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FEATURE STORY
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PT Manager
Keep track of trust data and expedite trust
administration
By Donald H. Kelley
Kelley Rating (one asterisk = lowest, five asterisks = highest):
- Ease of navigation, design of interface and learning curve ******
- Instructional documentation and help system ***
- Carries out the goal of the product as advertised *****
- Overall usefulness *****
PT Manager is designed to
facilitate the management and administration of trusts through
communication, compliance, scheduling and reporting. It is intended for
trust management institutions, but useful to others who administer
trusts for private trustees, such as law firms. The program also is
useful for family offices given the high degree of personal contact they
have with family members.
This program:
- reduces the time and effort required for administrative matters;
- provides quick access to biographical, historical and financial
account information;
- systemizes administrative procedures;
- tracks compliance matters;
- facilitates trust account audits; and
- furnishes a comprehensive report for annual account
reviews.
Competitors
Other programs facilitate trust inception, administration and
termination, but not with the administrative focus of PT Manager.
Cowles
Trust Terminator works through the details involved in trust
termination. It generates correspondence and documents, and includes
tracking tools to assist with obtaining asset information, creating an
inventory of assets, and completing the final accounting and
distribution.
EstateWorks,
TrueSettlement is a web-based work-flow solution directed toward the
process of administering estates. It manages cases and contacts,
automates task assignments and due dates, and tracks tasks to
completion—including sending standard letters and producing management
reports.
Connect2A is a web-based data
management service designed to gather, share and update clients’
personal and financial information for planning applications and
periodic client reviews. The accumulated data may be applied during the
planning, lifetime maintenance and after-death administration of
clients’ estates. This service also tracks asset and beneficiary
changes during the trust funding process.
AbacusLaw
Estate Planning Special Edition provides practice management for
estate planning, trusts and estate administration. It documents the
initial client consultation, retainer agreement and information
gathering. The software also assists with document drafting, document
signing, asset transfers and trust funding.
SettlementCounsel
software provides an automated solution for settling estates throughout
the post-mortem planning process.
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(Article continues here.)
What’s It All About?
After PT Manager is installed and launched it presents a simple and
easy-to-follow interface. According to the publisher, it functions with
Microsoft Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows ME, Windows XP and Windows
NT 4.0 Service Pack 6 or later. Microsoft Vista users should check with
the publisher.
The publisher’s website includes a tour of the screen
displays. The drop-down Edit menu, or Edit icon, allows you to add a
new account or delete an existing account. Proceeding to Accounts from
this menu presents a list of existing trust accounts by account number,
name and Tax ID. Accounts may be sorted numerically or alphabetically
by double clicking on a column header. You may search for an account
from the account screen by the trust name, its number or by a group of
letters in the trust name.
Opening an account displays an account information screen with 15 tabs
representing the characteristics of the account. The default tab, Acct
Profile, displays all of the identifying details of the account
including the trust name, ID number, relevant dates, grantor data, trust
administrator data, supervisory court data and links to amendments and
related accounts. Clicking on the Edit button that appears on the
screen allows information to be added or edited.
The account information screen keeps track of:
- Remittances and distributions
- Fee arrangements — frequency of and to what account charged
- Beneficiary data and contact information
- Investment objectives, allocation strategy, authority and
powers
- Special assets, such as real estate
- Liabilities, security and repayment provisions
- The legal nature and context of the trust including termination,
disposition and special powers
- Income tax information, including taxpayers, preparers, taxable year
and delivery of tax data
- Trust-related parties, including attorney(s)
- Remaindermen
- The grantor’s other relationships with the trustee
institution
- Other requirements, such as contact intervals and notes on
contacts
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PT Manager also incorporates scanning technology. Documents, pictures,
etc. can be scanned and attached to the buttons on various screens
designated for this feature. The Acct Profile screen, for example,
includes access to scanned and computer-generated documents relating to
the trust. These documents are categorized by Letters In, Letters Out
and Other Documents. Documents may be easily added through the dialog
box related to each of these categories.
A handy Notes screen is also included for miscellaneous notes and
observations related to the trust administration.
A Calendar feature is included, on which trust activity may be recorded
and future action dates entered. Actions entered into the account
dialog for trusts that are the responsibility of the individual trust
administrator appear on the calendar. Clicking on the action reference
on a given date brings up a list of actions for that date and clicking
on an action brings up its entry on the account dialog. One example of
an action is the dates distributions are due.
The Relationship Manager screen allows the trust administrator to
maintain a list of all individuals and firms, and their contact
information, with whom the trustee maintains a relationship. The
program includes a facility that lets you print mailing labels coded for
various relationships for purposes such as public relations and
advertising.
Past Due Items lists all actions of whatever type that have been entered
at the account dialogs. Reminders allow the trust administrator to
enter other actions or activities to be reminded of.
The Print command allows you to print from a detailed list of all types
of trust data and actions. You select an item from the list displayed
by clicking on Print to bring up a screen listing all trusts including
that item. Click on the trust name to cause the program to compile the
requested report and display it on the screen. From the report display
you may print the report or export data in a variety of formats
including PDF, Crystal Reports, delimited data files, Excel, Lotus, Rich
Text Format, text, Word or XML.
The program may be installed on a computer network, allowing access from
each workstation (with the destination folder set to the network
location) to provide a centralized database for all users.
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(Article continues here.)
What About Help and Support?
The Help file contains instructions for management of the program and
operation of each component of the program. Context-sensitive help
calls from individual program components are not, however, available,
although the publisher indicates that help calls will be available in a
later version. A comprehensive written manual is furnished with the
product. The user gets unlimited telephone/email/computer control
support for an annual fee, which is based on the number of accounts the
user manages with the program.
Where Do You Get This Software?
This software is available through the publisher:
Compliance Information Systems, Inc.
P.O. Box 240185
Saint Paul, MN 55124
Toll Free: (877) 469-5517
Phone: (612) 867-1050
Fax: (952) 891-2826
Email: Sales@csitrust.com
Contact Request Order Form: www.personaltrustmanager.com/6.html
Website: www.personaltrustmanager.com/
The software has a base fee of $850 and an annual fee based on the
number of accounts managed with the program.
Bottom Line
PT Manager is an easy to use, but detailed, database of all the client
data and operating information needed to manage the administration of
multiple trusts.
Trusts & Estates magazine is pleased to present the monthly
Technology Review by Donald H. Kelley—a respected connoisseur
of the software and Internet resources wealth management advisors use to
further their practices.
Kelley is a lawyer living in Highlands Ranch, Colo. and is of counsel to
the law firm of Kelley, Scritsmier & Byrne, P.C. of North Platte, Neb.
He is the co-author of the Intuitive Estate Planner Software,
(Thomson – West 2004). He has served on the governing boards of the
American Bar Association Real Property Probate and Trust Section and the
American College of Tax Counsel. He is a past regent and past chair of
the Committee on Technology in the Practice of the American College of
Trust and Estate Counsel.
Trusts & Estates has asked Kelley to provide his unvarnished opinions
on the tech resources available in the practice today. His columns are
edited for readability only. Send feedback and suggestions for articles
directly to him at dhkelley@qwestoffice.net.
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Unbundling
Trust Fees: A Trusts & Estates Podcast Sponsored By SunTrust
Banks are now going to be forced to unbundle the fees they charge trust
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