Issues with “By Goal Strategy Wizard” (3 March 2008):

In the "By Goal" section of the "Strategies" wizard, if the client held ISOs and the chosen strategy was coupled with the ‘Exercise ISOs to AMT limit afterwards’ strategy, there may be instances where some of the ISOs exercised to the AMT limit would need to be disqualified to re-achieve the chosen strategy.  This disqualification must be performed manually.

In versions of StockOpter^® Pro prior to v3.6, in the "By Goal" section of the "Strategies" wizard, if users chose "Exercise ISOs to AMT limit afterwards" there were situations where StockOpter^® Pro would erroneously report that the primary goal (After Tax Cash Flow or Diversification %) was met in all years. Exercising to the AMT Limit after the primary goal was met could cause the primary goal not to be fully achieved.

Fix: In StockOpter^® Pro 3.6, the message reporting the results of the chose strategy now accurately reflects the final status of your primary goal, taking into account the effect of subsequently exercising to the AMT limit.

Support for Microsoft Windows Vista and Office 2007

Net Worth Strategies is currently evaluating the new versions of Windows (Vista) and Office (2007). Changes may be required in StockOpter^® Pro to support these new packages from Microsoft. We plan to go thru an effort to review Vista and Office 2007 to determine a time line for any updates which are required. Please call us at (541) 383-3899 to discuss your plans for adopting either Windows Vista or Office 2007 so we can best serve your evolving needs.

May 17th 2006 Tax Changes

The tax law increases the AMT exemption for 2006 and extends the 15% tax rate for capital gains and dividends tax through 2010.

Work-Around: Upgrade to StockOpter^® Pro 3.31 (or newer)

Nonsensical result when using certain strategy wizards:

Stock price values in excess of $100 may result in failure of the Goal Seek: If the stock price in a particular year is in excess of $100, the goal seek function in StockOpter^® Pro may fail to find a valid solution. This impacts all strategies that utilize goal seek including; Sell-to-cover, Inventory-based and goal-based strategies.

Work-Around: Manually modify the strategy by entering an appropriate value for number of options to exercise or shares to sell, where applicable.

Expired ISO grant may cause VBA error:

Existence of expired ISO grant may cause VBA error: If an ISO grant exists within a StockOpter^® Pro workbook, and one of the following strategy wizard strategies is selected, a VBA error is triggered and the automatic calculation feature of Excel is switched to manual.
1) Grant Type Strategy – For all ISOs ("Exercise ASAP then sell to cover"): Select and click Implement
2) Grant Type Strategy – For all ISOs ("Exercise as late as possible (ALAP) then hold forever"): Select and click Implement
3) Inventory Strategy: Enter parameters and click Implement

Work-Around:
1) On the BaseCase Sheet: Change the expiration of the grant to a date subsequent to the current date. For example, if the grant expiration is 12/01/2004, consider changing it to 12/01/2008. If remaining "# of vested & unexercised options" exist, delete them from Column B since the option has expired. Leave the input for "# of exercised & unsold shares (12/31)" and the associated AMT adjustment as is. If there are no exercised & unsold shares, then consider deleting the entire grant.
2) Under Tools | Options | Calculation: Determine if the Calculation setting is set to "Manual". If so, reset the Calculation setting to "Automatic".

83(b) Election - cost basis calculation:

Erroneous basis calculation when modeling a current year 83(b) election (02 May 2005):
When trying to model the impact of a current year 83(b) election, the program incorrectly calculates the cost basis which is shown in the row titled, "Average per share cost basis before sale." Elections made in prior tax years are not impacted!

Work-Around: Upgrade to StockOpter^® Pro 3.3 (or newer).

Act! 2005 (Version 7.0):

Compatibility issue between NWSI software and Act! 2005 (Version 7.0) (14 February 2005):
After using and closing StockOpter^® Pro, StockOpter^® Insight, or StockOpter® Entry, a dialog box titled "VBA Password" appears on the Windows desktop and cannot be closed. Earlier versions of Act! did not show this behavior. Best Software has released several updates to Act! 2005 already, but this problem still persists. We are currently in contact with technical support at Best Software to resolve this issue.

