Trace Solutions Limited

TRAMPS / BlueBox property management system

Property management system and service charge management system. The system will manage income and aged debt on properties and also outgoings on freehold or leasehold properties. The system will integrate with existing systems.

Features

  • Web access and interface
  • Remote access
  • Real time reporting
  • Integration with accounting, document management systems etc
  • Integration with MS Office products
  • Fully integrated accounting
  • Fully integrated reporting
  • Easily defined screens and processes

Benefits

  • Management of income on properties
  • Automated aged debt management
  • Service charge budgeting and issuing of letters to tenants
  • Full service charge management and end of year reconciliation
  • Management of headleases and freeholds
  • Extensive automation and labour saving processes
  • Large number of standard reports and easy report writer
  • Management of void properties
  • Management and warnings of critical lease dates
  • Management and KPI reporting

Pricing

£245 to £3,300 a user a month

  • Free trial available

Service documents

Request an accessible format
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at neil.stewart@tracesolutions.co.uk. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 13

Service ID

1 1 2 9 2 1 6 7 7 2 0 7 3 7 0

Contact

Trace Solutions Limited Neil Stewart
Telephone: 020 7825 1131
Email: neil.stewart@tracesolutions.co.uk

Service scope

Software add-on or extension
No
Cloud deployment model
Community cloud
Service constraints
No, maintenance is performed out of hours and users are given notice counting down to any planned downtime.
System requirements
  • Up to date browser software is required.
  • Citrix Workspace (which is supplied)

User support

Email or online ticketing support
Email or online ticketing
Support response times
This depends on the fault severity. The highest severity will receive a response within half an hour. The helpdesk is also accessible by telephone for immediate contact. There is no application support at weekends.
User can manage status and priority of support tickets
Yes
Online ticketing support accessibility
None or don’t know
Phone support
Yes
Phone support availability
9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
Web chat support
No
Onsite support
Onsite support
Support levels
Support is supplied at no extra cost as it is included in the standard monthly price and we offer a high level of standard support with no option for greater support levels. Out of hours support can be offered on request and costs will be provided according to requirements. Most support is provided by the helpdesk but will be escalated to specialists as required.
Support available to third parties
Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

Getting started
We provide on site training. Remote training and training delivered at our London offices are also available. Documentation is available electronically and searchable help is available on our web site.
Service documentation
Yes
Documentation formats
  • HTML
  • PDF
End-of-contract data extraction
It is available either as an end user function - users can download their data, typically into Excel, or we will help with data migration.
End-of-contract process
There would not normally be any additional costs at the end of the contract. If we assist with data extraction, which is not typically necessary and certainly not mandatory, we would charge at our normal daily rate. Data can normally be extracted by yourselves. Where the system is used as a cloud service, log-ins will stop working at a date agreed between the parties. Where the system is on your own servers we will request that you stop using the system and delete the software. We will confirm in writing that your data has been permanently deleted at the end of the contract.

Using the service

Web browser interface
Yes
Supported browsers
  • Internet Explorer 11
  • Microsoft Edge
  • Firefox
  • Chrome
  • Safari
  • Opera
Application to install
No
Designed for use on mobile devices
Yes
Differences between the mobile and desktop service
Currently some modules are available on mobile devices and this functionality is becoming broader. The core system is available via Citrix which includes the full accounting and report writing, the full web interface allows virtually all other functionality.
Service interface
No
User support accessibility
None or don’t know
API
Yes
What users can and can't do using the API
The system has APIs that are not truly open but can be used to enable the exporting and importing of data to third party systems, typically accounting, document management, facilities management and GIS systems. Using the APIs will require some programming work to enable interfacing and we provide API and data dictionary information to enable this. However the system also makes use of highly developed standard and configurable flat file interfaces that allow easy to set up interfacing both to and from BlueBox.
API documentation
Yes
API documentation formats
PDF
API sandbox or test environment
Yes
Customisation available
Yes
Description of customisation
An administrator can customise the user interface, the navigation, lease and other codes and chart of accounts. This can be done via a variety of methods that are designed to be end user and do not require the customer to seek services from Trace.

Scaling

Independence of resources
Each customer is provided with their own software instance and we monitor demand and load on each server. Servers are increased as necessary so that there are always application server resources to provide both resilience and good performance for all customers. This is carefully monitored, reviewed and reported to our senior management team on a bi-weekly basis. Our outsourced data centre has more than sufficient bandwidth available to meet the needs of both our current and future clients.

Analytics

Service usage metrics
Yes
Metrics types
Some usage metrics are available on request
Reporting types
Reports on request

Resellers

Supplier type
Not a reseller

Staff security

Staff security clearance
Other security clearance
Government security clearance
Up to Security Clearance (SC)

Asset protection

Knowledge of data storage and processing locations
Yes
Data storage and processing locations
United Kingdom
User control over data storage and processing locations
No
Datacentre security standards
Supplier-defined controls
Penetration testing frequency
At least every 6 months
Penetration testing approach
‘IT Health Check’ performed by a Tigerscheme qualified provider or a CREST-approved service provider
Protecting data at rest
Other
Other data at rest protection approach
We encrypt backups and passwords at rest, not all data. Greater encryption at rest due during 2022.
Data sanitisation process
Yes
Data sanitisation type
Deleted data can’t be directly accessed
Equipment disposal approach
In-house destruction process

Data importing and exporting

Data export approach
Data tables can be exported or it is an easy end user function for users to write their own reports or run existing reports that can export data as an XLS or CSV. Various screens allow direct export.

