This is another free custom report, this time for people who use the booking calendar for short term tenants.

This report provides a simple list of tenants and their arrival date and departure date.  The user can provide a date range for the report.

This report can be downloaded started at the following link.

http://www.rentmaster.co.nz/CustomReports/ReportList.aspx

Closed tenants are automatically excluded from the inspection schedule screen.  However they were still included in the printed inspection schedule report.  So they are now excluded from both.

 Tenants who are linked with a property which has been marked as 'No longer managed by us' are now excluded from the lease expiry part of the events screen and the lease expiry report.

Another free custom report is available called the Rent Roll report.

This report provides a list of tenants, their current rent and rent due.  This report prints a separate page for each property owner.

This report can be downloaded started at the following link.

http://www.rentmaster.co.nz/CustomReports/ReportList.aspx

RentMaster version 8.2 has been released and is available for download now.

To get the latest version go to the help menu inside RentMaster and choose Download RentMaster Update.

Whats new?

- There is a new Complexity menu option which allows you to specify how complex you want the software to be.  You can choose to simplify the software by turning some features off.  After upgrading, all features will remain on by default.
- You can now create negative extra charges as a way of allowing rent credits.  These will also show on the tenant statement report.
- On the tenant details screen, below the contact address, there is a new checkbox which allows you to send correspondence to the contact address rather than the property address they are renting.  This will affect the address printed on the tenant statement reports.
- You can now print the 'Previous Paid To Date' on the tenant mail merge letters.
- On the Extra Charge Income Groups screen, if you choose to use the Rent income group to pay rent as well as extra charges, you now have the option of paying off the rent first or paying off the oldest outstanding value first.
- You can now go to the mail merge File menu and change the settings used when printing inspection reminder letters.
- The report printed from the cashbook screen now includes column totals.
- The Owner List report now excludes closed owners.
- The Rental Calendar menu option has been renamed the Booking Calendar to better reflect its purpose.

It is now possible to print the Previous Paid To Date on the tenants rent receipt.

The Paid To Date is the date the tenant is paid up to.  The Previous Paid To Date is the date the tenant was paid up to prior to the most recent rent payment.  By adding both print fields to a sales receipt mail merge letter you can get a situation where it prints 'This payment pays for the period xxxxxx to yyyyyy'

Notes - Both paid to dates are rounded.  The tenant may owe $100 rent, which might equate to 3.76 days, but the paid to date will print the nearest date.

When the Tenant Statement and Tenant Statement 2 reports are printed, the address at the top of the report is the address of the property they are renting.

However sometimes you might want to sent this report somewhere else.  So there is now the option to print the tenant contact address from the tenant details page at the top of both of these reports instead of the property address.  This option can be specified on a per-tenant basis.

When designing software there is always the trade off between creating feature rich software which is quite complex, and easy software which lacks features.  Some people only want basic features, so would prefer something simple.  Others prefer something with heaps of features which they might one day use.

In RentMaster version 8.2 there is now a complexity chooser.  So if you only want simple software, then it will remove some of the more complex and lesser used features. 

First it asks if you want to only see features for property managers, or landlords, or both.  If you choose to only show landlord features for example it will remove the disbursements menu option which landlords have no use for.  If you choose property manager only features it will remove mortgages.  After that you get a slider bar which allows you to decide how many other features you want to remove.  You can choose anywhere from the most basic 70 menu options which you cant do without, through to the full range of about 110 menu options.

When upgrading from version 8.1 you will automatically get to see all menu options which you are used to up until now.  You can choose the Complexity menu option to start cutting down menus.  Also if you use security operator roles, they always supersede the complexity chooser.

This is a bit of a strange occurrence which has occurred for 2 customers now, so I thought I would blog about it in case anyone else has a similar situation.

On the tenant details screen the rent box has disappeared although the label to the left of the box is still there.  Also on the automatic income setup screen the code field has gone.  But in reality they are actually still there.  Confused yet?

Thanks to Glen for finding the solution.  It appears to be a Windows issue when changing the DPI settings.  Glen was using Windows Vista, although Windows XP also has a DPI setting, so it might have the same result.  By changing the DPI settings back to the default setting again the missing fields reappeared.

The strange things is that I have also tried changing the DPI settings on my computer using both Windows Vista and Windows XP, and in both cases none of the fields went missing.  So it might also depend on your screen resolution or your graphics card driver or windows service pack version or something else.  Who know????

So if you have a situation where fields are going missing, try changing your DPI settings.  Run windows help and search for DPI to find out how.