therefore is an unverifiable qualitative approach. There is no need to introduce subjectivity to a process that can be clearly defined.

At CommonGoals Software, we have developed software that enables organizations to define and track the core activities they employ to achieve their goals. TEA allows the definition of your primary Programs/Departments, the core activities required to achieve organizational goals, the services you provide and most importantly, the ability to allocate your time to the aforementioned key areas. By providing simple methods to record/log all your core activities, the information you need to make key decisions is at your fingertips. Activity Management in TEA can be broken down into three primary sections:

• Scheduling and planning of Activities (Tasks, Scheduled Activities)


• Monitoring and Alerts for managing Scheduled Activities (Calendar, Reminders)


• Activity Logs (Time/Program Allocation and Activity Details)

The Scheduler
The new Scheduler in TEA 10 provides all the flexibility you would expect from a high-end software solution. The Scheduler allows users to view multiple calendars on a single screen for all the analysts within your organization. It also provides a vast array of views including Day, Week, Work Week, Month, Year and Time Grid. Each view can be printed and the reports are highly configurable to ensure you get the information you need.

The Scheduler also incorporates a comprehensive Alert system that notifies you of all scheduled activities that are due. From the Alert system, you can reschedule appointments, open the scheduled activity, create an activity log and record time (program allocation), see all pertinent details regarding the activity and schedule follow-ups. With this kind of flexibility, you are able to manage all of your tasks and activities directly from the Alert/Reminder system without having to go into each client or activity record.

Figure 1 below illustrates the new look and feel of the Scheduler in TEA 10.


















Figure 1. TEA 10 Scheduler

Scheduling Activities
The Activity section in TEA 10 has been expanded to allow for many additional features when scheduling activities. The new version enables the association of multiple persons with a single activity. For example, if you had a meeting with three other staff members, you can schedule the activity and, providing you include them in the ‘With’ section of the activity setup, it will be included in their respective schedules. Each activity can be associated to any object (module) in TEA using the ‘Regarding’ feature. By allowing users to associate activities with any object/module in TEA, activities can then be centralized to a common module such as Accounts. This becomes very important as TEA allows users to create activities in virtually every module of the system. Without centralizing the activities via the ‘Regarding’ feature, activities would be fragmented among each module and a centralized view for activities would not easily exist.

Figure 2 below illustrates the new Scheduled Activity screen in TEA 10.























Figure 2. Scheduled Activity Screen

Scheduled Activity - Recurring
You can now make any activity a recurring event and set the specific recurrence pattern in addition to setting the range of recurrence or termination of the activity. Therefore, any staff or client meetings that have regularity in both time and frequency can be automatically scheduled with an associated Alert/Reminder as well.

Figure 3 below illustrates the new Scheduled Activity - Recurring screen in TEA 10.

Figure 3. Scheduled Activity – Recurring Screen

Scheduled Activity - Attachments
Also added in TEA 10 is the ability for attachments to be added to any scheduled activity which enables you to associate any documentation you require (spreadsheets, Word files, scans, etc.) to complete the activity efficiently. In addition to being available at the activity level, the attachments can also be centralized/associated to any other module in TEA using the ‘Regarding’ feature during the activity setup.

Figure 4 below illustrates the new Scheduled Activity - Attachments screen in TEA 10.











Figure 4. Scheduled Activity – Attachments Screen

Scheduled Activity -Availability

Finally, when you are creating an activity that may affect multiple analysts in your organization, you can check their availability by selecting the new Availability section in the Scheduled Activity module. This avoids having to navigate back to the Scheduler to determine if a staff member or colleague is available for a meeting or activity

Figure 5 below illustrates the new Scheduled Activity – Availability screen in TEA 10.

Figure 5. Scheduled Activity – Availability Screen

Time Allocation
Of all the exciting new features added to support Activity Management in TEA 10, the Activity Log is the most powerful. Activity Logs are similar to Contacts in TEA IX, but we have added additional flexibility to support better time classification in addition to the ability to allocate activity time to multiple programs in a single activity record. Basically this means that if you have a client who has received services under two specific programs, and you complete a single activity that was related to both programs, you can specify the amount of time associated to each program individually within a single activity record.

This feature is what will allow you to calculate the amount of time that internal resources have spent on each program and allow you to allocate staff wages and overhead to each program in order to truly report the cost of services for each program.

Figure 6 below illustrates the New Activity Log screen in TEA 10.

Figure 6. New Activity Log Screen

Activity Classification
TEA 10, as with TEA IX, provides the facility to define both a Category and Sub-Category to clearly articulate the nature of your activity. For example, your Category Sub-Category could be Loans Collections. Whereby the Category ‘Loans’ specifically identifies that your activity is related to Lending and your Sub-Category ‘Collections’ specifically identifies the nature of the loan activity. By providing this breakdown, you are able to effectively report on any type of activity completed in your organization and provide a granular detailed analysis on how internal resources are utilized.

Activity Logs - Services
Another addition is the ability for you to associate the specific Services that were included as part of your activity. For example, you may have provided specific documentation or services like a business plan, application, Internet access, etc. These services can now all be associated to the Activity as outlined in Figure 6. No matter how many specific Services are provided during your meeting/activity, they can all be associated to a single activity record. This allows you to determine what primary services and documentation are required most frequently.

