Keystone Version History

The following is a summary of improvements and new features added to the current and previous versions of Keystone.

Keystone 6.0

General

• Document and Picture Management - You can now store and view documents and pictures for individual contacts, family partners, and houses via Keystone. For more information, see the Managing Documents and Pictures in Keystone section.
• Expanded support for Microsoft Office 2007 - Keystone now supports Word and Excel templates for Office 2007. Office 2003 templates remain supported as before.
• Multiple Keystone users on the same computer - Keystone now allows you to share a single version of the program on the same computer while allowing each user to customize Keystone according to their needs without affecting other users. This also eases software updates as it will only need to be run once to update all users on that computer.
• Custom Screen Positioning - You can set the position of screens and windows that have an @ symbol in the lower-right corner by clicking on it, which fixes the position these screens will appear at in your Keystone workspace. This lets you, for example, set the Payments screen to appear in such a way that you can see both that screen and the Mortgage/Payments Information screen at the same time without having to arrange the windows every time you open them. For more information, see the Custom Screen Positioning section.

Reporting

• Data Collections - Data Collections vastly expand the export and data analysis capabilities of Keystone. You can now export data from all across Keystone (using Collections reports or many other export reports), assemble the information in Microsoft Excel, and analyze and explore it in just about any way you can imagine. You can use Data Collections to create a nearly endless variety of reports, charts and graphs, merge data, and more. For more information, see the Introduction to Data Collections section.
• Reports - Many new reports and report options have been added. Some new options include: reporting on square footage, number of bedrooms, and appraised values of homes (by home or averages); year-to-date and total-to-date added to donor receipts; excluding donors who are marked to not receive appeals; reports with the option of choosing a time period (e.g., ‘this quarter') now include the entire date range in the report even if the end date is in the future; a "Has E-mail" option makes it easier to send announcements to contacts who have e-mail and separately send standard mail to those who don't.

Finances

• Mortgage Payment Histories - You can now view two years of mortgage payment status on the Mortgage/Payment Information screen, both in summary and detail form. Delinquency measurements have been changed from principal-only to principal plus escrow, meaning that the number of months delinquent is now based on the total monthly payment and not the principal payment.
• Credit reporting and mortgage responsibility - You can now set who is responsible for a mortgage for purposes of credit reporting on the Administration tab on the Mortgage/Payment Information screen.
• Mortgage payment entry - When entering a batch of mortgage payments for a date before today, you can now set a payment date that's in the past that will be used for all payments you enter in that batch. It stays set until you close the Mortgage/Payment Information screen, at which time the payment date defaults back to today's date.

Development

• Pledges - When a donor changes their pledge amount, you can update this in Keystone without having to create a new pledge. You can now also track the value of lost pledges.
• No Appeals - Option now available for contacts, covenant partners, donors, and volunteers to omit them from appeal mailings.
• Donor Receipts - Year-to-date and total-to-date has been added to donor receipts.

Volunteers

• ‘Non-house' work sites - You can now create ‘non-house' work sites, which are sites at which other volunteer activities besides home construction can occur, such as the affiliate office or warehouse. You can customize and track activities at house sites as well as at any other ‘non-house' site you define. You can do this starting with the Hours/Work Sites/Activities tab in Affiliate Setup. Volunteer and sweat equity reports have been updated to include these new options.
• Volunteer availability - Expanded options for tracking a volunteer's availability let you track this by day of the week or time of day. In contact records with more than one person, you can now track their availability separately.
• Hours data entry - An "Hours Tab To" option has been added to the Hours/Work Sites/Activities tab in Affiliate Setup. This controls the default tabbing settings on the Schedule/Post Hours screen, allowing affiliates to set whether they always want to have Time In and Time Out included in their data entry or to skip those by default and enter Time Total instead.

Contacts

• Birth dates - You can now track the date of birth for contacts.
• E-mail addresses - Expanded options for quickly correcting bad e-mail addresses in your contact records, in many cases even when you don't know who the address belongs to.

Family Partners

• Affiliate Demographics report has been modified to include average square footage and average appraised initial value - by number of bedrooms and by total - has been added. These can be set on the Property Addresses screen.
• Sweat equity - The balance of sweat equity required has been added to the (S/A/F)/Demographics/Family Partnership tab on the Family Partners screen.

