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.