ALMSys® 5.6 Release Information
(From Richard Stephens, Chief Software Developer)
(Revised 04/14/2009)
5.6 is READY.
You must be on version 5.5 before going to 5.6.
Click here for upgrade instructions.
New Convenience Features
Clicking on the search panel on the main menu will automatically place the cursor into the search box, allowing you to
type immediately after selecting the item for which to search. The search selection will now be remembered between log-ins.
If you have customers with many leases, you will now have the option of controlling the order in which these items appear
in the pull-down deal list. Set your preference on the Tools - Preferences - General 2 screen.
Delinquency Changes
A bug was fixed that prevented deals from appearing on the Delinquency Report when the delinquency override was set. Another
bug was fixed where delinquency calculations did not work properly on leases which had been extended to the point where
there was no remaining asset.
The delinquency calculation has been changed to not include delinquent late fees in the days delinquent calculation.
The payment due day has been added to the delinquency reports.
Credit Bureau Changes
The credit bureau look-up tables have been updated with new entries from the 2008 Metro 2 Guide. These changes are minor
and have little to no impact on your credit bureau processing.
A Credit Bureau Completion Override Date has been added to the Credit Bureau screen. This is the ultimate override
date that will indicate that the lease is terminated as of the date entered, and that all payments have been made to-date,
including a complete lease payoff to an asset balance of zero. The lease itself does not need to be terminated,
and may still be active and billing. This date overrides all credit bureau settings.
Credit Card & ACH CHanges
ALMSys will now export "NACHA" type files. These files are used throughout the US and Canada for originating ACH
transactions. If your bank accepts NACHA files, then you can use ALMSys to ask for these payments. If you want to
pursue this, then please contact me for assistance in getting started.
The CC/ACH screen load will no longer include payments for leases at or past the scheduled end date. This will save
the embarrassment of pulling payments for leases which have terminated. For those payments manually added to CC/ACH
batches for terminated leases, the corresponding payment will be posted to the TermPayments file.
Payment Posting Changes
A new quick-fill button on the Payment - Post screen has been added. The amount on this button is controlled
on the Tools - Preferences - General screen. This amount may be postivie or negative. If you specifiy a
negative amount, the Post screen will assume that you are using the button to add an NSF fee to the amount owed and
will select the appropriate payment type code.
Payment breakdown amounts and the current book value have been added as data fields for the Payoff Spreadsheet.
See the help topic for the
"Payoff Wizard" for instructions on how to update your Payoff Spreadsheet template.
The Substitute Statement on Payment History screen has been corrected to use the override location name
for the information at the bottom of the statement.
Lease Changes
You now have the ability of automatically extending leases that are at lease end when billing, thus creating a
never-ending lease. This feature is NOT turned on by default, and you must manually turn this on for each lease
on the Lease - Misc. screen. Leases marked to never end will be extended for six months at a time.
Depreciation Changes
The Recalculate button has been moved to the top of the Depreciation screen. Before, it was just above the grid and
was not the easiest to locate.
The current book value has been added to the Depreciation screen. You will find it under the monthly Book amount on
the right side of the grid.
Vehicle and Leveraged Financing Changes
The VIN renumber has been changed to allow a deal to be assigned to an existing VIN that is still active. This was done
to facilitate more than one lease paying for the same vehicle.
The Leveraged Financing screen has been rearranged into a 2-page tabbed notebook; one page for "Calcs" and the other
for "Termination." The new termination page has new fields for Payoff date and check number.
The Leveraged Finance screen now knows how to back-calculate the Payback Factor on Even Principal financing.
The Payback Factor is usually provided by the bank. If not provided, and this is even principal financing, then you will
have to calculate this by providing the Base Price, Term, and Monthly Payment Amount (on the Standard page).
Then, click the calculator button after the Payback Factor field. (Make sure all other calculation fields and
dates are input before calculating in order to avoid error messages.)
"Inventory Low Book" has been added to Vehicle General screen. This field will appear on the "Vehicle Inventory"
and "Vehicle Inventory Flooring w/ Lev. Fin." reports.
Many changes have been made to the Vehicle Termination Worksheet screen and reports. Most notable is the ability
of specifying that a field is taxable. Overall default tax information is specified on the bottom of the Lessor -
Lease Company Information - Lease Term screen. (These settings may be overridded on the deal.) The tax rate is
entered as one total rate; no breakdowns between tax entities is available.
Another new button has been added to Vehicle Termination Worksheet that will calculate all outstanding payments owed,
plus all remaining unbilled payments for the lease.
A new button has been added to the Vehicle Confirmed Return screen that will copy inventory amounts into the amount
fields on the screen.
New Communications Templates
Two new templates have been added to communications to facilitate lease end communications. These "Lease Term Letter"
templates (open and close-ended leases) were provided compliments of Turpin Pontiac Buick GMC Ltd. in Kanata (Ottowa),
Ontario. Thanks!!
Report Changes
A new report, "Delinquency Summary by Customer," has been added. This report will show the same information as the
other delinquency reports, but will have leases for the same customer grouped together.
A new report, "Suspended Billing," has been added. The purpose of this report is to provide printed information
regarding deals that have had their billing suspended.
A new report, "Project Amortization Cash Income Summary," has been added. This report will provide a month-by-month
breakdown of expected future income (payments).
A new report, "Billing Status," has been added. This report will show the last time each lease was billed.
A new report that will print monthly statements for terminated leases that have a balance owed on the termination
worksheet screen has been added. When run, the "Lease Term Settlement" report will generate a summary report to the
Print Queue, and statements to the E-mail Queue. See help topic, "Report: Lease Termination Settlement," for more
information.
A new report, "Deposit Slip Report," has been added to the Multiple Payments screen. The intention of this
report is to generate a quick list of name, amount and check number to act as a deposit slip for the bank. This
report must be run before posting the marked payments.
The "Vehicle Inventory Flooring w/ Lev. Fin." report has been changed to add flooring date and to remove floor plan.
There was a bug in the "Lev. Fin. Amortization Status" report that would not calculate data for deals with a due date
greater than the 28th of the month, and the first payment due date was not the end of the month. This bug has been fixed.
The payment day due has been added to the Delinquency reports.
Billing Changes
Leases may now have up to a 25-day grace period.
The "Print Statement" field has been changed to have the ability of completely suppressing statements, regardless of
late fee activity.
The ability to temporarily suspend billing for a lease has been added. The Suspend Billing field is used to
temporarily stop billing for active leases. It has no effect on terminated leases. If you suspend billing and a number
of months have passed, unsuspending billing will cause the unbilled months to be all billed at once for the next
billing run. If this is not desired and you only want one month billed, then you should consider changing the next
payment due date on the Amortization screen.
Other Changes and Notes
There are no more users of ALMSys versions older than 5.4. Therefore, support for older versions has been dropped. If you
are still on version 5.4, then PLEASE get updated to version 5.5 and then 5.6 as soon as possible. It is difficult to
support older versions, especially when newer versions fix problems that you may encounter in an older version.
Unused fields in the AMPTax and Lease files have been eliminated. This should improve performance slightly.
A new feature called, "Leveraged Financing Lease Payments to Bank," has been added. This is a customer-specific request
and should be used with caution.
Adding New Deals from XSellerator Changes
The new deal import from XSellerator will now import data from non-lease sales.
Also changed was the ability to copy ledger information from existing AMPTax master codes when new
GST & PST master codes are automatically created.
ALMSys® Tracking Software
