Hi Richard,
With the current
posting rules for this forum, it's difficult to have a good discussion on the pros and cons of the many software products out there.
The concerns with any software product are:
1) What about the person after you? The person who follows you (or follows the next person) may not be comfortable with the software. When this happens, it may simply not be used.
As an example, we had an Architectural Chair spend a great deal of time developing a database of all the requests, approvals/disapprovals, membership lists and violations. The person who followed them didn't know the program (MS Access), so never updated the database. I was on the committee 5 years later and discovered the data on a loose thumb drive in one of the boxes. The data was so out of date and the committee had gone back to pen and paper, that the work put into developing the data was wasted.
2) Hardware availability Will the Association purchase a dedicated laptop or will each treasurer be required to utilize their own computer?
3) Software Requirements Related to hardware availability, if each person is using their own computer what about licensing agreements with the software and compatibility issues between software platforms?
4) Data Backup What plan will be in place to back up the data in the event of data loss?
Our Association, Self managed, 130 lots, used excel to track income and expense statements along with budgeting, MSWord for word processing and paper ledgers. Recently, this year, I've been able to develop a spreadsheet for lot ledgers and we are trying this for 2016. All of these materials are readily available and rarely has there been issues.
Hope this helps,
Tim