<<
My memory may be faulty, but I believe the "difficult" process that Rip
developed involved a gift of units between two people who were not
spouses.
>>

I **Know** my memory is faulty, but I believe that I was describing a
work-around to transfer units using NCA2. That process was difficult,
but doable. As Ira has indicated, the work-around does not work with
bivio. In the past, I have been told that bivio support will make the
transfer of units for you.

<<
I still stand by my first piece of advice...ask bivio's technical
support. If these were pencil and paper records, the transfer would be
trivial. The difficulty arises because bivio doesn't have the necessary
transaction options. Note, I'm not advocating that bivio add these
options because I suspect they would be abused or misused by naive
treasurers. However, it may be possible for the tech support staff to
do them "behind the scenes".
>>

As indicated above, I believe that bivio support will accomodate these
transfers. Unlike Ira, I do advocate that bivio add this as an option. I
don't believe in crippling or leaving valid options out of any
accounting program, solely because unwary users might misuse such
options. I am really against the idea of going back to the beginning and
changing the entries. This would make the records not agree with the
facts, and, as Ira said, would put the recorded tax returns at odds with
the official records.

What hasn't been addressed in this whole thread is what is the reason
for wanting to do this. Does one spouse really want to make a gift to
the other spouse, or does the club merely want one member in place of
the two spouses. If there is no real pressing reason to do this, why not
leave things as they are?

Rip West
Saint Paul, MN

Rip West writes:
> As indicated above, I believe that bivio support will accomodate these
> transfers.

You are correct. bivio's goal is to take the "accounting" out of
investment clubs so there's more room for investing. :-)

> Unlike Ira, I do advocate that bivio add this as an option. I
> don't believe in crippling or leaving valid options out of any
> accounting program, solely because unwary users might misuse such
> options.

You wrote this response an operating system (Microsoft Windows) and a
mail program (Microsoft Outlook Express) which give "full power" to
all users with the extremely nasty side effect that you now have to
buy software to protect your computer from virii, which take advantage
of unsuspecting users' use of said features. Other systems have more
restrictions, because experienced software developers know that
certain features require more training than others, and most users
neither have the time nor the inclination to use them with care.

While this may "cripple" experienced users, such as yourself, it
reduces our overall support load at bivio, because this is such an
unusual circumstance that it makes more sense for our experienced
support staff to effect the change than to have to correct the books
of all those clubs which would, for example, transfer units between
outgoing and incoming members instead of treating such "buy outs" as
two independent easily auditable transactions.

Cheers,
Rob

Hi Rob,

< You are correct. bivio's goal is to take the "accounting" out of
< investment clubs so there's more room for investing. :-)

I have never found that a full featured accounting program for
investment clubs [like bivio] has made me run out of room for investing.
<g>

< You wrote this response an operating system (Microsoft Windows) and a
< mail program (Microsoft Outlook Express) which give "full power" to
< all users with the extremely nasty side effect that you now have to
< buy software to protect your computer from virii, which take advantage
< of unsuspecting users' use of said features.

Well, you're the expert, here, but I think that's a little overblown. I
was always under the assumption that the reason that Microsoft had to
keep issuing patches was because of faulty program design, something
from which bivio doesn't suffer.

< because this is such an
< unusual circumstance that it makes more sense for our experienced
< support staff to effect the change than to have to correct the books
< of all those clubs which would, for example, transfer units between
< outgoing and incoming members instead of treating such "buy outs" as
< two independent easily auditable transactions.

Two things here. I gave up keeping track a while back, but when I was
counting, I had over 25 valid requests to accomodate a transfer of units
between members. I never had a request to transfer units for a buy out.
If one is worried about all the dumb things an inexperienced user could
do, maybe recording expenses shouldn't be allowed, because some user is
going to use that feature to record a stock purchase. It would be very
easy to include warnings in a transfer option that would (1) explain the
feature is only to be used in a gift situation, and (2) that unless the
transaction is between spouses, gift taxes should be considered.

Anyway, keep up the good work.

Rip West
Saint Paul, MN