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Updates and New Features in Vacation RentPro

Note: Registered users are entitled to free updates for one year.
Updates are easily installed by selecting the "Check for Updates" option in the VRP Tools menu.

Updates History:

Updates are cumulative.  Therefore, please review any previous updates that may apply to you depending on your last update.

• 3/8/2010 v.1.0.2058 - The Tenant and Contact's Birthday and Anniversary dates now have an option to set recurring Reminders which are included with other Alerts, using the small "R" button next to these dates.  Adjustments were made to various reports to accommodate the new reporting engine update, which required some report columns to be expanded slightly.  There is a new "Prep Note" in the Bookings form Notes page which can be used to specify Preparation notes, such as "Leave extra linens" for example.  The Prep Note is include on cleaning schedules with the "previous" booking's cleaning notes.  The check-in and check-out date selector in the Bookings form does not automatically close now when selecting the check-out date in order to avoid accidentally clicking on a booking when it closed automatically.  The Property Statement report now suppresses the totals for the Owner if only 1 property was reported for that Owner to avoid showing the same totals twice.  Expanding the Post Transactions form now expands the Transactions grid to view more transactions. Corrected an issue with printing Alerts.  The Floating Calendar was updated to recognize the new HomeAway inquiry format.  The Floating Calendar also now recognizes inquiries from FlipKey.com.  When posting to QuickBooks, the Received From name is now exported for payments received.  Two new Fee Base-on options were added which allow creating discounts based on each X number of nights booked.  For example, you can specify a discount of 1 nights rent (or a specific amount) for each week booked.

• 3/2/2010 v.1.0.2048 - All web pages posted by VRP now include a reference to an optional external CSS Style Sheet which can be used by your web designer to further customize the web pages posted by VRP if needed.  Improvements were made to the Html Editor for fonts, background colors, tables, etc.  Various Sample Templates were updated also.  Remember you can import any of the latest sample templates using the Import button on the Doc Info page of the Templates form.  For example, import the latest "Generic Rental Agreement - Html Format" template.  Or the "Available with Rate Quote - Html Format".  The samples will not overwrite your existing templates.  When doing "View Sample" for "Inquiry Reply" type templates in the Templates form, you no longer need to use the Floating Calendar.  You can now view these samples using the property, dates, tenant, etc. from the selected sample booking.  The Housekeeping report has new options to show the Tenant's Phone or Email address on the report.  A new checkbox for "Alert Cleanings Past Due" was added to the Properties form "Misc" page.  Mark this checkbox to be alerted when scheduled check-out cleanings are past due.  Note that Additional Cleanings past due are always alerted, regardless.  The Alerts popup now re-evaluates alerts when you click View Alerts and then select individual alerts to update.  A substantial speed improvement was made to the uploading of multiple web pages and calendars to the web.  In System Preferences, you can now specify your own field names for Info1, Info2 and Info3 on the Property Notes page.  The Timeline grid in the Bookings form now highlights Holidays (specified in System Preferences).  The main Toolbar buttons at the top of the screen will now bring the selected form to the front if it is already open, rather than close the form.  This way, the top toolbar allows you to easily switch between forms whether they are closed or not.  The Follow-up report for outstanding security deposits now includes the specified Return Amount and Notes.

• 2/23/2010 v.1.0.2038 - VRP now interfaces with HomeAwayPM for uploading available dates to HomeAway calendars.  This requires a 5-user license or more and a HomeAwayPM account.  Skype phone calling and text messaging is now available in the Tenants and Contacts forms.  You can also Skype a Tenant from the Bookings form using the Folder button next to the Tenant.  When multiple Commissions are set up for the same Resource in the Property Commissions form, you can now choose between them when selecting commissions in the Bookings form.  Inquiries from AlwaysOnVacation and ValueVacationRentals are now also recognized by the Floating Calendar.  When sending Confirmations from the Bookings Workflow page a warning is displayed if the status is not yet Booked.  A few new Pre-defined Filters were added to the Bookings form for showing "Bookings Updated Today" and "Created/Updated Last 2 Days".  The Alerts popup now includes scheduled Cleanings not yet cleaned (in the last 30 days).  The Alerts popup also color-codes the alert types and allows sorting on the Alert type, Property or Date.  The Tenants and Contacts forms have a new "Relations" page for things associated with maintaining relations.  These include two new Document Template emailing functions, similar to the Bookings form Work Flow page.  Four new Template Types were created for these, which can be customized, renamed and used for any purpose.  For example: sending notices about specials, owner appreciation emails, etc.  The new Relations page also has two "Last Campaign Sent" dates, which are updated by the Send Bulk Email function.  There is also a new "Anniversary" date available which can be used for example, to track when you started business with an Owner or Tenant.  There are also new Pre-defined Filters allowing you to see upcoming Anniversaries.  Both the Tenants and Contacts form also have a new feature in the Options button to "Send Separate Emails for the Records Listed".  This function which also exists in the Bookings form, is can be used for sending multiple personalized emails with the individual's names.  In addition, both the Tenants and Contacts forms have a new "Bill To" name field, which can be used to specify the billing name if it is different from the main Name.  There's a new Template Placeholder for showing the Bill To name, or the main Name if the Bill To is blank.  The "Find Text in Any Field" function in all forms now allow specifying multiple search criteria by separating search terms with " OR ".

