Captools/nettm

Captools/net is the third generation of investment portfolio management, ROI performance measurement and performance reporting software from Captools Company for investment advisors, money managers, broker/dealers, family offices and others entrusted with managing investment assets. Employing a client/server architecture and utilizing MS-Windows web-server and SQL database technologies, Captools/net delivers a powerful, scalable, and cost-effective investment tracking and client-reporting system. Because Captools/net operates and stores its data on your hardware, it ensures that you maintain control of your valuable client and investment data.

Scalable - Captools/net uses advanced software architecture to compartmentalize various program tasks and functions in a way that allows it to be as easily installed and run on a single desktop or laptop computer as well as for multi-user versions to be installed and run on a centralized server hosted in your office or on a virtual machine hosted by a third party hosting service.  Multi-user versions can be accessed by users located in the same office as your server, or by users who remotely access the server via the internet.  Whether run locally or remotely, Captools/net provides the desktop application functionality that is desired by users who have a need for extensive data input or manipulation, while still allowing many functions, such as reporting to operate through a web-browser interface.

Client/Account Detail - Captools/net allows you to maintain comprehensive and detailed records concerning your clients, their accounts and their investment requirements.  Client contact detail, note keeping, and PDF form-filling functionality in many cases remove the need to maintain separate contact management and/or form management software.  Other useful client/account functions, such as built-in retirement account minimum withdrawal computations, minimum cash specifications, fee exclusions, margin and short limits and client family/relations records help you to better service your clients and also lay the groundwork for additional future business.

Portfolio Detail - Captools/net expands upon our reputation for maintaining comprehensive, detailed, and audit-compliant account portfolio records. Over 70 transaction codes, plus detailed transaction records, support virtually all security and transaction types, including comprehensive treatment of fixed income securities as well as common stock, mutual funds, annuities, options, etc., .. virtually any investment that can be quantified and valued.  Portfolio transaction, holdings and valuation records are readily accessible in easy-to-review and easy-to-edit data formats. Security preferences such as price alerts, tax factors, fee factors, fee exclusions, tax withholding and no-trade specification may be set at the account level.  Filtering, sorting and subtotaling functions on nearly every data field make it easy to isolate and examine data for a particular security, transaction date or transaction type, while color cues assist you in determining the source and status of data.

Tax Focus - From our first product 20 years ago, our software has provided users with tools to help manage the impact of taxes upon their investments.  This continues with Captools/net.  Account-assignable tax rate classes, designed to accommodate past and future tax rate changes, enable Captools/net to compute estimated taxes on actual and prospective transactions, as well as before and after-tax ROI performance.  Five tax-lot methods (Specific, FIFO, LIFO, Average (single & double category)) and automated tax-lot matching help you to choose and implement the tax lot method which will minimize taxes on your taxable transactions, taking into account holding periods, local, state and federal taxes and same security wash sale tax rules.  Tax oriented income reports segregate income by relevant categories, including taxable and non-taxable, qualified and non-qualified, and realized gains by relevant holding periods, with reports optionally available in 1099 and other tax form relevant formats at higher program levels.  Lastly, Captools/net provides you with a export function which allows you to generate TXF format files which can be imported into the Turbo-Tax tax preparation program.

Customizable Reporting - Captools/net continues our tradition of giving users the power to generate reports superior to typical custodian or outsourced reports.  Such reports reinforce to your clients the value that you are adding in managing their money.  Over 350 data fields and over 40 charts types permit you to construct an almost limitless variety of reports starting from over 50 standard reports.  Practically all other aspects of reports are customizable, from field selection, order and width, to sub-totaling, report orientation, fonts, page headers and footers, labels, etc.  Merged reports permit you to consolidate data from multiple related accounts (e.g., by family, tax id, account group, etc., subject to program level) into a single report, facilitating analysis of overall asset performance and allocation. Cross-reference reports provide you with management level information across all your accounts or across a selected group of accounts. Reports can be generated to PDF, HTML, or exportable plain text format.  PDF format reports can be faxed, or e-mailed as encrypted PDF files, with report copies archived to meet data retention requirements.

Investment Performance - Captools/net offers a wide range of return on investment (ROI) performance reporting ranging from reports showing performance at the security level within a single portfolio, to multi-period performance reports across multiple portfolios. ROI's can be computed for individual securities, groups of securities, portfolios or groups of portfolios, before and after taxes and before and after commissions and fees, and optionally on a pre-margin basis. ROI's may be computed as dollar (internal rate of return) and/or time-weighted figures, and presented on annualized and/or non-annualized bases over user specified time periods. ROI computations also generate alpha, beta, standard deviation, sharpe, treynor and correlation statistics versus up to eight user-specified benchmarks.  Benchmarks can consist of market indices and/or can be synthetically constructed from securities or indices.  *AIMR PPS/GIPS reporting compliance, including year 2010 requirements, is supported at higher program levels for users subject to CFA Institute requirements (see help topic AIMR/GIPS Compliance).

