Monthly Archives: February 2009

Coming in v8.7 - Listing Extra Charges

Posted on February 21, 2009

The extra charges list screen has changed what is displayed.

If an extra charge is charged to a list of different tenants, the list will now only contain one entry instead of one entry per tenant.  The exception is if a tenant is selected from the combo box at the top of the screen.  Then it will show all the charges related to that one tenant.  If the charge is split across multiple tenants, then when it is filtered by the tenant, it will show that tenants portion of the total charge, otherwise it will show the total value across all tenants.

Coming in v8.7 - Picture locations

Posted on February 21, 2009

When people load pictures out of their digital camera they tend to save them all in the same or similar location on their computer.

To make browsing for those pictures easier in RentMaster, it will now remember the location of the last picture loaded, and will default to the same location when you go to add the next one.

Property pictures and tenant pictures may be stored in different locations, so the system will remember the location of the last tenant picture and the location of the last property picture separately.

This does not stop you from navigating somewhere else to find the next picture, but hopefully it will start in a location closer to your preferred destination.

Coming in v8.7 - Column sorting for extra fees

Posted on February 21, 2009

The extra fees and also extra charges screens were not sorting correctly when the column heading was clicked.  This has been fixed.

For those who know what it means, everything was being sorted by its string value rather than its correct data type value.

Coming in v8.7 - Rent status screen refresh

Posted on February 21, 2009

The rent status screen shows the rent arrears balance for tenants.

Some people tend to leave this window open while they are entering transactions.  But to update the balance they had to close the window and reopen it again.  But now this has been made a while lot easier in a number of ways.

1. When transactions are entered either manually, via a statement import or automatic income transactions, this screen will now automatically refresh itself if it is open in the background.

2. A refresh button has also been added in case you want to manually refresh it, although there should be little need for this.

3. The events screen also has a arrears tab which is very similar to the rent status screen.  This tab will also automatically refresh itself if the screen is open on that tab during data entry.  The events screen can be refreshed manually by changing tabs.

Note - if the rent status screen has more than 100 tenants on it, the automatic refresh will not happen.  This is because it could be detrimental to the speed of data entry if it has to refresh a large number of tenants.  The manual refresh button will still work though.

Pocket PC Inspection Software for Windows Mobile 6

Posted on February 20, 2009

The Pocket PC inspection software, which has been around for a while, now works with the newer Windows Mobile 6 devices.

It has also been modified to fit a lot more different screen resolutions.  The newer devices have a wide range of screen sizes, so now the software should work fine on all those devices.

You can download the software from this web page

www.RentMaster.co.nz/Products/PocketInspection.aspx

Trademe.co.nz Integration

Posted on February 10, 2009

TradeMe.co.nz is New Zealands largest auction web site, and a favorite of people looking to find or let a rental property.

So I am very proud to announce that RentMaster users now have direct access to TradeMe for adding and removing vacant rental properties. 

This is going to be a real time saver for property managers.  Listing a vacant property manually requires navigating a lot of slow web pages, as well as manually adding all the pictures.  The RentMaster upload facility gives you a quick and easy screen for confirming or changing your property listing details, as well as automatically upload your pictures for you.

There are some restrictions, so it wont suit everyone.  To find out more and watch the tutorial/demo, go to www.RentMaster.co.nz/Products/TradeMe.aspx

RentRecall.com Password Reset

Posted on February 4, 2009

This is a new enhancement which is ready to use today.

For people who use RentRecall.com, sometimes you have issues with tenants or landlords forgetting their password, and not being able to log in.  So now as a property manager you can do something about that.

Property managers can log in to the managers login at RentRecall.com, go to the setup menu option in the top right corner, and choose to reset either landlord or tenants passwords.  For security reasons, you can not see what the password is, but you can reset it back to be the same as their login name.  You will then need to contact your tenant or landlord, and let them know their password has been reset.  The tenant or landlord can then log back in again, and change the password if they need to.

The password reset screen only shows tenants or landlords who have changed their password.  So if a particular client is not in the list, then their password is already the same as their login name.