You can also use third party report writers or exports can be to any modern platform via standard or bespoke interfaces.
Data export formats
  • CSV
  • Other
Other data export formats
XML
Data import formats
CSV

Data-in-transit protection

Data protection between buyer and supplier networks
TLS (version 1.2 or above)
Data protection within supplier network
TLS (version 1.2 or above)

Availability and resilience

Guaranteed availability
99% during English business hours. As standard we do not offer refunds for issues that cause availability to be less than 99%
Approach to resilience
The data centre chosen by Trace Solutions is ISO 27001 compliant. Trace Solutions employ an N+1 design philosophy with regard to redundancy for the hardware that we use and for security reasons the design of this will only be disclosed subject to signing of a non-disclosure agreement.
Outage reporting
There is not a public dashboard but banner messages are displayed on the portal login screen as appropriate.

E-mail alerts are also issued.

Identity and authentication

User authentication needed
Yes
User authentication
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Username or password
Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels
Process of delegated authority starting with top level client assigned power user who then has full control over delegated staff authority.
Access restriction testing frequency
At least every 6 months
Management access authentication
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Username or password

Audit information for users

Access to user activity audit information
Users have access to real-time audit information
How long user audit data is stored for
User-defined
Access to supplier activity audit information
No audit information available
How long system logs are stored for
Between 1 month and 6 months

Standards and certifications

ISO/IEC 27001 certification
No
ISO 28000:2007 certification
No
CSA STAR certification
No
PCI certification
No
Cyber essentials
Yes
Cyber essentials plus
No
Other security certifications
No

Security governance

Named board-level person responsible for service security
Yes
Security governance certified
No
Security governance approach
Security is managed using internally developed standards. The data centre is a highly secure third party data centre.
Information security policies and processes
Trace Solutions has policies and procedures for both our operational in-house responsibilities and for our hosted applications that relate to the data centre. Many of these contain security sensitive information and hence are not available for distribution outside of the company. Certain policies and procedures may be made available subject to a non-disclosure agreement being signed.

Operational security

Configuration and change management standard
Supplier-defined controls
Configuration and change management approach
Trace continually monitor the system components using Zabbix and Nagios. An automated reminder system is used to monitor and prompt to replace hardware and software when approaching the end on warranty.

Security is checked by using both an annual pen test, a continuous monthly process of application security tests using Appcheck-NG and by following vendors best practice advice.
Vulnerability management type
Undisclosed
Vulnerability management approach
We employ and monitor IDS and Cisco ASA we also monitor our gateway portal for unusual activity.

Vendor recommended patches are deployed during the monthly maintenance window. Emergency packages can be deployed sooner.

Potential threats are as advised by hardware and software vendors we also use Talos and Kaspersky threat research
Protective monitoring type
Supplier-defined controls
Protective monitoring approach
All internet traffic connects via a restricted gateway which in the first instance is monitored by a Cisco security appliance. We record all source addresses and detect unusual login activities. Multiple unauthorised attempts at access result in the the source addresses being blacklisted automatically. Only authorised access to our portal is permitted, no anonymous access is allowed.

Response to threats is a mixture of automatic and manual process depending on severity. Security restraints cannot be described in public documents.

Speed of response depends on nature of threat.
Incident management type
Undisclosed
Incident management approach
We have a predefined procedure linked to a management approved policy that cannot be disclosed in public documentation.

Secure development

Approach to secure software development best practice
Supplier-defined process

Public sector networks

Connection to public sector networks
No

Social Value

Tackling economic inequality

Tackling economic inequality

Trace Solutions has always been a company with a social conscience and our CEO Richard Wolfe has always been heavily involved with charitable causes. Today the Trace Group, of which Trace Solutions is a part, is immune to the equity-financed takeovers that have plagued the industry in recent years, because it has been owned by its employees since 2007. Mr Wolfe used his own money to purchase the company in a contested buyout, and handed 95% of shares to his staff. With the remaining 5% he established the Trace Charitable Trust, which continues to support homeless and other charities through direct grants and is funded by Group profits. In addition, profits the Group retains are invested in Home REIT, a real estate investment trust designed specifically to support the homeless. Trace Solutions itself is a supporter of LandAid, the homeless charity, as are many of its private sector clients. In March 2022 Trace Solutions raised over £7,000 by participating in the LandAid SleepOut.
In 2021 Trace donated £10,000 to the Thirteen Group Housing Association, approximately 1% of the contract value.
For housing associations Trace Solutions’ software is designed specifically to provide scalable and future-proofed new methods to modernise the delivery of the service charge function in Hosting Associations and increase the productivity of Association staff. In this we deliver Model Award Criteria 3.3 of the Social Value Model 2021 directly.
Alongside this, the software ensures greater accuracy in service charging and rent setting. By reducing loss, it thus provides tenants with better value for money. It also integrates with printing services to communicate directly with tenants and better explain why charges and rents are as they are.
Equal opportunity

Equal opportunity

Trace has a strong equal opportunity approach that is detailed in our staff manual but is not specifically part of our social value plans
Wellbeing

Wellbeing

Trace takes staff wellbeing seriously and implemented some staff wellbeing plans during the pandemic that have continued since. These are not specifically part of our social value plans that are more focussed on economic inequalities and homelessness

Pricing

Price
£245 to £3,300 a user a month
Discount for educational organisations
No
Free trial available
Yes
Description of free trial
For trials, initial training, support during trial. Trials are typically 14 days but pre-contract proof of concept periods are available.

Service documents

Request an accessible format
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at neil.stewart@tracesolutions.co.uk. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.