ACT! by Sage for Financial Professionals 9.0 Accelerates Sales Growth While Aiding Client Retention and Compliance Tracking

New ACT! Industry Solution Enables Comprehensive Contact Management and Activity Tracking Tools for Financial Advisors, Brokerage Firms and Financial Services Teams


SCOTTSDALE, AZ--(Marketwire - June 6, 2007) - Sage Software today announced ACT! by Sage for Financial Professionals 9.0, a comprehensive contact and customer management solution that provides data management, activity tracking, reporting and sales productivity tools for financial advisors, brokerage firms and teams of financial services professionals. ACT! for Financial Professionals centralizes prospect and client data in a single, secure database and helps individual advisors and teams capture and access key contact, account, investment and financial planning information, and assists with regulatory compliance tracking. Users can synchronize contact, calendar and to-do information with their Palm OS® or Pocket PC devices. Purchase of ACT! for Financial Professionals also includes one year of ACT! Business Care(1) maintenance and support.

"Financial advisors require tools that help them work more efficiently, so they can prioritize time for converting prospects to clients, up-selling existing clients, and keeping their business in step with industry standards," explained David van Toor, ACT! senior vice president and general manager. "ACT! for Financial Professionals provides these tools, along with the mobile capabilities many advisors are seeking to help manage their book of business wherever they are."

ACT! for Financial Professionals is the second ACT! industry solution. Sage Software introduced ACT! by Sage Premium for Real Estate 9.0 in May 2006.

A Tailor-Made ACT! Solution For Financial Services Professionals

Two versions of ACT! for Financial Professionals are available to help users capture and organize financial data for prospects and clients in logical fashion with the aid of custom information tabs, including tabs for accounts, households, family members, and retirement and estate planning, among others. Users can customize tabs, fields, templates and reports to meet their specific business requirements.(2)

ACT! for Financial Professionals is ideal for individuals or up to ten networked users,(3) and ACT! Premium for Financial Professionals 9.0, which is designed for larger workgroups,(4) includes advanced security features at the user and contact levels, automatic database synchronization and backup, and centralized administration.

Additional features specific to both versions of ACT! for Financial Professionals include:

Dynamic Labels -- Track information that is most important to a user and/or clients, and label it accordingly.

Missing Info Notification -- Track and update missing information for each contact with a quick view of fields that require more data. Completed fields are automatically updated on the contact record upon exiting missing info screen.

Important Notes Field -- Save critical client information on the main contact detail view.

Primary Address -- Promote an address to primary status on the main contact detail view, so all communications can be directed to the current and correct address.

Age Calculation -- Identify the age of a contact quickly. Wherever a birthday field is displayed, the age automatically calculates any time the contact record is accessed.

Category and Tier Fields -- Segment clients and prospects to understand the level of attention they are used to receiving and the type financial advice advisors offer.

Audit (Compliance) System -- Track any and all field changes, by user, to each contact record. The audit system monitors field changes that occur in the database and records them in a separate database file.(5)

Pricing & Availability

ACT! for Financial Professionals is available for $519.99 MSRP and $349.95 MSRP for customers upgrading from ACT! + Fact for Financial Professionals. ACT! Premium for Financial Professionals is available for $739.99 MSRP and $469.95 MSRP for customers upgrading from ACT! + Fact for Financial Professionals.

Customers who purchase ACT! for Financial Professionals also receive ACT! Business Care, a maintenance and support plan that includes one year of product upgrades(6) and updates, access to senior product support specialists,(7) and a dedicated toll-free number with priority queuing and four business-hour call-back time.

ACT! For Financial Professionals is available by contacting the ACT! Corporate Sales team at (877) 851-7572 or corporatelicensing.act@sage.com, or by contacting an ACT! Certified Consultant. For more product details visit www.act.com/affp.

About ACT!

The introduction of ACT! in 1987 established the "Contact Management" software category. For more than 20 years, ACT! has been the number-one selling contact and customer management solution and preferred choice of over 2.7 million registered users and more than 38,000 additional corporate customers to organize, access and manage their critical customer information. ACT! delivers powerful contact and customer management capabilities with flexible deployment and customization options to help individuals, selling professionals and corporate workgroups improve productivity and increase sales.

ACT! by Sage is part of Sage CRM Solutions, the only family of CRM products designed specifically for the needs of small and mid-sized businesses that also includes SageCRM, SageCRM.com and Sage SalesLogix. For more details, visit www.sagecrmsolutions.com or call (888) 855-5222.

About Sage Software

Sage Software supports the needs, challenges, and dreams of more than 2.8 million small and mid-sized business customers in North America through easy-to-use, scalable and customizable software and services. Our products support accounting, operations, customer relationship management, human resources, time tracking, merchant services and the specialized needs of the construction, distribution, healthcare, manufacturing, nonprofit and real estate industries. Sage Software is a subsidiary of The Sage Group plc, a leading international supplier of accounting and business management software solutions and related products and services for small and mid-sized businesses. Formed in 1981, Sage was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1989 and the Group now has 5.4 million customers and employs over 13,000 people worldwide. For more information, please visit the Web site at www.sagesoftware.com/moreinfo or call (866) 308-2378.

© 2007 Sage Software SB, Inc. All rights reserved. The Sage Software logo and ACT! are registered trademarks or trademarks of Sage Software SB, Inc., or its affiliated entities. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

(1) Your ACT! Business Care (which includes product upgrades, product updates, and customer support) will be renewed automatically each year on the anniversary date of the shipment of your product unless you terminate your agreement prior to that date. Renewal is not required for continued access to product updates.

(2) All customization within design layout is allowed with the exception of removing or adding ACT! for Financial Professionals custom controls (these include age text box, household text box and custom button).

(3) You must purchase one license of ACT! per user.

(4) In a shared environment, ACT! by Sage for Financial Professionals is designed to work with up to 10 users. If you intend to use workgroup functionality or share a database with more than 10 users, you must purchase ACT! by Sage Premium for Financial Professionals. Published minimum system requirements are based on single user environments. Actual scalability and number of users supported will vary based on hardware and size and usage of your database. Sage Software scalability recommendations are based on in-house performance tests using the recommended server system requirements found at: www.act.com/2007systreq. You must purchase one license of ACT! per user.

(5) Requires Microsoft® Access™ or Excel™ to view the Audit System database file. The Audit System does not capture any changes to the database made on a remote synching database or from a handheld device. Some fields are tracked automaticallym -- tracked field can be changed and added.

(6) Product upgrades include an upgrade to ACT! by Sage for Financial Professionals or ACT! by Sage Premium for Financial Professionals for one year from the date of purchase, not the next version of ACT! by Sage or ACT! by Sage Premium for Workgroups (EX Edition). Access to support is available for one year from the date of purchase. See http://www.act.com/affp for more information.

(7) Specialists reserve the right to limit calls to one hour or one incident. Support Specialists are available 8:30 am to 8:30 pm ET, Monday through Friday. Support is not available for users who do not meet the minimum system requirements.

Contact Information: Contact: Ryan Zuk Sage Software 480-368-3818 ryan.zuk@sage.com Dawn Miller Porter Novelli 404-995-4508 dawn.miller@porternovelli.com