Monthly Archives: January 2010

RentMaster version 9.2 has been released

Posted on January 5, 2010

Version 9.2 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

The biggest change over the last few weeks is the all new landlord and tenant logins at www.RentRecall.com.  The landlord login now gives the landlord the ability to download their transactions in a CSV file format which can be opened in Excel.  It also has a new payment timeline graph, and is faster to navigate.  The new tenant login now has the same inspection results and photos the landlords have had for a while, with the addition of the new payment timeline graph.

What else is new?

  • After adding or editing transactions via the cashbook screen, the transaction list is no longer reloading, making it faster. Edited transactions are updated in place, and new transactions are added to the end of the list.
  • The Trial Balance report now includes owners with a zero or a positive balance, although they are listed separately from the owners who money is owed to.
  • The Events screen has been renamed the Overview screen, and has been added to the toolbar by default, although it can be removed.
  • Future generated rent periods are now excluded from the rent periods screen and balance due. This only applies is people have changed the date on their computer to a future date and back again.
  • The database compaction option has been disabled for people running Windows Vista in non-administrator mode.
  • The property count is included on the Help/About screen, even for people who have an unlimited property license.
  • The Quick Start utility has had a help file added.

 

Coming in v9.2 - Removed future rent periods

Posted on January 3, 2010

When RentMaster starts up, it automatically generates new rent periods if the date has advanced past the last rent period in the database.

If someone advances their computer date a long way into the future, and for some reason quite a few people actually do this, then when they start RentMaster, it will generate a whole load of new rent periods, which dramatically increases the total rent due for the tenant.  When they return their computers date back to its correct date again, the damage is already done, and the total balance due is still a large number.

What RentMaster will do now, is it will ignore all rent periods where the period start date is ahead of the current computers date.  The exception is when the tenant only has one rent period, which is the case when a new tenant is created with a start date in the future.  All tenants need at least one rent period.

Coming in v9.2 - Cashbook screen updates less often

Posted on January 1, 2010

This change is as a result of popular demand.

In version 9.1 and earlier, after a transaction is added or edited via the cashbook screen, the cashbook screen itself would reload all the transactions again.  The down side of this is it was a bit slower, and the cursor would always move down to the bottom of the list again.  This was a problem when someone wanted to edit multiple rows, and they had to keep scrolling back up again to find the next row they want to edit.

In version 9.2, when a transaction is edited, the current row on the screen is updated to reflect the new changes.  When a new transactions is added it is added to the bottom of the list.  It does not reload the entire list.  

One disadvantage of this, because the list is sorted, the newly updated or added item may not be in the correct place in the sort order because the row does not get resorted.  However closing and reopening the cashbook window will resort the rows into their correct order again.

One exception to this rule is if you edit a transaction and change the bank account.  This will still do the full list reload because the transaction is now in the wrong list.