Version 9.1 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

This is an important update for windows Vista users who are not starting RentMaster as an administrator. Database backups may not be working correctly on previous versions. Further details here http://blog.rentmaster.co.nz/post/2009/10/Coming-in-v91---Backup-issues-for-Vista-users.aspx

What else is new?

• A new 'Missed Rent' report has been added. This lists tenants who have not paid their last rent amount.
• Closed tenants previous letters can now be seen in mail merge. They are hidden by default, but are available at the bottom of the list of tenants.
• If there is a very large list of tenant names in the mail merge program, the scroll bar does not go down far enough to reach the last names.
• Extra charges can now be made to tenants who are closed but marked as open for further transactions.
• The new custom date range added to the previous versions report screen, has also been added to the cashbook screen when you press the Filter button.
• The actual location of your database file is now shown in the Maintenance/Options screen on the network tab.
• On the options screen, you can now specify both a from and to number of days range for showing expiring tenants

This is an important change for anyone who is using Windows Vista or Windows 7, and is not starting RentMaster as an administrator.  If you are not sure if you are an administrator or not, you should probably assume you are not.  All other versions of windows is not affected.

In windows Vista, Microsoft decided to help protect their users by creating something called File Virtualization (google it if you want to find out more).  This meant that lots of different locations on your computer became read only, so you could not save your files there.  One of those locations is the location where RentMaster is installed, the Program Files folder.  Because you can no longer save files there (unless you are an administrator), behind the scenes windows was creating a second copy of all the files you wanted to write to, and one of those files was the RentMaster database file.

This change did not affect RentMaster, until it came to doing a database backup.  RentMaster was not aware Windows was creating a second database file, so it was continuing to back up the original file, which in effect was not being used.  The backup would complete successfully, but it was backing up the wrong file.

In version 9.1 of RentMaster, the backup procedure now goes looking for a second database, and if it finds one, it will backup the file which has been modified most recently.

Also in version 9.1, if you go to the maintenance menu and choose Options/Networking, it will display the location where the database file is, which may be the alternative location where windows has put it.

On the events screen, one of the tabs show expiring lease agreements.

In the last release, a new feature was added which allow you to specify the number of days out before the expiring tenants are shown on this screen, defaulting to 60 days.

In this coming release, this has been extended to be a range of days, defaulting from 60 days down to 0 days, which means the tenant will be shown on the screen when their end date is 60 days out, up until the end date is reached.  By specifying a range, you can enter a negative number for the end days, for example from 60 days to -10 days.  This means the tenant will remain on the screen for a further 10 days after the end of their tenancy.

The mail merge facility allows you to see mail merge letters which have been previously generated for a tenant or owner.

However for tenants, the letters for closed tenants are hidden, otherwise the list would become very long and hard to search.  But sometimes someone wants to find these previous letters.  So coming in version 9.1, the list of tenant names will also include the name <Closed Tenants> at the end.  Selecting that name in the tenant list will load the list of all open and closed tenants so you can see the letters for these people.  When you close and open the program again the list will default to showing open tenants only, however you can expand it again to show closed tenants if needed.

A new report has been created in version 9.1 called the Missed Rent report.

This report is important for keeping on top of tenant issues.  If you can catch the tenant as soon as they miss their first rent payment, and send them a reminder that you are watching them, they will hopefully pay the missed rent and not miss any more in future.  If they think they can get away with missing the first payment, they are more likely to try it again next time.

A missed rent is determined based on the rent payment frequency of the tenant.  For example, if the tenant pays rent weekly, then they are deemed to have missed their payment if they have not paid any rent at all in the last 7 days.  Monthly rent tenants will be deemed to have missed if they have not paid anything within the last month etc.