Today's Wall Street Journal (5/24/2001) contains an article
about yet another Web site that is closing down and will no
longer be availalbe to its users. While today's article
focused on a site that was shutting down due to too much
activity, many web sites close for other reasons as well.
Our club is investigating a switch from a PC based Club
Accounting system to a Web based Club Accounting system,
bivio is on top of the short list of canidate sites.

If we transition our club's accounting records to bivio, how
do we ensure long term access and protection of our
accounting records and guard ourselves against any
disruption caused by a shut down of the web site?

One possible option would be an export function into a
genreal purpose file format, such as a spreadsheet format.
We have looked, but did not see where such an export
function is avialalbe in bivio.

Tom Lawlor
Treasurer - RMRIC

Thomas,

There is an export function in bivio. It's under
Administration > Tools > Export Club Data.

Ira Smilovitz

Thomas Lawlor wrote:

<snip>

>
> If we transition our club's accounting records to bivio, how
> do we ensure long term access and protection of our
> accounting records and guard ourselves against any
> disruption caused by a shut down of the web site?
>
> One possible option would be an export function into a
> genreal purpose file format, such as a spreadsheet format.
> We have looked, but did not see where such an export
> function is avialalbe in bivio.
>
> Tom Lawlor
> Treasurer - RMRIC

This question may have already been asked, if so please
forgive. But if I use Bivio to export my club's data how
will I be able to convert it back to NCA (NAIC Club
Accounting)? It's my understanding that the conversion can't
happen. If this is the case, how do I get it back to NCA?

Brian

Ira Smilovitz wrote:
> Thomas,
>
> There is an export function in bivio. It's under
> Administration > Tools > Export Club Data.
>
> Ira Smilovitz
>
> Thomas Lawlor wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> >
> > If we transition our club's accounting records to bivio, how
> > do we ensure long term access and protection of our
> > accounting records and guard ourselves against any
> > disruption caused by a shut down of the web site?
> >
> > One possible option would be an export function into a
> > genreal purpose file format, such as a spreadsheet format.
> > We have looked, but did not see where such an export
> > function is avialalbe in bivio.
> >
> > Tom Lawlor
> > Treasurer - RMRIC

Brian Lancaster wrote:
> This question may have already been asked, if so please
> forgive. But if I use Bivio to export my club's data how
> will I be able to convert it back to NCA (NAIC Club
> Accounting)? It's my understanding that the conversion can't
> happen. If this is the case, how do I get it back to NCA?

We are very concerned about this issue. Your data is very
important to us. You have my personal guarantee as CTO of
bivio that your accounting data will be transferred to a
competing product in the highly unlikely event bivio ceases
to be profitable. Given our large share of the club
accounting market, it is likely our competitors will work
with us to help with this conversion.

We cannot simply export to NCA format, because it does not
support expense categories, multiple accounts, and numerous
other transactions which are supported by bivio. NCA is an
inferior accounting product. We have chosen not to "dumb
down" ours. The price is lack of backward compatibility.

To this end, we chose an open, industry standard format
called XML. The only thing which prevents our competitors
from importing XML is missing features.

One last thing. The NCA format is obfuscated. We have
heard that the next version will be encrypted to prevent you
being able to go to rival accounting products. This is
already true of the NAIC's online service, which by the way,
is also not backwards compatible with NCA even though they
were both supposedly built with the same "tried and true"
technology.

Thank you for using bivio,
Rob Nagler

Robert Nagler wrote:
"One last thing. The NCA format is obfuscated. We have
heard that the next version will be encrypted to prevent you
being able to go to rival accounting products. "

Hi Rob, your response brings me to another question. Are
you saying that with the next version of NCA, we, meaning
current NCA owners, will not be able to import to BIVIO?
Please, please say that is not going to be the case!
Pamela

Pamela Berger wrote:
> Hi Rob, your response brings me to another question. Are
> you saying that with the next version of NCA, we, meaning
> current NCA owners, will not be able to import to BIVIO?
> Please, please say that is not going to be the case!

We have heard that the next version of NCA will use an
encrypted format so that you won't be able to import data
into old versions of NCA or into bivio or any other
competing product. This is just like not being able to read
your Microsoft Word documents in Corel's WordPerfect and
vice-versa.

This is just a rumour. We suggest you contact EasyWare to
find out the facts.

Rob