Properties

• Square footage - You can now track the square footage of houses on the Demographics tab on the Property Addresses screen.

Other

• Improvements to Start Screen - The version of Keystone you are using, the date you last ran ScanDb, and the date on which your affiliate's current support license expires are all now shown on the Start Screen.
• MTD News - Critical MTD News items are now displayed in red.
• Loading History - Can now enable and disable Loading History separately for mortgages and properties. This way you can enter historical data for one without affecting the day-to-day functions of the other. Keystone will now warn you if you forget and leave Loading History enabled.
• System Information - The System Information - Summary screen has been updated to allow you to see the locations of new folders such as the folders used for managing documents. The fields and tabs have been reorganized somewhat to make things easier to find.
• Numerous other changes based on bug reports from affiliates.

Keystone 5.5

• Numerous additions and improvements to reports, some of which include:
  • Contact Management > Labels and Export Data reports
    
    Communications (phone, cell, pager, fax, etc. numbers) and E-mail Addresses have been added to the following reports:
    - By Affiliation
    - By Contact Categories
    - Multi-select Categories
    - No Mailings
  • Development > Labels and Export Data report
    
    Communications (phone, cell, pager, fax, etc. numbers) and E-mail Addresses have been added to the following report:
    - Volunteers Who Are Not Donors
  • Volunteer Coordination
    
    - Hours By Work Site; A Report Detail > Summary By Site and a Type (All, Family Partners, or Volunteers) selection options have been added.
    - A Work Site E-mails report can be used to e-mail Volunteers or Family Partners who are scheduled or who have provided hours for a specified work site and date range.
    - A Waiver Dates report can be used to find Volunteers who have no waiver, who have waivers with no waiver date, and/or who have waivers within a selected date range.
  • Finance
    
    - Check Number and Notes fields have been added to the Escrow Management > Disbursements Detail/Summary > Detail report.

Keystone 5.4

• The options on the Help menu have been greatly expanded and reorganized.
  
  • The Keystone Training Videos have been placed on the MTD Web Site, and these can be accessed directly from the Help menu in Keystone (Help > Online Help > Training Videos) or any browser.
  • The System Information screen has been expanded to include Summary and Detail options to provide information for improved technical support and to help you better locate Keystone-related files and folders on your computer or server.
  • A link has been provided to the MTD Help Center in the Help menu in Keystone (Help > Online Help > Help Center) .
  • A link has been provided in the Help menu to Online Remote Support to make it easier to connect to this service when needed. (Help > Support > Online Remote Support)
  • The search capability of the Keystone Help has been improved.
• Affiliate Setup screen > Affiliate tab - The Tax ID (EIN) has been added to Affiliate Setup. The EIN will become the major affiliate identifier in Keystone.
• Numerous additions and improvements to reports, some of which include:
  
  • Label and Export Data Reports - Printing merge envelopes has been added as an option to these reports.
  • Development > Fundraising Activities > Detail/Summary - The View options have been changed to FRA; FRA-DDA, and DDA-FRA. The FRA-DDA option indicates how an FRA has been designated, The DDA-FRA option provides a breakdown of direct and indirect donations the DDA has received.
  • Volunteer Coordination > Hours > [reports] - A selection option of Class (All, Retired, Students, and Others) has been added to these reports.
  • Finance > Escrow Management > Escrow Categories Due - The estimated amount of the next payment for each escrow payee has been added to this report so that affiliates can do cost comparisons of services provided to homeowners by these payees.
  • Donations, Mortgage Payments, and Closing Fee reports - A 'By Payment Method' report has been added for these payments.
  • Volunteer Coordination > Labels and Export Data > Hours Scheduled - The Waiver Date has been added to the exported data.
  • Family Services > Delinquency > Excluded Homeowners - Foreclosure and Others categories have been added to this report. The name has been changed to “Excluded From Delinquency List". This report has also been added to finance reports.
• The Loading History function has been improved to make initial loading of Keystone easier.
• Family Partners screen - Sweat Equity By Others is set to red when this value exceeds the goal set on the Administration tab.
• Donors Screen > Donations tab - The background and font color of inactive FRAs and DDAs has been changed to gray and red respectively to make them distinctive from their active counterparts.
• Several other fixes based on feedback and testing.
  

