When rent is specified weekly, the rent periods are always 7 days long.  Fortnightly rent periods are always 14 days long etc.

In version 9 of RentMaster you will be able to create a short first rent period.  So if the rent is paid weekly, the first week can be up to 7 days long, with the default being 7 days.  For fortnightly rent the first rent period can be up to 14 days long etc.

Some property managers prefer to have all their rent due on a certain day of the week e.g. every Thursday.  With a short first week you can do this.  The first shortened week will have its rent amount apportioned accordingly.

The short first week can only be specified when the tenant is first created, and cannot be subsequently changed without deleting and recreating the tenant again.  So care needs to be taken when first creating the tenant. 

This feature is similar to what monthly rent periods have had for a long time.  With monthly rent, the rent might be due on the 1st of each month or the 15th etc. 

The reports screen allows a date range selection for most reports.  

When the report screen opens it defaults to the current financial year.  However a new dropdown list has been added with a list of predefined date ranges which you can select which will change the date range until the window is closed again.  You can still enter your own dates manually.  The list of predefined date ranges are ...

This Financial Year

Last Financial Year

This Calendar Year

Last Calendar Year

This Month

Last Month

Last 30 Days

Last 7 days

Can anyone think of any other predefined date ranges you might want to see?  Just add a comment to this blog entry and it will be considered.

The expiring leases can be seen on the events screen in RentMaster.  By default they are shown when the lease is 60 days out from expiring.

In version 9.0 you will be able to specify the number of days prior to expiry that the tenant will be shown on the events screen. The default will still be 60 days.

As well as this, the same now applies to rent review dates which also  default set to 60 days but can be changed. 

The number of days prior to the property being recognised as vacant is also now changeable.  By default it is 30 days.  This means that 30 days prior to the tenancy end date the property will automatically be marked as a marketable property.  This only applies to automatic vacancy status.  If you have chosen to manually determine the vacancy status of a property, this setting will have no effect.

The RentMaster web site has the ability to access anonymous usage statistics voluntarily provided by users.  If you have ever try to download the software update automatically, it would have asked you if you wanted to provide those statistics.

Thanks to those people who did provide the statistics.

Some of those statistics are now available online.  You can see the most populate windows and reports on this web page

http://www.rentmaster.co.nz/faq/usagestats.aspx 

For people who have multiple computers, an error can occur when doing a database backup if another computer is still running RentMaster.

The error message would look something like

Error creating last 10 backups - Line 26 - You attemptedto open a database that is already opened exclusively by user 'XXXX' onmachine 'XXXX'. Try again when the database is available. 

This error does not mean your backup has failed necessarily.  If the program continues on to say Backup Successful then your main backup has completed OK.

This error message will not appear in v9.0 as a way around requiring exclusive use of the database has been found, so other users can continue to use the software while the backup is being done. 

For those that are interested, when a backup is done it creates a backup to your backup drive as requested, but it also keeps a copy of the last 20 backups on your hard drive in the Backups directory.  This is because some people loose their backup drives.  Other people might get a database corruption in their current database and then continue to do a backup, in effect overwriting their last good database file with a bad one.  So the last 20 backups is a backup for the backup, and allows you to go back to a previous backup if required.  Although this should not be relied upon.  The main backup should still be done to a removable drive or flash drive in case the main computer crashes.

The tenant details screen in version 9 will have a print button.

The result is a report which prints all the details about the tenant.  This includes all the notes and the rent changes and the bond/deposit etc.

This is something which has been asked for before.  Previously the way to get a similar result is to print the tenant list report for a single tenant, with the print notes option turned on.  The new report will print more details than the tenant list report. 

I am considering doing something similar for the owner and property screens.  Would anyone use this feature if it was provided? Let me know.  Add a comment to this blog post.

The owner list report currently does not provide enough space for all email addresses to fit.  

The space for the email address has been made larger in v9.0.  Although for people with really long email addresses, they still might not fit, but that is less likely with the next release.

Both the landlord and tenant logins at www.RentRecall.com give the owner or tenant the ability to send a message to the property manager.

A change has been made, so now the tenant or landlords code will be included in the first line of the email message so the property manager knows quickly who the message was sent from.

On the home page of the landlords login to www.RentRecall.com there were some currency symbols being displayed.

These currency symbols have now been removed, making it consistent with the rest of the web site.  Currency symbols can cause confusion when the landlord lived on one country and owns properties in another country.  In this case the wrong currency symbol can be displayed.  So no currency symbol is better than the wrong currency symbol.