Captools/net investment portfolio management software is an information and data management tool designed to meet the investment tracking, analysis, monitoring and reporting needs of advanced investors and various levels of money managers and firms in the financial services industry.  Unlike investment data tracking and reporting solutions offered by clearing firms, custodians and remote "Application Service Providers", Captools/net gives you full control over your data.  This ensures privacy and flexibility in terms of data management and reporting, and if you are a money manager or broker-dealership, strengthens your control of clients and facilitates your independence from clearing firms and custodians.

 

Captools/net (also sometimes referred to herein as "Captools") maintains a complete record of investment transactions, downloads and imports price quotes for portfolio valuations and security analysis, computes return on investment performance, generates user customizable reports and charts, and performs security analysis.  Account-specific data can often be imported from the broker/dealer, clearing firm, custodian and/or mutual fund company data sources using Captools' institutional data import interfaces (Pro versions/higher).  In other cases such data may be imported through Captools' generic import interface or XML import interface, depending upon data source and format.  Data may also be manually input or edited.

 

Virtually all security types and transaction types are supported, including stocks, bonds, mutual funds, options, etc., as well as depreciable assets such as real estate and partnership interests.  Investment cost bases may be tracked using four different tax lot methodologies.  Tax lots may be automatically assigned to minimize taxes or maximize gains. Tax reporting and estimated tax computations allow for multiple capital gains holding periods and multiple income categories as is now specified by recent U.S. tax law changes.  Multi-currency portfolio management support is optionally available for most versions.

 

Performance is measured using internal rate of return, and may be computed using dollar and time-weighted methodologies.  Performance may be measured before and after taxes, before and after fees and for holdings of individual securities, groups of securities, portfolios and groups of portfolios.  Performance may be compared versus user-selectable benchmark indices on a blended and/or non-blended basis.

 

Captools/net can generate highly customizable reports, integrating graphics and charts. Reporting output may be printed, output to PDF format, or in some versions optionally generated in HTML format suitable for real time web-hosting.  Report headers and labels may be customized to suit the user's preferred terminology, or to convert them to another language (Roman alphabet) for clients preferring non-English language reports.

 

A number of different versions of Captools/net are available to best suit the needs of various types of investors and money managers. This documentation may in some instances describe features which are only available at higher level versions of the software.  In these cases, when running the software, you will typically see these features suppressed (not visible) or grayed-out.   If you desire a particular feature not accessible to you, contact Captools Co. Sales to learn at what level that feature would be supported.

 

The various levels of Captools/net are briefly summarized below:

 

Professional/Level 1 - Investment portfolio management suitable for many entry level, solo money managers, active private investors, or a small family office with limited accounts and requirements.  Incorporates many widely used custodian data import interfaces, contains entry level client management features and supports client reporting and billing.  The Pro/1 is a single user license, licensed only to single person firms, and is limited to a single user log-in.

 

Professional/Level 2 - Investment portfolio management suitable for single site, small-office money management firm, family office, or larger fiduciary entity, requiring multi-user access.  Incorporates many widely used custodian data import interfaces, including some more complex interfaces not supported at the Pro/1 level.  Contains additional client management, client reporting and billing features not supported by the Pro/1.   Supports multiple users (up to number of licensed users)  in full multi-user client/server environment, with limited remote access support.

 

Professional/Levels 3 & 4 - Advanced investment portfolio management suitable for single site, small-office money management firm, family office, or larger fiduciary entities.  Supports all Captools custodian interfaces supported by Levels 1 & 2, plus some specialty interfaces not supported at those levels.  Advanced features include advanced portfolio rebalancing (e.g. by family and tax id), incentive fee billing support, additional margin and short position monitoring, dividend accrual and optional bond-centric reporting.  Pro 4 additionally supports cash/margin accounting, margin adjusted performance reporting, credit interest generation and various rep. management reporting. Pro 3 and 4 also optionally support Captools/net "fund accounting" for hedge funds, trust accounting and other pooled investment arrangements, subject to a fund accounting surcharge.  Levels 3 & 4 support multiple users (up to number of licensed users)  in full multi-user client/server environment, with remote access support, including optional end client remote access for reports.

