Once I sign up for an account, where do I start?
The My DVC system on this web site does not connect or sync with your actual DVC Member Account at all. Any vacations you enter in here do not reserve them in your DVC account and vise versa. You must manually enter all data for vacations, contracts, transactions, etc. within this web site's My DVC area and it's related sections.
Enter your contracts under the "My Contracts" page by selecting "Add New". This will bring you to the contract set up page. On this page, you can choose a name for each contract to differentiate them from one another. (You may have more than one contract at the same resort.) Then choose the Resort, Use Year, number of Points each year that you receive, the Start Year of your contract (this would be when you purchased the contract), and the Purchase Price Per Point. You may also choose to type in a End Date for the contract (when you plan to sell or the lease end date). You don't have to put in an End Date, it will automatically put in the resort Expire Year when left empty. Finally, it is often the case with resale contracts that the year you purchase isn't fully loaded, so you can enter a different total of points for the current use year in the Starting Points On Contract field.
Once you have entered all your contracts information, you will be able to view a list of contracts in your account. Note that it provides information on points available in your current use year as well as the next two use years. If you do not have all the information to fill in at once - you may edit this information in the future.
OK - my contracts are all in, what do I do next?
We would recommend next setting you reminder settings. Currently all of our reminders are sent to your email. You can set reminders for 11 months (home resort window), 7 months (non-home resort window), 180 days (ADRs), 90 days (some specific reservations, 60 days (FP+ booking), 31 days (cancelation before going to holding), and 10 days before a vacation. Not only this, but you can set reminders to be sent to you before you reaching your banking window date! This is a service not provided by the Disney Website.
The settings also asks for your name and phone number. At current the system does not set text alerts - but we are looking to potentially add them. You can leave the phone number information blank if you wish. The final part is what times you prefer to get your e-mail or text alerts to ensure you do not get alerts while you sleep.
OK, my settings are all set up - what comes next?
Now you need to record your transactions. There are two options here. One is for vacations, and the second is any other transactions such as banking, borrowing, transfers, purchase points etc. The "My Vacations" tab is where you can enter vacation information.
My Vacations Settings and Information
Choose and resort, room type, and dates, and the software will tell you how many points your vacation will take. You can also put in an override for the number of points, but this should not be necessary as all vacation charts are internally generated. You can then optionally record your party size and the type of tickets you would purchase. This is used elsewhere when comparing the cost of an AP to what indivudal tickets would cost, but can also be left blank
Once you choose "SAVE" on the above screen, several other pieces of information will appear. The first and most important is a box which allows you to choose what account or accounts you are drawing your points from for this trip.
You can select taking points from more than one contract as necessary. Note that you can put any amount of points here - but if you are banking or borrowing points, you will need to include that under the "transactions" option to balance the points properly in your account.
In addition to where the points come from - below this you have a list of important dates for your vacation, as well as a number of dollar values indicating the cost of your vacation based on various factors. Dates in the past will be crossed out.
Provided are the cost of getting points for rent at $18 apoint, Rental income at $15.50 per point, and rack rate cost for this same trip based on Disney's current pricing structure. In addition, once you have recording the contracts where the points came from - you will also see YOUR cost of the trip based on what you paid for the points. These values can be accessed from the "My Vacations" Tab anytime by selecting a vacation and editing.
My Transactions Settings and Information
The other area of the website where you may need to input information is under "My Transactions". Anything that does not require booking a vacation occurs here. Banking, Borrowing, Renting out points, one time use points purchase, transfers, and even recording of uses for non-DVC (Ex: ABD, DCL, etc) or RCI vacations. All that needs to be done here is to record the transaction and select the right category. You just need to know how many points will be needed.
One you fill in your transactions - you can see all transactions, including vacations, under the single page with My Transactions. (See example below.)
The great thing about our software is that it allows you to simulate your plans before you need to book them. This way - you can determine the best use of your points without first having to go through the actual booking process.
What other benefits do your tools have?
Tracking Overview allows you to look at each of your contracts individually and tell what points were used when, and how many points are left in each use year.
My Passes can be used to track any APs you purchase, and compare pricing versus the individual tickets you indicate in your vacations.
Points calculator works similar to the RAT in that you can look at a trip and see how much it will cost, and then compare it to other resorts. However, we provide the additional information of telling you how many points more or less a change would be than your original plans.
Calendar Events for Alerts (Bank Points, Important Reservation Dates & Moonlight Magic) and all your Vacations via CalDAV access. All alerts and vacations are synchronized from our site to the iOS/Andriod/PC device(s) that has the CalDAV connection setup. The calendar can also be acessed from mulitple devices. iOS devices can share the calendar to other users as well just by entering in the e-mail address(es) they want to share it with, within the iOS calendar app.
