With the release of version 8.3 of RentMaster, it is now capable of being translated into different languages.  Currently only the original English is available.

If you are interested in translating RentMaster into another language, a language translation toolkit has been created.  This will make the translation process easier. 

You can download the translation toolkit from this location

www.RentMaster.co.nz/Products/TranslationToolkit

This is a new report which lists vacant properties, however this one is designed to be handed to potential tenants. 

It lists properties in order of number of bedrooms descending.  It lists the number of bedrooms, bathrooms, garaging and description.  It also prints the Asking Rent property if it has been set on the property details screen.  If this has not been set, it will print the rent paid by the most recent tenant.  It would be advisable to enter the new rent value in the Asking Rent if you are going to increase the rent.

Just like the other Vacant Proprties report, this one also lists properties which will be vacant within the next 30 days based on the tenancy end date for any current tenants.  These properties are printed with a caption specifying when it will be available.

When using the export button on the cashbook screen, and choosing to export to a QIF file format, there is now the option to force the date output to be in the Month/Day/Year format.

The problem is that Quick Books itself requires the dates to always be in this format.  Other programs are less restrictive.  However the system is currently outputting the dates based on the computers locality settings.

This issue only applies to people in New Zealand or Australia or other countries that use day/month/year date formats.  If the system detects that your windows locality settings is set up to use month/day/year format already, then it wont show this new option and will always output in month/day/year format, which is what it has been doing previously anyway.

The system will remember your setting for the next time you try to do another export.

The late fee calculation method used in version 8.2 and earlier is not correct. 

A while ago the rent arrears calculation was changed, however the late fees calculation is still calculating the late fees using the old method.  This has been changed.

If you are running multiple computers on a network, then the mail merge program will attempt to store all letters on the server computer so that all computers are able to access them.  It has been doing this for about a year now.

However, due to network or windows security etc, one computer may not be able to write files onto the other computers hard drive.  What the mail merge program does when it starts up is it attempts to write a dummy file onto the other computers hard drive, and if it fails, it switches back to writing all its files locally.  It has been doing this for about a year also.  This security issue is more likely to occur with Windows Vista, but XP and other windows versions can also impose security restrictions.

What is not so apparent, is when trying to print receipts or cheques/checks or inspection letters, it is also making this same check, because these operations all use the mail merge program.  If it is unable to access the remote computer it attempts to use the local copy of the letters, which it may not have.

What I have done with the next version of the mail merge program is to display a message if you are using multiple computers and it is not able to save the files.  This will only happen when you are opening the mail merge program, it will not do it each time it tries to print a receipt etc.

Extras for Experts : If you know what you are doing, you might be able to remove some access restrictions.  Using windows explorer, right-click the Program Files\RentMaster folder and choose Properties.  If you have a tab called Security, you can change it so that each user is allowed full control.

The RentRecall.com logins for tenants and landlords has had a bit of a visual spruce-up recently.  Hopefully the look is a bit cleaner and easier to understand.

 If you are not already a user of this web site, you can see a demo starting from this web site location

http://www.RentRecall.com