We would like to advise our clients that Comtech's office will be closed and not accepting Member Services requests on:

Monday, November 12, 2007

If you have an emergency, for example, your Collect! system is down and you require assistance, please call 250-391-0466 and leave a message with your name, a brief description of your emergency and phone number you can be reached at, then someone will get back to you as soon as possible.

Have a safe and happy Holiday weekend!

Also check out our built in knowledge base that is part of the on-line ticket system. You may find, for instance, your question regarding reporting a bankruptcy in credit bureaus reporting is already covered in detail in the current knowledge base articles.

Our on-line Troubleshooter is also a fantastic tool for the self-starter. It can assist you in clarifying the results you receive from any Collect! Process. We are currently adding to the Knowledge base and Troubleshooter so F1 is still your best friend.

When member service requests come in we give the on-line ticket system the first priority. This means that the first tickets we target in a day are already entered into the ticket system. Phone calls and emails have to be manually entered into the ticket system by our member services team and so have a lower priority than those already in the system.

If you have not seen the on-line ticket system and members portal yet you can get a quick idea of some of the value it offers by watching our first Starting Right video http://www.collect.org/startingright.

So please consider when asking our Member Services Team for assistance that they will be able to respond fastest if you just ask through the on-line ticket response system found at https://collectsoftware.cc . Also if you have questions or stories to share with other Collect! users please visit and register for our new user to user discussion forum at https://collectsoftware.cc/forum.

Thank you for your continued patronage and all the valuable feedback we receive from you on a regular basis.

In this instance, some Equifax ePORT customers have reported receiving e-mails appearing to be from Equifax requesting that they provide Company ID, User ID and Password. Equifax and Comtech would never ask for this information. These e-mails have not been sent from Equifax and are not legitimate. DO NOT RESPOND TO THEM.

Simply clicking the link in a spoofed e-mail can be dangerous, even if you do not provide the information requested. When in doubt if a message is authentic or not, always contact your Equifax representative to confirm.

If you believe you have responded to a phishing attempt concerning your Equifax ePORT account, please call Equifax at 1-888-592-0008 immediately, or fax to 770-752-1275.

Interoffice Data Transfers
The Collect! Demo now ships with a convenient import/export library that you can use to take information out of one Collect! database and import it into another, for instance, the archive database, if needed. This may be used at any time with clients and all debtor information. Export a client to CSV, excluding all permissions, and easily use the same map to import into a different Collect! database. This is useful especially for archived records because read only permissions are not sent with the data.

Performance Variables
New settings in Database Preferences enable you to define values for optimizing your system performance.

Batch and Lock Interval settings affect the overall performance of your Collect! system. You can speed up batch process or you can ensure that you are not slowing down other operators who may be using Collect! at the same time.

Lock Timeout setting affects waiting time for lock requests.

Please refer to Help topic, Database Preferences, for details.

Search and Replace
Two new functions have been added to Search and Replace.

Wild Cards
Search and Replace now accepts wild cards in the search string. Currently supported wildcards are [*] which matches any number of characters and [?] which matches any one character.

Pick lists, Key fields & Notes
Search and Replace now works with pick list fields and key fields, such as Debtor Status.

Simplifying the Payment Process

It sounds simple, but oftentimes we hear buzzwords such as integration and partnership so frequently that we forget their actual meaning. For Electronic Payment Providers, transparency of the actual ACH and Card-payment acceptance process is critical in order to ensure that the experience remains seamless for Collect! users. Since EPP's inception, we have believed that the acceptance of a payment is the core function that a business seeks to achieve.

However, it's the way a business deals with the payment process that often dictates its profitability. How efficient are the business processes? How are transactions applied? What payment method is being accepted? All of these questions can be addressed through our integration with Collect! software. By allowing payments to be entered and automatically posted within Collect!, EPP allows collectors, managers, and business owners to focus on other areas and work more efficiently. Through this powerful integration, common pains such as NSF items can also be minimized.

By allowing the EPP/Collect! Integration to handle all of the work, returned transactions can be updated directly to the customer/debtor record without any need for manual entry on the part of the end user. By importing this data directly to the consumer record rather than relying on manual entry, a business can more efficiently deal with debtors who have submitted an NSF check in the past. Ask your Collect! Representative about this powerful payment interface today or contact us directly at (800) 377-2677.

If you or any member of your organization would like more information, please contact EPP at (877) 377-2677 or visit our web site at http://www.expresspayments.com.

Computer technicians are the white knights of the computer world. They install, maintain, troubleshoot, and repair computers, software and peripheral equipment. While the kind of work they do does not always show on the balance sheets they ensure your running smoothly and safely.

They must not only know their way around computer hardware and software but also know a considerable amount about computer networks, operating systems and security.

Be sure to find and keep a good technician available to your company and they will become an indispensable member of your team. Maintaining your computers, networks backups and batch processes, keep your technicians happy and you will reap the benefits.