I have had this question a few times now, so I thought I would blog about it.

Can RentMaster handle properties in multiple countries and therefore multiple currencies?

The answer is 'Sort of'.

RentMaster does not care about currencies.  As far as the computer is concerned it is just a number.  The fact that we as humans put a currency symbol in front of it is of no concern to the computer.  This is why RentMaster can use any currency, because it is just a symbol on the screen.

RentMaster allows you to have multiple bank accounts.  So you would almost certainly have different bank accounts for each currency.  When you enter transactions you just choose the bank account the transaction belongs to and enter the value in that currency.

The tricky part comes when you start to do reporting.  If you choose properties which are in different countries/currencies RentMaster will just add the numbers together without any currency conversion.  So when printing reports you would have to select/deselect properties from the list so that each print only contains one currency.  If you had 2 currencies, you would print each report 2 times, once including properties in currency A, and then again after only selecting properties using currency B.  This property selection is a manual task.

A new custom report has been created called the Expenses Per Property report.

This report contains the same basic content as the Expense Details report. However the report prints in landscape page orientation, and prints a new page per property. If this report is sent to email, it will create a new email for each property, and will insert the owners email address into the email. So this report is intended to be printed or emailed to the property owner.

This report can be downloaded from this location

http://www.rentmaster.co.nz/customreports/reportlist.aspx

This change is designed to make it easier to find errors with tenant transactions.  For example maybe the income was associated with the wrong tenant, particularly when there are multiple flatmates.  Or maybe it was associated with the wrong property or the amount was wrong.

A new 'Link' has been added to the link button on the tenant details screen called Transactions.  This takes the user to the rent periods screen for the selected tenant, but automatically selects the Transactions tab.  The transactions tab is like a hidden secret for some people who dont realise it is even there.  So this will make it easier to find it.

Also the cashbook screen now shows the tenant code in the 'Details' column for all income entries which are associated with tenants.

A new custom report has been added which you can download.

This report is the same as the NZ T41 Rent Summary report, with the addition of a date range selection, and also the addition of another column which shows an invoice number for each payment transaction.  One other column was removed to make way for the invoice number column.  The invoice number is the same number you may have printed on your receipts, if you print receipts with receipt numbers.

This report can be downloaded from the web site starting here

http://www.rentmaster.co.nz/customreports/reportlist.aspx

If a tenant moves out part way through a rent period, then the amount owing in the last rent period is a percentage of the total amount normally due.  The NZ T41 Rent Summary report adheres to this, and so does the rent periods screen, however the Tenant History report was not.  It was always charging the full amount in the last rent period.  The Tenant History report has therefore been fixed so that the total balance at the end should always match the balance of the Rent Summary report.

It looks like we have ongoing issues with database compactions in Windows Vista.

If you are using Windows Vista, and dont have administrative right or are not sure, then you should always do a database backup prior to doing a database compaction.  This is because the database compaction can fail if there is not sufficient rights to perform all the tasks.  The end result can be you loose all the data you have entered since the last database compaction.

Better still, dont do a database compaction.  Database compaction used to be a requirement back in the days when we were backing up the database to 1.44MB floppy disks.  But with the much large flash drives of today, this is much less of an issue.

If you want to run the program with administrative rights now, I have put together come instructions on how to achieve this at this web page www.RentMaster.co.nz/Admin.aspx .  There are some side effects of running in administrator mode, such as the program prompting you each time you run it to confirm you want to run it as an administrator, but it will allow you to do the database compaction without any problems.  If you are already logged into the computer with administrative rights, then none of this will apply to you.

In the next version of RentMaster, the compaction tab will be moved to the 4 tab on the database maintenance screen instead of the first, to signify its relative importance.  A lot of beginner users just open the window and press the first button they can see, which is the compaction button.  Also the system will do a series of checks to see if you have sufficient rights to complete the compaction before it proceeds.  If you dont, it will show you the web site URL above, and wont compact the database.