Work-Around: There are three alternatives:
1) Fully uninstall Act! 2005. This is probably far too drastic for most Act! users but will solve the problem. To proceed along this line, click on the "My Computer" icon, choose "Control Panel," then choose "Add/Remove Programs, and then choose "Act!"
2) Use Windows Task Manager to remove the dialog box. The behavior will continue to re-appear each time you use and then close StockOpter^® Pro, StockOpter Insight©, or StockOpter® Entry. To use this second method:
- Close any Excel session that you still have open.
- Invoke Windows Task Manager (the simplest way is by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del, then choosing Task Manager in the resulting dialog box).
- In the Task Manager dialog box, choose the Processes tab and highlight the Excel.exe item.
- Click the End Process button in the lower right corner of the dialog box, and then click Yes in the pop-up confirmation window. The VBA Password box should then disappear.
- Close the Task Manager dialog box by clicking on the the “X” in the upper right hand corner or choosing File / Exit on the menu system.
3) Remove the interface between Act! and Microsoft Office. This will leave Act! fully funcional as a stand-alone application but will remove Office features used by Act! such as using Microsoft Word as the text editor for your e-mail. Best Software's instructions for doing this are:
- Run this line from Start>Run (including all quotation marks): "C:\Program Files\ACT\ACT for Win 7\RegAsm.exe" /unregister "C:\Program Files\ACT\ACT for Win 7\Act.Office.Addin.dll"
- Then rename Normal.dot.
- This will remove it from both Word and Excel.

Google Desktop (Beta):

Compatibility issue between NWSI software and the Google Desktop utility (Beta) (11 January 2005):
After using and closing StockOpter^® Pro, StockOpter^® Insight, or StockOpter® Entry, a dialog box titled "VBA Password" appears on the Windows desktop and cannot be closed. While we are still investigating this, it appears to be associated with the use of the Google Desktop utility. This software is known to have this impact on other Excel workbooks which make extensive use of Visual Basic for Applications (VBA).

Work-Around: Upgrade to version 1.0 of the Google Desktop tool.

Windows XP Service Pack 2:

Possible compatibility issues with all programs using Excel VBA (26 August 2004):
We have completed testing SP2 with StockOpter^® Insight, StockOpter^® Pro, and StockOpter® Entry, and have encountered no problems. So, effective 29 October 2004 we support the Windows XP SP2 platform for all of our applications.

StockOpter^® Pro 3.0, 3.1 and 3.15, and StockOpter® Entry 3.0, 3.1 and 3.15:

Incorrect cell formula (02 May 2005):
When trying to model the impact of a current year 83(b) election, the program incorrectly calculates the cost basis which is shown in the row titled, "Average per share cost basis before sale." Elections made in prior tax years are not impacted!

Work-around: See Above.

Incorrect cell formula (31 December 2004):
Column "R" in the Tax Calculations section of all Case sheets: The formula in Column R in the row titled "Dividend income, including stock option activity" and all related subsequest rows will be incorrect if a NQSO or RSP is added, then subsequently deleted. (Additions or deletions of ISOs do not trigger the problem.) The first term in the formula should reference "Assumptions!Q60". However, under the circumstances described above, the first term in the formula becomes "Assumptions!R60", resulting in an incorrect input for the formula.

Work-around: Upgrade to StockOpter® 3.2 (or newer).

Incorrect cell formulas (7 July 2004): Fixed in Version 3.2
Incorrect cell formulas, and thus results, will occur if each of the following conditions is true:
- Multiple issuing companies have been defined within the workbook
- Multiple Case sheets have been created
- Grants have been added after the additional Case sheets have been defined
- The added grants referred to an issuing company other than the first company defined in the workbook.

In this situation, and only for Case sheets beyond the BaseCase sheet, the cell formulas for the grants added after the additional Case sheets were added refer to the price and dividend rows of the first issuing company, not the company to which the grant actually refers. The BaseCase sheet is not affected by this; the formulas on the BaseCase sheet are always correct.

Work-around: Upgrade to StockOpter® 3.2 (or newer).

StockOpter Pro® 3.1:

Deletion of Case sheets affecting graphs and charts (7 July 2004): Fixed in Version 3.2
If you have multiple Case sheets defined, and you delete a Case sheet other than than last (right-most) Case sheet in the workbook, the Case sheets to the right of the deleted Case sheet will visually disappear from the Charts and Tables in the workbook.

Work-around: Upgrade to StockOpter® 3.2 (or newer).

StockOpter^® Pro 3.0 or StockOpter® Entry 3.0:

Model years beyond 2017: Fixed in Version 3.1
The Regular Federal Tax calculation incorrectly uses a capital gains tax rate of 0%. This may result in the understatement of tax for any model year beyond 2017 and the terminal value calculation column. This in turn, may result in inaccurate values for the TPV, TPVTerminal and TPV15 charts as well as the CaseSummary sheet, AllCases sheet and SingleCase sheets.

Data Migration: Fixed in Version 3.1
Users may get an error when you migrate from workbooks with a gap in the Case sheet numbers (e.g. when the source workbook has case sheets in the sequence "BaseCase, Case2, Case4").