TimeValue Software™ TCalc™ Online Financial Calcula tors

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Setting TCalc Online Financial Calculator Defaults & Customizing the Calculator List page

SUMMARY: Your TimeValue Software ™ TCalc™ online financial calculators are provided with pre defined defaults. You may optionally override the built in defaults with your own values. In addition, you may want to create a calculator list page that has your own design instead of our generic list page. This document describes the steps necessary to accomplish these tasks. Each parameter of every TCalc calculator is outlined here for your reference.

Contents:

PREDEFINED DEFAULTS .......................................................................................................................... 3

WHAT IS A QUERY STRING ...................................................................................................................... 3

SETTING DEFAULTS AND CREATING A CUSTOM CALCULATOR L IST PAGE ......................... 3

A SAMPLE CALCULATOR LIST PAGE: ................................................................................................. 4

EXAMPLE OUTPUT FOR CALCULATORLIST.HTML: ........................................................................................ 4

CREATING YOUR OWN CALCULATORLIST.HTML PAGE ................................................................ 5

HF01 REFINANCE CALCULATOR EXAMPLE ....................................................................................... 6

DEFAULT SETTING SHORTCUT ..................................................................................................................... 6

TimeValue Software™ TCalc™ Online Financial Calcula tors

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Predefined Defaults Your TCalc financial calculators are provided complete with predefined defaults. Occasionally, you may wish to over-ride these defaults. This task is easily accomplished, but requires a basic understanding of how our calculators interact with a browser “query string”.

What Is A Query String The query string is the portion of a dynamic URL that contains the input parameters when a dynamic web page is visited. When values are entered into one of your TCalc calculators, the Internet browser (such as Internet Explorer or Netscape) automatically creates a dynamic URL. This dynamic URL includes a query string based on the results. Query strings typically contain “?” and “%” characters. The following URL is an example of a dynamic URL with a query string. The portion of the URL in bold is the query string: http://www.tcalc.com/calculators.html?CALCULATORID=HF01&TEMPLATE_ID=www.tcalc.com_1 &NEWRATE=5.00 Notice that the query string is composed of “name=value” pairs separated by ampersands. The query string above instructs the calculators installed at http://www.tcalc.com/calculators.html to:

1. Show the calculator HF01 (CALCULATORID=HF01). 2. Use the registration of www.tcalc.com_1 (TEMPLATE ID=www.tcalc.com). 3. Override the NEWRATE input parameter to be 5 (NEWRATE=5)

The first two parameters are required for every TCalc calculator. The third optional parameter in this example overrides the default value of NEWRATE in the HF01 calculator only.

Setting Defaults and Creating a Custom Calculator L ist Page All TCalc calculator defaults can be manipulated using the query string. To set the defaults, you will need to create a separate calculator list page (calculatorlist.html). This new list page is not the same page you created when installing the calculators on your site (calculators.html by default). You will need both pages. The list page serves as your entry point into the calculators page. It tells the calculators page what to display. The calculators page does not really contain anything except a little piece of script that is waiting to be told what to display. The query string passed to it tells it what to display. Default values are stored in the query strings for each of your calculator links on the calcualtorList.html page. All the calculator links point to the original page where the calculators were installed (calculators.html), and may contain default input parameters specified in the query string. This document describes the input parameters that can be manipulated for each calculator. When working with the calculator defaults, you will find that each calculator is independent of the others.

TimeValue Software™ TCalc™ Online Financial Calcula tors

TimeValue.com

Each calculator may have different parameters associated with it. See the tables that follow for a list of each calculator and its associated parameters.

A Sample TCalc Calculator List Page: The following is an example of a CalculatorList.html page where the heading was changed to “Home” and only two calculators HF01 and HF02 are displayed. We also changed the default “points” value in the calculator to 2% by setting parameter “POINTS” to “2”. Note: you can make your calculator list page look however you would like, just make sure the links are setup correctly for each calculator. <HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Calculator List</TITLE> <META name=”filename” value=”CalculatorList.html” /> </HEAD> <BODY> <H3>Home</H3> <UL> <LI> <A href="http://www.tcalc.com/calculators.html?CALCULATORID=HF01&TEMPLATE_ID=www.tcalc.com_1&POINTS=2"> Refinance Calculator</A> </LI> <LI> <A href="http://www.tcalc.com/calculators.html?CALCULATORID=HF02&TEMPLATE_ID=www.tcalc.com_1"> Fixed Rate Loan Payments</A> </LI> </UL> </BODY> </HTML>

Example Output for CalculatorList.html:

TimeValue Software™ TCalc™ Online Financial Calcula tors

TimeValue.com

Creating Your Own CalculatorList.html Page When you create your own calculatorList page you may want to start with the links on the generic list page that the calculators.html page produces. Then modify these links with the defaults you want. Simply click on one of the TCalc calculator links and your browser will display that calculator, and in the “address” field it will display the proper link to that calculator. Copy this “address” as the link for that calculator on your new calculatorList page.

TimeValue Software™ TCalc™ Online Financial Calcula tors

TimeValue.com

HF01 Refinance Calculator Example Please Note: The parameter names are case sensitive. Some parameters have limited possible values. Please check your query strings prior to posting derived links on your web site. To check a query string, simply type the complete query string (including the URL to your calcualtors.html page) into your browsers “address” field. Existing Loan Field Description Parameter Name Original amount of your loan: ORIGINALLOANAMOUNT Number of payments made on your loan: PAYMENTSMADE Original loan term: ORIGINALTERM Months/Years Toggle: ORIGINALTERM_UNITS Current interest rate: CURRENTRATE Compounding period: CURRENTCOMPOUNDING New Loan Field Description Parameter Name Amount you wish to cash out upon refinance: CASHOUT New interest rate: NEWRATE Points: POINTS Fees and closing costs: OTHERFEES New loan term: NEWTERM Months/Years Toggle: NEWTERM_UNITS New compounding period: NEWCOMPOUNDING Other Information Field Description Parameter Name Your income tax rate: TAXRATE Your investment rate of return: RATEOFRETURN How long will you keep this property: BALLOONTERM Months/Years Toggle: BALLOONTERM_UNITS

Default Setting Shortcut You can quickly set defaults without knowing much about the query string structure. Just visit a calculator, enter the values that you’d like to see as default. Next, click compute. You will see that the address of the resulting page has all the defaults pre-populated. This is the address to be used in your custom calculatorList page (see page 4 of this documentation). Simply copy this address and paste it into the HREF attribute of your custom link. These links can be pasted throughout your site making the calculators very accessible from anywhere in your website. Some developers even drive default rates off of database driven values. Others integrate housing financial details into their MLS listings (real estate). The calculators are built to integrate.