Should we use FairSplit?
Deciding to use FairSplit? This section talks about our process and capabilities, so you will know what to expect.
Why use FairSplit?
Rather than physically go to a house and divide assets, a family can avoid a long trip by doing the division process remotely through the Internet, with much less friction and disagreement.
FairSplit has expertise in dividing things, not families.
If you have assets to divide and don't even know where to start you can reach out and request advice from the FairSplit team – even if you are not subscribed to the software solution.
What is FairSplit?
FairSplit is a collaborative web application for listing, valuating, and dividing assets. It can be used for any kinds of objects that can be listed and divided among people.
When we say inventory, we mean a list of assets in the FairSplit web app. This includes the features of listing, valuating, and inviting people to look at the work done.
When we say division, we mean all the above, plus features to fairly divide the assets among divisees (beneficiaries). It's possible to start with an inventory and later upgrade it to a division.
In what situations is FairSplit useful?
- Estate: dividing an inheritance
- Estate Planning: making arrangements in preparation for future incapacity or death
- Downsizing: moving to a smaller house after retirement
- Divorce
- Insurance: take photos of your possessions so after a loss you know what to claim.
The above are the main use cases, but there are many others. You can even divide immaterial things – for instance, tasks to be done.
How is FairSplit different from other solutions out there for listing and valuating assets?
1. Cutting edge technology
FairSplit is the first inventory solution ever to offer:
- its own patented division methods and
- automated listing from photos by artificial intelligence.
The division methods help conduct the process in a just manner. Divisees then feel they had a fair shot to receive the items they wanted and usually people feel comfortable about the results.
If you don't wish to use our division methods, you can still use FairSplit to list an inventory.
You can simply take photos, upload them to FairSplit, and have the AI create assets from the photos, saving hours of work. At the end you should review the AI-created assets, correcting any mistakes.
When the assets are created, you must decide how to valuate them. You may type the values yourself -- or ask another person to do it -- but if you are not sure how much each thing is worth, our software can help. You can either see for how much similar products were recently sold on ebay or have the AI tool suggest values.
2. Data security
FairSplit takes the security of you information very seriously.
No one can see your estate or asset data, except the people who have been added to the inventory or division. No data within it is public.
Learn more about the security measures adopted by FairSplit to protect you and your data.
3. The best customer service
FairSplit understands how sensitive its use cases are – what people are going through – and therefore treats users in a warm and understanding way. You can contact our team and receive guidance about your division even if you are not a client yet.
What is the difference between an inventory and a division?
An inventory is a list of items. You can add photos to it and valuate the assets on the inventory.
You can stop at the inventory, or go ahead and make it into a division.
A division is when you use Fairsplit division rounds to divide inventoried assets among the beneficiaries. We call them divisees.
Can I upgrade a division that already has an active plan?
What to expect in division rounds?
After following all the steps to set up an inventory on FairSplit, you can start the division rounds. A normal division is composed of three rounds. In special cases more rounds can be added.
1. What to expect from the AR round?
The Asset Review round is recommended as the first one. It does not assign assets to people. It only asks them what assets they are interested in – without showing this information to the others.
When this first round is finished, FairSplit generates a list of assets nobody is interested in and shares it with the family; work can start early on selling or donating these, saving time and storage costs.
The Asset Review round also allows people to detect any problems with the way assets have been listed, before the actual division starts.
2. What to expect from the EV round?
The Emotional Value round usually follows the AR round. Each beneficiary gets a number of credits (for instance, 500) to distribute on a few assets which they care about most (the maximum number of assets is usually 7).
When this round is done, each person usually has what's dearest to them, and if not, at least they understand the division was done through a fair, neutral process, and they feel they had a fair shot.
3. What to expect from the SO round?
The Selection Order round is the final one. It is based on ordering a list of assets by preference.
Divisees must put the most wanted item on the top of their list, the second most wanted on the second position, and so on.
Then a distribution program assigns assets to divisees in turns, according to their lists of preferences. The program only takes a second to complete the division, but the result of this process is the same as if people had taken turns choosing one asset each turn.
Can I import an inventory done on another app?
Yes, if you already have an inventory taken through another app, you can adapt the data and import the asset information into FairSplit.
Most apps will have an Export Inventory function. Export to a spreadsheet format such as Excel or CSV.
Then, in a FairSplit inventory:
- From the division menu, choose "Properties and assets".
- Click on "Import spreadsheet".
- Read the instructions on the screen about how your spreadsheet should be organized.
- Using a spreadsheet program such as LibreOffice or Excel, adapt your spreadsheet to the format expected by FairSplit.
- Go back to the FairSplit page and upload your spreadsheet to populate your inventory.
How do I print a report with photos?
- Log in and enter your inventory.
- Click Reports in the division menu.
- Choose any one of the reports and click on the corresponding "Web page" link. A new browser tab opens.
- Click "Show images" at the top and choose an image size. The photos will then appear. One photo will appear per asset -- not too large, in order not to waste paper.
- Now you can hit the "Print" button and the common Print dialog from your operating system will appear, from which you can print, or...
These days all operating systems have, in that dialog, a "Print to file" option, which basically allows you to convert anything you are "printing" to a PDF file that you can send to people via email. The specifics of how this works depend on your operating system (Windows, Mac OS X, Android etc.), not on FairSplit.
How to use FairSplit for insurance purposes?
The inventory can also be used for insurance. In this case, you may photograph the rooms of your home, upload the photos to the FairSplit web app and add names and descriptions to them.
The inventory can show the day when the photos and information were uploaded and modified, and by whom. So, in the future, you can have easy access to evidence of how each room looked like on a determined date.
What are the security measures adopted by FairSplit?
(Please note that some of the measures below only work against hackers in proportion to the strength of your password. Do not use a password that is a dictionary word, and include numbers or characters in addition to letters; this helps defend against a brute force attack.)
- No one can see your estate or asset data, except the people who have been added to the inventory or division. No data within it is public.
- The web application uses the https protocol which involves an encrypted connection, such that the hardware through which your information passes on the Internet cannot decode the content. This prevents man-in-the-middle hacking attacks.
- We do not require the address of any property being inventoried and encourage you not to mention it in the web application.
- We do not take credit card numbers on our site. Instead, payment is done through a bank level secure third party.
- We do not store your password -- only a hash of it. This means no one can recover your password from our database. If you forget your password, you must go through the password recovery procedure, which involves a message to your email address as a way to verify your identity.
- When logging in, if you get your credentials wrong, you need to wait before trying to log in again. The wait time is doubled each time authentication fails. This makes brute force attacks on passwords very difficult to carry out.
- We keep all the software in our Linux servers up-to-date in order to avoid old, known security vulnerabilities.
- We host our web application with Amazon and use its advanced network security features to ensure other Amazon clients cannot access our data. We make a daily backup of our database, so that in the unlikely event of a catastrophic bug or failure, we can recover the data to the latest backup. We expect that, in such an event, the largest amount of work you could lose is 24 hours.
- The cookies used by the web app are protected with the HostOnly, HttpOnly and Samesite properties as applicable.
- Our software is written in such a way as to protect against SQL injection attacks and cross-site request forgery attacks. Our team knows that discipline is a very important trait in a programmer and our software is written in a careful, orderly, informed and deliberate manner.
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