Our club has invested in a REIT for several months and I
have just learned from an article given to me (that was in
Better Investing) the accounting can be a nightmare. Does
anyone know if this is true? Can Bivio take care of this.
Patsy

Patsy, many REIT's, royalty trusts, partnerships, etc., do not send out a
final 1099 til late in the tax year, at which time you may need to manually
edit the breakdown that AccountSynch previously entered. These investments
distribute their returns in different categories than just straight
dividends. bivio does have the proper categories to use, but they would not
necessarily have been automatically entered that way. Even if they were
correctly entered at the time received with the information available, they
are subject to change at the end of the tax year.

Gene Rooks, SWIM, Orlando

Patsy Hagen wrote:
> Our club has invested in a REIT for several months and I
> have just learned from an article given to me (that was in
> Better Investing) the accounting can be a nightmare. Does
> anyone know if this is true? Can Bivio take care of this.
> Patsy

We also recommend clubs avoid REITs. As Gene already
pointed out, we support the right categories but AccountSync
doesn't necessarily get them right automatically -- you'll
have extra work to do when you audit your books at tax time.

Eric Dobbs
bivio, Inc.

Bivio Account Sync is a terrific value.

 For $99 annually not only does it keep the books, but at tax time, with
little input, it prepares the form 1065 Partnership Tax return and Member's
K-1's as fast as your printer can handle it. Before Bivio we used an
accountant which cost a few hundred dollars for the job.

However, Bivio has its limitations, which I can attest to, because I have
been treasurer of two clubs using Bivio for a total of 14 years.

Clubs should only buy securities such as stocks & funds which report each
year's activities with a Form 1099

 Buying REITS, oil and gas partnerships, and anything else that generates
other than a 1099 leads to big trouble at tax time as Bivio cannot handle
these transactions.

Two years ago, against my advice, one of the clubs bought a pipeline
partnership at the insistence of one of the members.

At tax time, it was extremely difficult to manually adjust Bivio to handle
the partnership returns.

Fortunately, one of the members was a retired CPA and it proved easier for
him to download a year's information from the broker and use Microsoft Money
to do the return.

Needless to say, our club learned its lesson the hard way.

Arthur Klages, Treas.
Senior Investment Club

-----Original Message-----
From: club_cafe@bivio.com [mailto:club_cafe@bivio.com] On Behalf Of Patsy
Hagen
Sent: Wednesday, November 21, 2007 7:34 AM
To: club_cafe@bivio.com
Subject: club_cafe: REITs and accounting

Our club has invested in a REIT for several months and I have just learned
from an article given to me (that was in Better Investing) the accounting
can be a nightmare. Does anyone know if this is true? Can Bivio take care
of this.
Patsy