• 2/11/2010 v.1.0.2025 - A new option was added to allow basing commissions on Rent minus the Cleaning Expense.  A few new Placeholder Functions were added (See Help on Placeholder Functions).  The Payment Processing Auto-fill feature does not prompt now after successful auto-fills.  Example Field Mappings were added to the Help doc for Payment Processing using VacationRentPayment.com merchant services.  A new Expense Account was added called "Non-Expense Item" which can be used to record reminders or other transactions which you do not want included on the Property Statement or other reports.  The Bookings form now includes the Tenant's Telephone number in the top title bar for easy reference.  Improvements were made to the Html Editor including: ability to turn table borders on and off, insert page breaks or division blocks, remove all formatting, and others.  A few improvements were made to the Bookings form grid, such as a larger border around the currently selected booking.  When clicking "View Sample" in the Templates form, you no longer need to Save changes first.  Word Template type files (.Dot and .Dotx) can now be used in Document Templates also.  A new Description field was added to Commissions.  The Description is included on Reports, and is also copied from Property Commissions when creating new bookings.  Example descriptions: "Mgmt Fee", "Referral Fee", etc.  The Commission Note is no longer displayed on reports and is used for Internal notes only.  Also, the Property Commissions form and grid columns can now be resized horizontally.  When using the %RateQuote% Placeholder in Email Text, the quote is now left justified rather than centered.  Minor layout changes were made to the Housekeeping report.  When saving double bookings in the Bookings form, typing 'YES' is now required.  Also, a warning is displayed when saving Quotes for dates that are already booked.

• 1/30/2010 v.1.0.2011 - A Reminder field was added to the Document Templates form which can display a reminder message when generating documents or emails from that template.  The Document Templates form now has Filtering features as with other forms including several pre-defined Filters.  The Sample Templates which use Html formatting were updated.  If you wish, you can import one or more of these sample templates using the "Import Sample Template" button on the Document Templates form.  Various improvements were made to the built-in Html Editor.  Improved the Print and Find options in various forms.  When replying to inquiries in the Floating Calendar there is a new option to "Show Totals" prior to generating the reply.  Additional Cleanings can now be entered in the Expenses form using the new built-in Account called "Additional Cleaning".  These are included in the various cleaning schedules along with cleanings specified in the Bookings form.  In addition, a new Booking Status called "Additional Cleaning" is available in the Bookings form if you prefer to create separate bookings for additional cleanings instead.  When Replying to inquiries in the Floating Calendar you can now specify a "Flat" Discount amount by adding "F" after the discount.  The Expenses form has a new Email button for quickly creating an email to the Vendor.  Also, the Expenses form has it's own Docs folder button for maintaining emails and documents pertaining to individual expenses. The Property Statement report has a new option to Exclude unpaid Owner Payments.  All reports have 3 new Date range selection options for: This, Last or Next Week for easier weekly reporting.  The Booking Chart Detail report has a new option for whether or not to start each property on a new page.  The Find functions have a new option to Acknowledge the currently selected filter or not.  The image above the grid in the Bookings form now rotates each day to show a different photo.  There is also a small arrow button next to the grid which allows rotating through the images.  The "Available?" button feature now shows the number of Beds/Baths when using the "Select Properties" option.  Corrected an issue when exporting Contacts to Excel.  Resolved a possible issue when clicking too fast on the timeline Forward and Back buttons.  New Placeholders have been added to allow showing Commissions in Templates.