Keystone 5.3

• Expanded support for e-mail using Microsoft Outlook; greater ability add and subtract contacts within categories for your e-mail list; E-mail Address List report can now be generated for volunteer skills and interests for use with Outlook; exported data now formatted for Outlook e-mail merging.
• Limits can now be specified for both Club Pledges and Periodic Pledges; when that limit is reached, the pledge obligation ceases. Club Pledges also now allow total and per year house sponsorship limits.
• Notice of Silent Second Lien now included on the Mortgage Summary report, if applicable. If this lien exists for a homeowner, a note is included on the report that reads, "Habitat for Humanity also holds a second lien on this property which may be forgiven based on the terms and conditions of the lien. If you need a payoff amount, please contact our office." This has been done to discourage predatory lenders.
• Contacts can now be filtered by City or Postal Code (ZIP Code).
• A user can now view all reminders if you are running Keystone with user-level security and the user has the appropriate privileges.
• Numerous additions and improvements to reports, some of which include: 

• Support for reporting to Grizzard by including Largest Donation, Largest Donation Date, Last Donation, and Last Donation Date to the Donors Summary report.
• Exclude By options now included with mult-select category reports.
• Labels and export data now available for Family Services groups, such as homeowners in different affiliate classes or in different neighborhoods
• Communications records and e-mail addresses now available on Family Partners report
• Multi-select options now available for Distribution History and Mortgage Payment History reports
• Can now select by recent activity or use expanding filter options for Volunteer Profile report

• Several fixes based on feedback and testing.

See our detailed version notes on our web site.

Keystone 5.2

• Vastly improved installer and upgrade programs to greatly simplify upgrades and new installations for users.
• Numerous bug fixes and performance improvements for previous versions of Keystone.

See our detailed version notes on our web site.

Keystone 5.1

General

• Support for Microsoft Office 2007 suites that include Microsoft Access; Office 2003 Professional continues to be supported.
• Addition of the Keystone News Service, which will provide you up-to-date news about MoreThanData, Keystone, and related topics.

Development

• Several additions that make the Development functions more robust, especially for Pledges and Fundraising Activities (FRAs).
• The ability to record $0 amounts for Fundraising Activities. This is useful when you receive a single combined donation from an organization - such as the United Way or similar community foundation - where you only receive a list of donors' names and addresses but no individual donation amounts. This allows you to preserve the donor names and information even though you don't know specifically how much they gave.

Escrow

• The Affiliate Plan tab on the Escrow screen has been improved to allow you to see what impact on payments, disbursements, and balances may result from any modifications you make to your affiliate's escrow plan. This allows you to see much more detail side-by-side and analyze escrow adjustment scenarios.
• Option now available to initialize a subset of homeowners - such as all homeowners associated with a particular escrow payee - so you can make adjustments quickly to certain homeowners without having to wait for Keystone to update your entire database of homeowners.
• Hovering your cursor over disbursement amounts now shows what payees make up a particular disbursement. This allows you to quickly find details about these payments.
• Bug fixed where the Affiliate Plan on the Escrow screen was being doubled when it should not have been.

Other

• System Information screen improved so you can easily find the location of your Keystone folders - such as for your database, Help files, templates, and so forth.
• Foreclosures tracking has been added to the existing bankruptcy report (now called In Bankruptcy or Foreclosure).
• Increased database protection and reliability
• Other improvements based on affiliate input
• Numerous other bug fixes

See our detailed version notes on our web site.

Keystone 5.0

Some of the new features in Keystone 5.0 include: 

• New interface between Keystone and QuickBooks for posting closing fees, mortgages, and donations directly to QuickBooks
• Many new reports, a new reports interface to make reports easier to find, and the ability to create a "My Favorites" area for frequently-used reports
• E-mail support using Microsoft Outlook with addresses stored in Keystone
• More robust donation and pledge management
• Support for Windows Terminal Services for better remote access to Keystone
• Improved speed and reliability
• Improved database security
• New Affiliate Setup options to allow more affiliate-specific customization
• Many other improvements and fixes based on input from affiliate users

See our detailed version notes on our web site. (Part 1 | Part 2)