The www.FindARentalHome.com web site now shows a map of the property after a property is selected.

 To take better advantage of this, the more detailed address you can provide, the closer the map will be to the actual location.  So on the Web tab of RentMaster, when it asks for the suburb, city and country, it would be advisable to provide as much detail as possible, including the actual street address if it will fit in the suburb field.  When the google maps are requested, all 3 parts of the address are used as suburb + city + country.

This question has come up a few times in emails recently, so I thought I would post a blog about it.

People have purchased the software without the tutorial CD, and are now thinking they should have got the CD as well, and were wondering if it can still be purchased separately.

The answer is yes it can be purchased either with or without software.  You can also purchase it prior to purchasing the software as a way of becoming familiar with the software before committing to buying it.

To purchase the CD separately just go through the normal purchase procedure on the web site, and on the order form just choose the CD as the item to purchase without the software.

A new version 8.4.2 has just been released.

For those who got a very early version of 8.4.0, on the contractor details screen the phone number fields were not visible.  This was fixed in 8.4.1.

The new look ahead entry of the combo also caused a problem on some screens like the Add Income screen.  After typing in Rent into the income group box, the tenant combo box should have been enabled to allow entry of the tenants name, but this was not happening.  If you used the mouse you would not have had a problem.  Version 8.4.2 fixes this.

You might also notice that the look ahead typing into the tenant combo box is a bit different to the others.  This will be dealt to in a later 8.5 release.  It still works pretty much the same, but looks a bit different.

A new feature recently added to version 8.4 of RentMaster is an owner account balance on the owner details screen.

The same information available on that screen is now also available online at the home page of the landlord login at RentRecall.com web site.

So now the owner has visibility to see what their account balance is at any point in time.

These are the key highlights.

Also other minor changes included in this release include...

This has been asked for a few times, so it has now been added.

The booking calendar screen now includes tenants who are long term tenants.  They will be displayed in a grey colour, and will not be selectable for edit or payment taking etc like the short term tenants, but they will be there.

This mainly benefits people who have properties that they sometimes rent to long term tenants and sometimes short term tenants e.g. during the holiday season.  Because now you can see when the property is actually available for short term tenants.

Coming soon in version 8.4 is a new feature designed mainly for property managers.

The owner details screen will contain a new tab called the Information tab.  This tab will list summary financial details regarding this owner similar to the following

Last Disbursement Date          xx/xx/xx
Last Disbursement Amount        xxx.xx

Since the Last Disbursement...
Rent Received                   xxx.xx
Expenses Paid                   xxx.xx
Anticipated Fees                xxx.xx
Extra Fees                      xxx.xx
Reserve to be Retailed          xxx.xx
Anticipated Next Disbursement   xxx.xx

Current Reserve Retailed        xxx.xx
Balance of Account              xxx.xx

The balance of Account number at the bottom represents the amount of money currently available in the account for this owner which could be used to pay for upcoming expenses.

This screen provides similar information to what is shown in the Owner Trial Balance report.

It is anticipated the same information will soon be made available on the landlords login for the RentRecall.com web site, so landlords can see the same information the property manager can see.