A new report has been created in version 9.3 called the Disbursement Preview report.

This report will show the disbursement amounts and fees which would be charged if a disbursement was done at that time.  It also includes a breakdown of how those amounts are calculated by showing the income and expense and fee transactions that would be included.  This report is designed to be used as a diagnostics report for the property manager, to show how a fee is calculated, and can be run for a single owner.

In a previous version, a feature was added which allowed extra fees to be automatically created each time expense transactions are created such as repairs.

In version 9.3 this feature has been extended to allow both a fixed value fee or the previous fee percentage to be specified.  This is specified on the expense group screen.

In the last release, the way the cash book is updated was changed so that as new records were added or changed, it did not reload the entire list from the database again.  This made the screen update faster.  However the side effect the was the account balance shown on the screen was not being updated.  Previously the balance was recalculated after a complete reload. As of version 9.3 the balance is again updated dynamically, without needing to do a complete reload.

People have commented that the software seems to be more complex than it needs to be.  This is a trade off software develops have to deal with.  By providing more features, the software provides more people with what they need.  But those additional features also seem to just get in the way for those people who dont need or want it.

So in version 9.3 there is the ability to turn off a few features which not everyone will need.  Those features are...

Holiday Homes

Depreciation

Mortgages

Inspections

Disbursements.

Landlords generally don't need disbursements and possibly inspections.  Property managers generally don't need depreciation and mortgages.  And most users don't need the holiday home features.  So now you can turn them off which hides them.

When you upgrade, all features will be turned on by default so you wont notice any change.  You can turn them off by going to the maintenance menu and choose options.  For new installs, the initial setup wizard will prompt to include or exclude these features, so new users can turn them off at the beginning.

On the bank reconciliation report, the Balance column has been made wider to accommodate different currencies which can sometimes result in much larger numbers.

Unfortunately that means taking space from somewhere else, so the transaction group column has been made slightly narrower and the columns have been moved closer together.  It is a bit of a balancing act trying to fit everything in, as that report does have a lot of columns.

When a RentMaster window is closed, it automatically stores the location of the window so that when it is opened again it will be opened in the same location and same size as when it was last used.

The problem that can have is when someone makes the main window smaller, the location of the window may now be outside the boundaries of the main window.  This results in a number of people thinking the software is not working because they click a button expecting a window to open, which it has, but they can't see it.  They can find the window again by clicking and dragging the scroll bars inside the main window, but people often overlook these scroll bars.

So now when a window it opened, if RentMaster determines the window cannot be easily seen inside the main window without scrolling, it will automatically be moved back to the top left coordinate of the main window.  From there it can be manually repositioned somewhere else again if required.