What do you do? Custom Software. Clients, like Elyse and Marsha, who make their living by grieving property tax assessments, need two basic kinds of information to do their work. They need property descriptions, including assessments and taxes, and they need information about recent property sales. These clients typically subscribe to CompSearch (P.O. Box 55, Bayville, NY 11709 -- 516-628-9512) from COMPS, Inc. and/or to the Long Island Board of Realtors dial-up Multiple Listing Service. Both of these services provide limited-distribution, custom software which benefits "mightily" from expert installation. That's a part of what we do. In Elyse and Marsha's case, we installed the network version of CompSearch.
SERVENET.COM's Installations Plus+ division also supplies custom software of its own design for clients in the property tax reduction business. For Elyse and Marsha of PTA we supplied a client database that simplifies several common tasks. At right is a screen capture (click to magnify) of the menu page of the database which the partners use to print Board of Assessment Review (BAR) and Nassau County BAR (NBAR) grievances, Small Claims Assessment Review (SCAR) petitions as well as property record cards, labels and invoices. (You can examine the grievance and petition forms and get more information about the grievance process from the New York State Office of Real Property Services website.)
What Elyse and Marsha love about this software is that they only have to enter the data once for each client! One of their two typical data entry screens is shown at left (click to magnify). Of course, data entry can occur months in advance of "tax time". Then, when it's time to submit the forms, the software, like Income Tax software, manipulates the data mathematically and logically to complete and print the needed forms. Using ordinary laser or inkjet printers, Elyse and Marsha can turn out a four-page standardized form for 50 or more clients in a one-hour session!
As their needs grow, Elyse and Marsha can order a variety of enhancements to their basic database, including new-client sign-up packages, Article VII petitions, tracking reports, and analytical spreadsheets. In fact, to help their business grow, they can order our targeted monthly mailer of over-assessed properties sold the prior month in Nassau and Suffolk counties. Or, like United Tax Reduction, they can commission a website to help their business. But more about mailers and websites another time.
Now let's look at the setup, installation, and training aspect of What We Do.