RentHQ Software Blog

Monthly Archives: February 2013

New Feature - Future Date in Mail Merge

Posted on February 28, 2013

A new field has been added to the mail merge called Future Date.  This will enable you to generate a date a specified number of days, weeks or months in advance of the current date.  For example, you could get it to print a letter with a date of today + 14 days.

New Feature - Assets

Posted on February 24, 2013

A new addition has been added to the property screen called Assets.

Assets is where you record details about the property and the fitting or chattels inside the property.  This can be used for depreciation purposes where depreciation is applicable.

A new report has been created called Years Depreciation.  This will do a depreciation calculation for the financial year specified listing the total depreciation for the building and fittings/chattels.

Also another new report called Asset List has been created under the Entity List reports.  This is a basic list of assets inside the properties.

New Feature - Statement Import

Posted on February 17, 2013

When importing a bank statement, if the number of transactions in the file is large, the system goes very slow.  Even opening or closing the rules window becomes slow.

The reason it is slow is because the number of items in the scrollable screen is very large.

A change has been changed to make it faster.  The solution was to split the file into multiple pages.  Each page contains 30 items.  At the bottom of the screen it will tell you which page it is on, and you can press the Next Page of Previous Page buttons to move between the various pages.  It is a bit like the google search results only showing 10 at a time, but you can move to the next page to see more.

If you have 40 items or less, it will fit them all on the one page.  Once the file goes over 40, it will split it into pages of 30 at a time.

If you have any rules, or add new rules, the rules will automatically get applied to all transactions, even the ones not on the currently visible page.  The total count of completed and incomplete transactions will also include those not on the currently visible page.

New Feature - Email address validation

Posted on February 17, 2013

When entering an email address in the contact details screen, accessible from the tenant and owner and contractors screens, the email address is now validated.  

The validation that is done is quite simple, and only checks for obvious errors.  It will not block the email address from being saved, even if it thinks it is invalid.  It will just show a message to you which you can choose to ignore if you wish.

New Feature - Changed to Last Disbursement Report

Posted on February 16, 2013

A change has been made to the Last Disbursement report.  This report now contains Income and Expense columns.  This shows the total income and total expenses that went into making up the last disbursement for each owner.

New Feature - Printed Inspection Letters

Posted on February 12, 2013

You can now print a letter to your tenants telling them they have an inspection coming up.

The letter template is created via the mail merge facility as a new tenant letter.  2 new fields have been added expecially for this purpose.  One is the Inspection Date and Time, and the other is the Inspectors Name.  You need to add the inspection date and time to your letter for it to be recognised as an inspection template.

On the individual inspection details screen, there is now a button which allows you to generate a new inspection letter.  You select your format, and press the Generate Letter button.  (If you done see any formats in the list, it is because you done have any templates containg the inspection date and time field).

The newly generated letter is automatically attached to the tenant as a new letter.  It can also be printed or emailed (if the tenant has an email address) and is also automatically visible via the tenants login.

After a letter has been printed, a small icon appears in the inspection schedule screen so you can quickly recognise which inspections have been printed and which have not.

New Feature - Mail Merge

Posted on February 12, 2013

A new insertable field has been added to the mail merge facility.

The new field applies to tenant templates only.  The new field is the Next Period Start date.  

New Feature - Colours in the Rent Arrears Screen

Posted on February 12, 2013

The rent arrears are shown on the dashboard screen.

These arrears have been changed with the addition of a bit of colour.  The arrears value now shows varying shades of red, depending h=on how far behind in their rent they are.  If they are only a bit behind, it is a light red.  If they are a long way behind, it is a darker red.  

New Feature - New Aged Trial Balance report

Posted on February 9, 2013

A new report has been created called the Tenant Aged Trial Balance  report.  This report can be found at the bottom of the list of Tenant reports.  You will need to scroll down to see it.

This report is designed to standard Aged Trial Balance conventions.  It prints outstanding balances grouped into current, 1 month, 2 months and 3 months+ groupings.

This report works best for people who have tenants who are charged rent monthly.  For people who are charged rent weekly or fortnightly etc, the rent due is based on the first day of the rent period.  This means some months they might get 5 weeks rent charged and others might only be 4.

This report only prints people with balances owing.  People who are up to date are excluded.  It also prints totals for current, 1, 2 and 3 months.

This report can be useful for analysting how old your outstanding balances are.  If you have a lot of balances 2 or 3 months or more overdue then there is cause for concern for the business.

RentHQ Price Structure Changes

Posted on February 6, 2013

Multiple changes have been made to the pricing of RentHQ as a result of customer feedback.  These changes are as follows.

  • 'Buildings' will now be free.  Although they are in the list of properties in RentHQ, they add very little value as they can not be rented out, so they are now free.
  • Closed properties will be charged at half price.  Closed properties still have some value, as they can be reported on.  However they dont have as much value as an open property.  Closed properties can be deleted if people prefer, but that is not recommended.
  • The standard price of open properties will increase by $0.10 per property per month for dollar currencies, and €0.05 per property per month for Euros.
  • These changes will take effect from next month.

New Discounts.

In addition to the price changes listed above, new discounts are now available.  Pay $100 or more in one payment and receive a 10% discount.  Pay $200 or more and receive a 15% discount.  Pay $300 or more and receive a 20% discount.  These discounts are available to take advantage of right now.

For example, if you pay $100, we will credit your account with $110.  Pay $150 and we will credit your account with $165.  Pay $300 and we will credit your account with $360.  These additional credits can be used in the following months to reduce or completely eliminate the monthly charge.  This applied to both dollar and euro currencies.

Pre-Payment.

For large customers who already pay more than $100 per month they will get the discounts automatically.  For smaller customers, you can now choose to prepay your account to reach a higher discount level.  Pre-paying your account can also remove the admin work of paying your bill every month.  Pre-paid credits are non-refundable.

As a result of these changes, it has been calculated that the average person will pay less then before if they choose to take advantage of the discounts available.

Feature Change - Deleting or Changing Transactions

Posted on February 6, 2013

A change has been made to the cashbook screen.

A transaction which has been disbursed or reconciled can no longer be deleted.  In order to delete these transactions you will need to delete the associated bank reconciliation or disbursement first.  Then you will be able to delete the transaction.  

Also if you try to edit a transaction which is disbursed, you will not be able to change the amount or the property associated with the transaction.

If you try to edit a transaction which has been reconciled, you will not be able to change the amount.

These changes have all been make in order to maintain data integrity.  Once a transaction has been disbursed, if you edit to delete the transaction, the disbursement becomes invalid.  The same applies to reconciliation.  You need to make sure your transactions are correct prior to doing your disbursements.  If you later find out they are incorrect, you should create new adjustment type transactions rather than changing previous transactions which have already been paid out to owners.