Our Club pays Bivio $100.00 a month for their service.
It is really nice to turn on the computer in the morning and
everything is up to date.

 Just had a problem with their service,
but it was resolved after to many E-Mails and a phone call.

Our Club did have the NAIC accounting program. In the
opinion of our Club Bivio is superior. With Bivio the job of
Treasurer is a real nothing.

As the Treasurer it is nice to know that I won't have to
lose
any sleep about doing the taxes. Come February they will be
signed and delivered.

Thanks Bivio
Frank Novotny
A.V. Stock Investment Club

I too love the Bivio service - however, the biggest drawback
I see with Bivio at this time is the lack of any ability to
export the files to NAIC online accounting or Club
Accounting 3. Without this capability, I am forced to keep
two sets of books because if Bivio ever goes out of
business, I am screwed as our clubs treasurer. Saving the
file using the export mode available now is worthless with
respect to being able to port the file to another accounting
program.

Rick Martin
Central West End Investment Club Treasurer

Frank D. Novotny wrote:
> Our Club pays Bivio $100.00 a month for their service.
> It is really nice to turn on the computer in the morning and
> everything is up to date.
>
> Just had a problem with their service,
> but it was resolved after to many E-Mails and a phone call.
>
> Our Club did have the NAIC accounting program. In the
> opinion of our Club Bivio is superior. With Bivio the job of
> Treasurer is a real nothing.
>
> As the Treasurer it is nice to know that I won't have to
> lose
> any sleep about doing the taxes. Come February they will be
> signed and delivered.
>
> Thanks Bivio
> Frank Novotny
> A.V. Stock Investment Club

Rick Martin writes:
> Saving the file using the export mode available now is worthless with
> respect to being able to port the file to another accounting
> program.

The file format is open and industry-standard XML. If bivio were to
go out of business (which we have not intention of doing :-), any
competitor's programmer could figure out how to import your data. I
suspect that now we have an alliance with BetterInvesting (NAIC),
you'll see our competitors making their programs compatible with
bivio.

Cheers,
Rob Nagler
bivio Inc.

Rick...

While you have a very real concern, and it was the same concern my clubs
had when we considered bivio, I turned the question around and asked
what would happen if the I-Club went out of business. When we evaluated
bivio, I-Club's products had a proprietary data formats and the company
was threatening bivio with lawsuits for allowing new bivio customers to
import their data files, thereby locking us into I-Club products. What
would have happened if I-Club went under? We felt that the situation
was equivalent by turning the question around and decided to go with
bivio. At least now we have a product whose data COULD (and legally) be
probed and re-worked into a new accounting platform.

We also felt that each company's customer base was too large for NAIC or
the company's competitor to ignore in the event of a company failure.
We believe that some sort of support will be available, if need be.

John Munn
Cross Country Investment Club
Capitol Investors




Rick Martin wrote:

>I too love the Bivio service - however, the biggest drawback
>I see with Bivio at this time is the lack of any ability to
>export the files to NAIC online accounting or Club
>Accounting 3.
>
...cut...

>I too love the Bivio service - however, the biggest drawback
> I see with Bivio at this time is the lack of any ability to
> export the files to NAIC online accounting or Club
> Accounting 3. Without this capability, I am forced to keep
> two sets of books

I get lots of private mail on this subject since many NAIC clubs know that
we use (and prefer) bivio. The coding of CA3 was done to keep clubs from
leaving. But it didn't work because bivio has been able to successfully
convert EVERY club I know of. Even if the new affiliation with NAIC can't
force the competition to open their coding source, it won't matter. If a
club wants to convert, bivio makes it really easy.

There's simply no need to do double books, at least not after a couple
months to gain confidence in the new program. I, too, was concerned, in the
beginning, about losing data. But after bivio explained that they keep more
than one back-up of our data (in two separate cities, I believe), I felt
that was sufficient. Besides, we keep printed records that would easily
allow us to re-create it if we really had to. After 5 years with bivio, and
seeing their progress, it's no longer a concern for us. But the ability to
back-up onto a disc must be very comforting to other clubs.

I certainly don't discount Rick's concerns, though. We all have a right to
be concerned about these numbers and have our concerns taken seriously. I
believe time will prove bivio to be reliable to the new clubs coming
onboard.

Lynn Ostrem, President
garbagecop@earthlink.net
Crow River Investment Club
www.bivio.com/crowriver