We've been talking about how easy bivio is for some time now. Well,
we've come up with a concept to make bivio even easier. This is a
pre-announcement of a product we are working on called The One Minute
Treasurer(tm). It will allow you to do your accounting with only
three buttons.

What's more, we are planning on offering people who use The One Minute
Treasurer(tm) a $30 year discount. We have found that we have less
work to do when clubs use AccountSync(tm) and follow The One Minute
Treasurer(tm) simplification guidelines. It's not only easier for
you, it's easier for us, too!

In order to help you understand what The One Minute Treasurer(tm) is
about, we've prepared a talk about the subject, complete with notes.
You can download the talk at:

http://www.bivio.com/club_cafe/files/TheOneMinuteTreasurer.pdf

If you have any questions, email here so other people can see our
answers to the questions. Remember, this isn't available yet, and
please don't try to pin us down on a date. We are just finishing up
tax season, and our work on this product is still in the prototyping
stage.

Thanks,
Rob Nagler
CTO
bivio Inc.

Dear Rob,
It was interesting to read about the One MInute Treasurer.
From what I read, our club is already doing our record
keeping in the way described. We receive AccountSync
communications from Bivio on all stock transactions
(dividends, etc.) and it certainly does help keep track of
our investments. How will the new program differ for those
of us already enrolled?

Thanks.

Sharon Hotchkiss
WI$E WOMEN

Sharon Hotchkiss writes:
> How will the new program differ for those of us already enrolled?

The main difference is that we will be giving you a $30/year rebate
for using The One Minute Treasurer(tm) system for the whole year.

Another significant difference is that all deposits will be completely
automatic, that is, if you are using our Penny Payment system, our
software will know to whom the deposits are credited. Right now, you
have to click "OK" once a month when deposits come in.

The user interface will be greatly simplified. All the manual
accounting buttons will go away. There will be three buttons:
reimburse, withdraw, and add member. We find that the number of
buttons people can push is directly correlated to the cost of
supporting those people. If there are only three buttons, it's a lot
clearer what novice treasurers need to do, and it takes a lot of the
fear away for people who want to become treasurers.

All The One Minute Treasurer(tm) forms will be simpler, e.g. no
remarks, no valuation dates (always the same as the transaction date),
and editing.

The One Minute Treasurer(tm) rebate is our way of saying thank you for
keeping your accounting simple. If you like lots of buttons and the
control that goes along with it, that's fine, you'll be able to use
AccountSync(tm) as you do today. However, we believe that most clubs
and especially treasurers consider accounting to be one of the biggest
burdens in running an investment club.

Finally, The One Minute Treasurer(tm) will include a promise that your
books will match your broker's, or we'll fix them for free. That's
the same promise we give AccountKeeper(tm) customers, but The One
Minute Treasurer(tm) clubs will pay less per year than they are now.

Please ask more questions if anything is not clear.

Thank you for using bivio,
Rob Nagler
CTO
bivio Inc.

This looks very interesting, but from what I've read it
appears that the One Minute Treasurer might not work for us.

Although we only work with one brokerage, we reinvest our
dividends, one of our stocks is a REIT and another is a MLP.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Elaine Confino writes:
> This looks very interesting, but from what I've read it
> appears that the One Minute Treasurer might not work for us.
>
> Although we only work with one brokerage, we reinvest our
> dividends, one of our stocks is a REIT and another is a MLP.

Good points. You are correct.

We do not recommend you invest in REITs or MLPs as an investment club.
This greatly complicates your tax situation. REITs and partnerships
belong in individual members' portfolios, not the club's.

Reinvesting dividends is like "automatic investing". We've never seen
a good system for automatic investing, which yields anything but
random returns. Just because a stock was good to invest in a year
ago, doesn't mean you should invest today. Part of the focus of The
One Minute Treasurer(tm) is to get club's to focus on the investing
part of investment clubs, not the accounting. DRPs end up having the
opposite result.

Thank you for using bivio,
Rob Nagler
CTO
bivio Inc.

> This is a pre-announcement of a product
> we are working on called The One Minute
> Treasurer(tm). It will allow you to do your
> accounting with only three buttons.

Any more news about an "official" announcement of this?

> What's more, we are planning on offering
> people who use The One Minute Treasurer(tm)
> a $30 year discount.

So $69/year rather than $99/year? In effect, the customer
would get AccountSync for free?

-Jim Thomas

Jim Thomas writes:
> > This is a pre-announcement of a product
> > we are working on called The One Minute
> > Treasurer(tm). It will allow you to do your
> > accounting with only three buttons.
>
> Any more news about an "official" announcement of this?

Unfortunately, not. We've been quite busy in other areas, and it's
difficult for us to know when we might get to this. The principles
behind The One Minute Treasurer(tm) are still valid, and we highly
recommend clubs adopt them:

* Only one account; get rid of your bank account
* Use our penny payment method so that deposits can be detected
  automatically.
* Simplify investments: no DRPs, DSPs, REITs, etc.

> So $69/year rather than $99/year? In effect, the customer
> would get AccountSync for free?

This is correct. However, we can only really offer this, once we have
The One Minute Treasurer(tm) in place.

Rob

Hi Rob,

I was reading about The One Minute Treasurer at
http://www.bivio.com/club_cafe/files/TheOneMinuteTreasurer.pdf
I realize this service isn't available yet.

I was looking at the details, and have one question. Your
writeup explains that the Penny Payment System allows bivio
to detect which deposit should be credited to which member.
But our club treasurer tells me that Scottrade will not
accept checks made out to Scottrade from club members, for
deposit into our Scottrade account. So we have a bank
account in the club's name, and deposit our members' checks
there, and then write one check to Scottrade from the club's
bank account.

The problem is obvious. If we stay with our current (clumsy)
system, bivio will not be able to determine how much each
member has deposited (unless we write out a separate check
from the club account for each member).

So it's not clear to me whether we could use The One Minute
Treasurer when it beomes available. I imagine our club is
not the only one that would have this problem. Am I missing
something?

Mike Carroll

I called Scottrade after posting this. They now have an
Investment Club Deposit Form, which our club treasurer
didn't know about. It allows the members' checks to be made
out to Scottrade, and the different checks to have different
amounts. We probably should switch over to that anyway.
Problem solved.

Mike Carroll

Mike Carroll writes:
> But our club treasurer tells me that Scottrade will not
> accept checks made out to Scottrade from club members, for
> deposit into our Scottrade account.

I saw your other message, but I'd like to point out to everybody: Your
broker will accept 3rd party checks into your club.

At a recent talk I gave about The One Minute Treasurer, one treasurer
was quite upset about my statement that their broker would accept
checks from the members individually. It was TD Ameritrade, and I
happen to know many bivio clubs deposit directly to TD. She didn't
believe me until another treasurer in the room stood up and said
that's exactly what they do.

Brokers don't want work. However, they do want your money. If you
just send in your members' checks in a single envelope with a deposit
slip, and mail it to your broker, it'll work just fine. Just make
sure your club's account number is on each check in the memo field. I
haven't heard of a single case where they returned the deposit.

You can even have your members deposit directly. My club did this
with E*TRADE, and we simply distributed a bunch of deposit slips to
all the members so they could deposit whenever they felt like it.

Rob