 

Enterprise - This level of Captools/net is designed for larger numbers of end users and higher levels of data volume than would typically be expected by users of the products above.  The Enterprise supports the features of the Pro Level 2, depending upon the options selected by the licensee.  Additional features may also be offered at this level which are not available at lower product levels, to support the types of businesses which would typically require the Enterprise product.

 

Enterprise/Levels 3 & 4 - These levels of Captools/net are intended for users needing the capacity of the Enterprise and the feature set of the Pro 3 or 4.  There may also be some other features only offered at these levels and not available in the Pro 3 or 4.

 

The main difference between the Enterprise and lower level versions is that the the licensing cost per account supported is lower for the Enterprise licensee.  All versions initially install the Microsoft SQL Server Express database engine that is included as a Microsoft redistributable in the Captools/net installation.  Microsoft SQL Server Express employs SQL technology and the MS-SQL data format, but is memory limited by Microsoft to five end users and approximately 2GB total RAM memory usage and 1 GB maximum single table RAM usage.  Because SQL Server is designed to cache results of queries in memory as it operates, the memory usage is often much greater than the size of the actual data base files.

 

Captools/net Enterprise users, and Pro users with a very large amount of data will typically install one of the higher level versions the MS-SQL Server database, such as the "Standard" edition.  The advantage of these higher versions that they have a much  higher database size constraint and can utilize much more RAM memory during operation.  An additional advantage of using the "Standard" edition of the MS-SQL Server database is that it is designed  to be "scalable", meaning it can utilize multiple CPUs that can handle larger volumes of data and end users.  The actual number of end users and amount of data that can be supported by Captools/net Enterprise is dependant upon the computer hardware configuration and performance and upon the data throughput demands.

 

Since MS-SQL server and SQL Express databases are essentially identical in data format, lower level Captools/net users may easily upgrade to Captools/net Enterprise, if business growth and/or performance considerations require.  If you have questions about the proper program level and/or hardware/software configuration, please contact Captools Company.

 

User Limits - All versions of Captools/net are subject to license-based user limits.  Additional users above the base configuration in multi-user versions may be added subject to licensing surcharges and subject to any user limitations in the underlying database engine (e.g. the SQL Express engine used in the Pro versions typically will support a maximum of 5 concurrent users, whereas the MS-SQL Server database engine supports more users, subject to separate MS-SQL licensing).   For licensees who need to track data by Rep ID, the minimum required number of users will be determined by the number of Rep ID's to be tracked, plus sufficient additional users to allow for those involved in data administration and oversight.

 

Account Limits - All versions of Captools/net are subject to license-based limits on the number of accounts supported in their base license configuration. However, in the Pro and Enterprise versions, additional accounts may be added subject to licensing surcharges.  Account and user limits are interrelated (i.e. the number of allowed accounts increases with the number of allowed users) to avoid overlapping surcharges for additional users and accounts.

 

Ownership, Attribution and Copyrights: Captools/net software is copyrighted by and is owned by Captools Company and licensed to users for periodic fees. The software employs a three tier client/server technology and code developed using a software development platform from Embarcadero Corporation (embarcadero.com), supplemented by a number of licensed third party components, most significantly the "VCL Suite" from Developers Express, Inc. (devexpress.com), "Report Builder" from Digital Metaphors, Inc. (digital-metaphors.com), and Export Devices for Report Builder from Gnostice Software (gnostice.com), as well communication components from IndyProjects.org (indyproject.org), and components to support automated updates from TMS Software (tmssoftware.com) and fault tracing from Madshi Software (madshi.net).  Captools/net runs on the Microsoft (microsoft.com) Windows operating system and uses various function calls and application interfaces supported by that operating  system.  Captools Company's copyright and ownership claims apply only to its own work in creating Captools/net using its own coding to develop this product with the aforementioned tools. The applicable licensing for the aforementioned third party components may be found on their websites via the links above.  

 

Feature and Documentation Limitations: Although we do our best to verify that features documented are operative as documented herein, some documented features may not yet be operative, and conversely, some features found in the software may not be documented or may differ from the documentation.  We appreciate users reporting of such so that we may correct the documentation or software as appropriate.  However, please be advised that some features documented herein may be restricted to certain program levels, and the restriction thereof to those levels only may not always be documented.  Furthermore, please be advised that some features intended only for higher program levels occasionally may be inadvertently activated at a lower level.  In such cases we reserve the right to restrict such features in later program levels to the level originally intended.