Activity Logs - Attachments
As with Scheduled Activities, you can also add Attachments (spreadsheets, Word files, scans, etc.) to the Activity Log to ensure all pertinent information related to the activity completion is associated to the record.

Activity Logs – User Defined Fields
Finally, as with most modules in TEA, you have the ability to create User-Defined Fields to track any other pertinent information related to an Activity Log. There may be some social or performance metrics you wish to associate at an Activity Log level and this is easily achieved with this new feature. You can create up 240 user-defined fields and they can be any type of field you require (numeric, alphanumeric, Boolean, date, etc.).

Summary of Benefits
Overall, once you experience the new Activity Management features in TEA 10, the benefits and enhancements that have been added to help you get the best possible results out of your organization and TEA will become quite obvious.

Some of those primary benefits are listed below:

• Enhanced Scheduler (multiple calendars, new views, detailed reports)


• Add Attachments to an Activity or Activity Log


• Activities and Activity Logs can now be associated to multiple persons


• Activities and Activity Logs can be associated to any module in TEA


• Time Allocation to programs in Activity Logs


• Add unlimited Services to an Activity Log


• New Alert system to keep you informed of all activities


• User-Defined Fields available for Activity Logs


• Global Views for Activities and Activity Logs

In general, you will find TEA 10 extremely efficient for the management of all core activities and for the reporting and outcomes associated to those activities.

TEA is now Account Centric

TEA 10 now offers an Account Centric structure, which is used to facilitate the centralization of all activities related to a client.

An account defines a significant relationship with an individual or an organization. In TEA 10, all clients in your database have an account. The account may be specifically for a loan, grant, training, counseling, investment or any combination of the above. TEA 10 also provides the flexibility for end-users to create their own account types. Typically, account types are a concise representation of the primary services you offer, or of those you receive from other significant constituents or service providers.

Accounts are the central area from which you navigate to primary contacts and associated organizations, and where you manage all time related activities and tasks. Although activities can still be associated to a person, organization, loan, or any other object in the TEA database, they are centralized in the account module. Additionally, you can easily navigate from the account module to any ‘Financing Project’ (loan, grant) to view specific details on any financing instrument used for the Financing Project.

Flowchart of the Account Centric approach in TEA 10:

Benefits of Account Centric Systems
Although this method does require a little more data entry because of the separation between Persons, Organizations and Accounts, the overall benefits definitely outweigh the additional data requirements as illustrated below.

• Ability to manage both Individual, Business and Group lending
• Centralization for all Activity/Task Management
• Centralization for navigation and workflow in the database
• Centralization of all Clients (Loan, TA, Training, etc)
• Ability to identify primary contacts for mail-out and merge purposes
• Ability to relate multiple entities to a single account

For organizations that are familiar with TEA IX, many of the features between the two versions are quite similar, as both applications provide the separation of Persons and Businesses. With the implementation of the Account Centric structure in TEA 10, the aforementioned benefits will now be available to the end-users.

Although the structure is somewhat different than TEA IX users are accustomed to, the differences are managed by the incorporation of intuitive wizards that facilitate the setup of accounts and all associated records (Persons, Organizations, Loans, etc). The new wizards provide a simple linear process for creating any type of accounts and will continue to be the basis for record entry in all TEA 10 modules.

The New Logo

Step 1: Order the T-Shirts

Anyone that has worked in software development or who is familiar with the software development process knows that the first step is critical to the overall success of the project. And the first step in the software development process is to:

Order the T-shirts for the Development team!!

For those of you interested, the entire software development process is outlined below.

1. Order the T-Shirts for the Development team
2. Announce availability
3. Write the code
4. Write the manual
5. Hire a Product Manager
6. Write specifications (writing the specifications after the code helps to ensure that the software meets the specifications)
7. Ship
8. Test (the customers are a big help here)
9. Identify bugs as potential enhancements
10. Announce the upgrade program

Of course, we're kidding!! Well, except for ordering the T-shirts for the Development team. That step really is critical to the overall success of the project.

Welcome to TEA 10

The newest version of The Exceptional Assistant is coming soon and we want you to be the first to know about it! This blog showcases the insider's view to new functionality and features; the business problems it will help you solve; and why they are of critical importance to your organization. We look forward to your comments and questions, so feel free to share your thoughts with us.

It is our vision that TEA 10 will make it possible for your organization to use a single integrated database to manage all core activities in order to achieve your mission. We have made significant enhancements based on customer recommendations and feedback. These enhancements will undoubtedly help your organization evolve to a new level of productivity.

The new release of TEA will boast some exciting new features:

• Enhanced Activity Management (Tasks, Scheduling, Time Tracking/Allocation)
• Account-Centric Structure (Supports Individual, Business and Group Lending)
• Integrated Loan Application Module with Credit Report Integration
• Integrated General Ledger, Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable Modules
• New Interface and Data Entry Wizards
• New Reporting Module (Fast Reports—All generated from a single area)
• New Customizable Dashboards (Display Tasks, Key Statistics, Global Search)

Keep visiting our Blog as we will continue to write new articles on the key features in TEA 10 so that you, our customers, are prepared to take advantage of all TEA 10 has to offer!