Monthly Archives: June 2009

Coming in v8.9 - Larger phone book screen

Posted on June 27, 2009

The phone book screen has been made much taller so more entries can be seen on the screen at the same time, as well as making more groupings.

The current phone book screen has 8 tabs and up to 24 lines are shown at any one time.  With the new version there is 12 tabs, and each tab can show up to 37 lines at a time.

More tabs means most tabs cover 2 letters instead of 3 at the moment.  Only the last 2 tabs cover 3 letters.

The original phone book was created back in the day when we had smaller screens, so the phone book has to fit in a 640x480 screen resolution.  Now that we have more space, we might as well use it.

Coming in v8.9 - Management fees to 4dp

Posted on June 27, 2009

The management fee % set on the owner details screen in v8.9 will allow you to enter 4 decimal places.

For those that are interested, the current system will allow you to enter 4 decimal places, and it will then calculate the fees based on the 4 decimal place fee percent.  However if you later open the owner details screen again it will convert the fee percent back to 2 decimal places, which means when you save the owner the extra 2 decimal places is lost (unless you retype the 4 decimal places each time).

Coming in v8.9 - Rent Review Report

Posted on June 14, 2009

Along with the new rent review date on the tenant details screen and rent review tab on the events screen, there is also going to be a rent review report.

This will list the tenants whose rent review is due in the next 60 days, along with their current rent amount.

Coming in v8.9 - Edit from the phonebook screen

Posted on June 13, 2009

The phone book screen has always had an edit button, but it has only allowed you to edit items that were created on the phone book screen with the Add button.

The phone book screen has been changed to allow you to edit tenant, owner and contractor details.  This is done by opening the tenant or owner or contractor details screens, depending on the phone book entry type.

How is the paid to date and rent balance calculated?

Posted on June 11, 2009

This question has been asked a bit recently, so I thought I would answer it.

The paid to date is first of call calculated based on the rent balance.  E.g. the rent balance may be 50 owing.  Assuming the rent is 70 per week (10 per day), this means the tenant is 5 days behind in their rent.  So the paid to date is the end date of the current rent period less 5 days.  The reason it is the end date is because the rent is due up to the end of the current period.

If the paid to date is incorrect, it probably means the rent balance is incorrect.  So the second question tends to be how is the rent balance calculated?

The rent balance is simply the sum of rent due - sum of rent paid.  Rent due can be seen by going to the rent periods screen and looking at the rent due column.  The rent due can be manually changed from the rent periods screen if required.  The rent paid is the sum of all transactions in the cashbook for that tenant with an income group of Rent.  This can also be seen on the rent periods screen in the paid column.  So if the total rent balance is incorrect, it means the rent due is wrong, or the rent income transactions are wrong.  Fixing the transactions or rent periods will also fix the rent balance and also fix the paid to date.

 

Coming in v8.9 - Mail merge to closed owners

Posted on June 1, 2009

When creating mail merge letters for tenants, for a long time there has been the option to include or exclude closed tenants.  Closed tenants are hidden by default.

Now in v8.9 the same option is going to be provided when creating mail merge letters to owners.

Coming in v8.9 - Links on the associations screen

Posted on June 1, 2009

The item associations screen is a screen I suspect a lot of people have not seen, but it can be found under the general menu group.  This screen lists all owners and their associated properties and their associated tenants.  So one owner could be listed multiple times if they have multiple properties and tenants.  It is also sortable on all columns.

In v8.9 all 3 code columns will be changed to blue hyperlink columns so you can click one of the values and it will automatically open the owner, property or tenant details screen for the selected item.  For people that use this screen this should be a handle shortcut.

Custom vacant handout reporting printing wrong logo

Posted on June 1, 2009

On the marketing screen you can create a custom version of the handout report which includes your own custom formatting.

There is a bug in the current version which means that it is not printing a custom company logo or is not printing any logo at all.  This issue will be fixed in the coming version 8.9.

For people who want a work around now, just delete the logo field off your custom report and add it back in again.  That will then print your company logo.