Data Interfaces - Professional and higher versions of Captools/net support a large number of broker/dealer, clearing firm, and other institutional data import interfaces, simplifying the acquisition and maintenance of client data. This gives you the flexibility to diversify your clients across custodians, clearing firms, and/or mutual funds without becoming locked into any one of them as a result of your software choice. Captools/net also supports several sources of security pricing corporate action and fundamental data, including subscription and non-subscription (subject to user eligibility) sources.  Third party data can also often be imported through Captools/net's user customizable import utilities.  Users needing to export data can easily do so either directly from the data base, by using a user customizable Captools/net export utility, or through its reporting system to a variety of different data formats.

Data Conversion - Users wishing to convert to Captools/net from other systems are provided with a number of alternatives. Users of Quicken and MS-Money can export transaction to QIF format, for which Captools/net provides an import utility. Utilities are also included to support conversion from several other competing portfolio management systems to assist new users in converting their historical data. In cases where such a conversion is not possible, users often can initialize from data provided by their custodian or clearing firm. Users needing access to Captools/net data for other application can rest assured that Captools/net Open Data Base Compliant (ODBC) data format provides industry standard access to the data for application programmers.

Time Saving Tools - Captools/net offers numerous time-saving functions assist you in managing investment accounts. These include (some at higher program levels) data reconciliations, portfolio rebalancing, swap trade generation, block trade allocations, flexible client fee billing, including optional incentive billing, and special transaction generation associated with spin-offs and mergers, data rollbacks, etc. Multi-account processing allows efficient handling of most of these functions. Furthermore, many functions, including data downloads, custodian data imports, valuations and reports can be scheduled to occur at a specified time as background events using Captools/net’s "Tasker" service. This allows you or your data administrator to simply monitor events rather than having to trigger them manually.

High End Functionality - Captools/net’s functionality goes beyond simply fulfilling the requirements for a typical investment portfolio manager with the latest technology. In addition to all of the aforementioned capabilities, optional features are available to meet the needs of users with specialized requirements. International date and currency formats and customizable field labels support use by non-U.S. users, as does Captools/net optionally available multi-currency capability. Optional pooled funds accounting tracks the holdings of fund participants for private partnerships and limited liability companies, hedge funds, trust funds, and other pooled investment situations.  Multi-tiered rep based account assignment, rep commission and fee allocation and optional specialized utilities, reports, and web-access features support use by small to mid-sized broker/dealers for both back and front office use.

Captools/net Professional provides investment portfolio tracking and reporting suitable for single-site investment management offices supporting up to five users, typical of many financial planning, investment advisor, and family office settings. The Pro utilizes the MS-SQL Express data engine that installs with the Pro. Accordingly it supports low cost of operation since it typically will not require additional database software or tech staffing.

Captools/net Enterprise delivers client investment portfolio tracking and reporting suitable for larger numbers of users and accounts typical of larger registered investment advisor and planning firms. It also satisfies the multi-site requirements of independent broker dealers and other investment firms. The Enterprise employs the high capacity MS-SQL server database. This choice permits licensees to add hardware capacity at the server level, thereby scaling Captools/net power to the size of the user’s business.

Control your data, Control your Destiny! - In the competitive world of financial services, access to and control of client data is essential to maintaining control of your clients. Those who depend upon their custodian, clearing firm or some third party service bureau to maintain and report their data jeopardize the clientele and independence that has taken them so long to build. Captools/net gives you the latest in technology without requiring you to forfeit control of your data or be locked in by your custodian or clearing firm. Control your data and control your destiny with Captools/net!

Additional detail is available in under the Captools/net Features & Pricing, Desktop User Interface and Custodian Interfaces topics and in the Captools/net "Help documentation".

Requirements: Captools/net requires Microsoft Windows 7 / 8 /10 (Professional preferred) which include the MS-Windows IIS (Internet Information Services) component, or Windows Server 2012 or later (Small Business Server edition is not recommended due to other baggage applications which can conflict or slow operation). Your server operating system must have the latest Microsoft service pack and updates installed.  A minimum of 4 GB of RAM memory is recommended (> 4 GB of RAM desirable those with more data).  The latest generation computer CPU (AMD or Intel) "multi-core" type processor are strongly recommended.  For end users, a minimum monitor display resolution of 1280 x 1024 is recommended, and higher resolution, "wide screen" displays helpful to minimize the need for horizontal scrolling.  Hard disk space requirements depend upon the amount of data, however we recommend allowing at least 10GB of free space on the intended installation drive plus at least 5GB of free space on the C drive even if it is not the intended installation drive (we have seen user's computer performance compromised by insufficient space on the drive containing the operating system which eventually gets consumed by Windows updates and temp files).  If the C drive is also the intended installation drive, a minimum of 20GB free space is recommended.  We do not recommend installing Captools/net on a machine which is also used as a domain controller, MS Exchange server or file server due primarily because as a general rule this is advised against for MS-SQL server installations due to performance, security and maintenance (e.g. installs and re-boots) considerations.  If one insists on placing it on a machine hosting such functions we recommend that a "virtual server" be set up on such machine, with adequate resources assigned, to host Captools/net.  Although some users may be running Captools/net on Server 2003 or Windows XP, we no longer support new installs or reinstalls on such older systems.