Version 8.9 has arrived.

You can download this update by going to the help menu inside RentMaster and choose Download RentMaster Update.  If you have any problems downloading the update automatically, you can also download it manually from www.RentMaster.co.nz/Update.aspx

Main Highlights

People have been asking for rent review dates for quite a while. It could be done before with notes, but now it is much easier with automatic rent review dates and review reminders. You set the next review date on the tenant details screen. On the options screen you can specify automatic rent reviews every X number of days. The Events screen automatically shows tenants whose rent review is due within the next 30 days. From there you can choose to defer the review, choose to leave the rent as it is this year, or create a new rent change.

The other feature people have been asking for is property inspection pictures online on the www.RentRecall.com web site so the property owners can see the state of their properties. This is now available.

What else is new?

• A new Rent Review Dates report has been created.
• The TXT/SMS screen now displays tenants/owners etc in alphabetical order.
• The phone book screen has been made larger to fit visible entries at a time.
• The phone book edit button also now goes directly to the tenant, owner or contractors screen for quick modification.
• The associations screen now has hyperlink fields for quick editing of associated items.
• The mail merge letter generation facility now has the option to include or exclude closed owners.
• Automatic statement import rules are now visible on the rules screen for edit or deletion.
• The owner management fee can be entered as 4dp.
• Marketing handout report was printing the wrong logo.
• Mail merge was deleting line breaks when converting to email.

When bank statements are imported, you can create rules which makes transaction import easier.  For example if the transaction contains the name 'Smith' then you can specify that the transaction is a rent income transaction from the tenant 'Mr Smith' from PropertyX.  This is a real time saver when similar transactions occur regularly, such as automatic rent payments into your bank account.

As well as being able to create your own rules, the system has automatically been creating rules behind the scenes based on successfully entered rent transactions.  These rules have remained hidden until now.  In version 8.9 you can see those rules as well as the ones you have created for yourself.  The system will continue to create these automatic rules, but you can now modify or delete them if required.

When a property manager takes photos of a property during an inspection, naturally you would want the property owner to be able to see these pictures.

This has now been made easier in version 8.9 with the ability for pictures to be loaded up to the www.RentRecall.com web site.

To see a sample of this new feature, go to https://Landlord.rentrecall.com and log in with the demo login with a company name of Demo, a user name of Demo, and a password of Demo.  Then go to the Inspection Pictures menu at the top.

If you dont take any photos, or have not loaded any photos up to your web site, your login will not show this menu option.  It will only appear after the first photos has been uploaded. 

You will need to get a new copy of the upload program which will be released at the same time as version 8.9 itself.  You also need to select which pictures you want to load onto the web site.  You might have taken 20 photos, but think the landlord only needs to see 10 of them, so you get the option of selecting which ones to include.

The amount of disk space on the web site available for your photos will be limited initially to 100MB per property manager.  Each picture is automatically resized to a maximum of 800x600 pixels when it is uploaded, which creates a file size of about 0.15MB each.  This means you can load about 650 photos before you run out of your disk space allocation.  This disk space allocation will be reviewed over time and may change depending on usage patterns.