Ledger transactions, monthly transactions and yearly transacitons reports now have a new 'group by property' option.

With this options turned off (the default is turned on) the transactions are sorted into date order with one total at the bottom for all properties.  With this options enabled, the transactions are sorterd and grouped by property, with totals at the end of each property.

This new feature came about because occassionally I have had people ask how do you handle both commercial and residential property in the same database.

In some countries such as New Zealand and Australia residential property transactions are exempty from GST, however commercial properties still incur GST on income and expense transactions.  Previously this was hard to handle.  But now you can mark a property as transaction tax exempt.  This means when you enter income or expense transactions for these properties the tax amount will automatically change to zero.  All other properties will still to have tax automatically calculated.

This enhancement came about as a result of a suggestion provided to me during the survey.  The suggestion was to add a quick link to the Rent Summary report directly from the tenant details screen.

 The idea of quick linking to another screen using the existing screen as a pre-selection is something I have done recently, but this idea has taken it a bit further and simplified it at the same time.  At the bottom of a few key screens there is a new 'Link To' button.  That button will drop down a list of things you can jump directly to.  For example on the tenant details screen you can now jump straight to the Rent Periods screen and the Extra Charges screen, property details, owner details, the Rent Summary report as well as the reports screen.  Where appropriate the tenant selection on those jumped-to screen will be preselected based on the tenant screen you are on.  Also some of those screen also have a link-to button to link across to somewhere else.

A client has a number of properties which are being sold to new owners, and they wanted to know how to handle that in th software without disturbing existing transaction history against the old owner.

My suggestion is to create a whole new property.  Maybe use the Change Codes menu option from the maintenance menu to change the code of the existing property from X to X-old or something like that.  Then create a new property called X and associate it with the new owner.  On the date of purchase, flag the old property as no longer being managed by you.  Then switch the property code on the tenant details screen (assuming the tenant is staying) to the new property.  Or maybe create a new tenant as well.

A customer has asked how do you look for transactions based on a payee name. 

 The payee name is shown in the cashbook screen in the details column.  To filter on that column click the Filter button, and then in the text box above the details column type in anything.  The system will then filter all records and only show the ones which contains the text you have typed.

This was something asked for by a few people when I did the survey.  So here it is.

 The rent periods now stop at the tenancy end date.  Previously the last rent period would be a full week or full month or whatever the rent period length was, which meant that the end date was often past the actual tenancy end date.  This is not fixed.  And the rent owing in the last rent period is also adjusted to be the amount owing for the potentially shorter than normal rent period.  This includes changing the Rent Summary report to show the same result.

Have you ever wanted to print a report to a PDF file?  Go to www.doPDF.com and download the FREE PDF printer driver.  

Then when you print anything you will have another printer available to print the output to a PDF file instead of a printer.

I got this idea from someone I had lunch with a week ago.

 She has created an extra 'Room' in the property inspections and called it 'To-do'.  She added one attribute to this room.  Then when she does the property inspections she has an area which she can fill in in the inspection checklist details to write items that need to be done like maintenance issues.  These issues remain on file.  So she might add a comment which says 'Replace broken whatsit in the kitchen'.

Great idea.  Thinking outside the square.  Not surprisingly, she used to be a computer programmer.

I have been thinking about doing this for a long time.  And the time has now come.  I am now officially a blogger.  I am not sure if that is a good thing or not, but that is the way it is.

 Hopefully this blog will evolve over time as I find more ideas about what I can use it for.  But my immediate intention is to provide information about coming features in RentMaster.  Also to provide tips and trick for RentMaster users. 

Over the weekend I was having lunch with a group of people and I found out one of them is a customer of mine.  It is great to talk to other users and find out how they are using the software and any suggestions they might have.  I will pass on her idea in a future blog.  I dont want to waste all my ideas on the first day now do I.

Drop me an email if you have anything you would like me to write about.  I suspect I am going to be in desparate need of ideas shortly.  Otherwise this blog is going to go very quiet.

 Till next time....