• 12/28/2009 v.1.0.1980 - Outlook Contacts can now be imported into either the Tenants form or the Contacts & Resources form on an individual basis using the Options button at the top of these forms.  This feature allows adding or updating individual Tenants or Contacts from the currently selected Contact in Outlook.  See Help on Importing Data for more info.  Property selections in the reports now show Inactive properties at the bottom of the selection lists.  When duplicating properties in the Properties form, all info for Fees and Commissions is now duplicated.  Html email text created in external .htm files now include their internal styling when sending emails.  The Floating Calendar now shows Blockout dates with a strikethrough mark.  The Amenity Name length has been expanded.  An Active flag has been added to Contacts, so that  Inactive contacts you no longer use, will show at the bottom of various contact selection drop-downs.  The Ad Source & Referrals report has a new option to sub-total by Rate Type.  When using the Search for Available Properties feature, a larger selection window is displayed when selecting Amenities or Properties.  Also, you can now use 2 new Placeholders in the Templates used with the Search for Available Properties feature in order to allow specifying text before or after the list of Properties generated.  These Placeholders are: %BeginProps% and %EndProps%.  Text between these two placeholders will be generated for each available property.  The Contact Short Name was added to the Contacts form grid.  A new Birthday field has been added to both the Tenants and Contacts form, along with pre-defined filters for selecting Birthdays in the current or next month.  This can be used along with the Send Bulk Email feature to help with tenant and contact relationships.  Modified the Floating Calendar to accommodate the new VRBO email Inquiry format.  The Property Rates report now includes the Security Deposit, Processing Fee and Tax Rates for each property.  Property Rates, Fees and Commissions can now be copied "From" rather than copied "To" another property on the respective forms.  A new Placeholder option [WebLink] was added for easily creating Html links in Templates.  Several of the pre-defined Filters in the Bookings form now exclude Quoted status bookings.  When specifying a fixed Discount or Adjustment amount in the Floating Calendar's Reply button, the Disc/Adj amount is now either a Daily, Weekly, or Monthly amount depending on the rate type selected.

• 12/13/2009 v.1.0.1969 - A new Html Editor is now available in both the Document Templates form and the Email Preview form.  This provides a WYSIWYG Html editor for designing document and email templates and storing them within the database.  You can still use external templates created using Word and other editors also.  For customers who use the Weekly booking option on Webervations, VRP will now upload weekly rates if the Default Rate Type specified in the Properties form Misc tab is set to the "By Week" rate.  Also, Weekly type reservations downloaded from Webervations now include the weekly rate.  Property Rates can now be Imported.  See the Importing Data Help topic for more info.  Property Amenities can now include Amenities from other Properties on the Properties form Amenities page.  This allows you to define common Amenities once and share them across multiple Properties.  Two new System Preferences for Company Info1 and Info2 were added.  These can be used to store miscellaneous company-wide information and then reference this information in Templates using their corresponding Placeholders.  When sending emails from buttons adjacent to email addresses in the Tenants, Contacts and other forms, the format is now set to Html if your Email Preferences are set to the Extended Mapi option.  Also, you can now click outside of the email form to look at other forms when sending email since these buttons do not need to wait for the email to be sent.  A Preview button was added to the Html Editor.  All Text edit boxes now have a Right-click Find and Find Next feature.  The Data Import functions now require Short Name columns also.  A new sample template is available called: Generic Rental Agreement - Html Format.  (Use the Import Sample Templates button on the Document Templates form).  Property Fees and Commissions can now be "shared" for individual properties across multiple properties.  This is useful and if you have properties with similar fees or commissions.  The Floating Calendar has been updated to accommodate HomeAway's new email inquiry format.  Improvements made to the Html Editor including: ability to add Rows and Cells to Tables, and the ability to resize photos and keep the aspect ratio, Ability to set background colors for block areas, and others.  When importing reservations from Webervations and the Tenant name already exists, you now have the option of overwriting the Tenant info with the new Tenant info or not in case they have changed their address or other info.

• 12/1/2009 v.1.0.1951 - A new Template Placeholder option called [GetTagItem] was added for referencing specific text within any Note field.  This allows note fields to contain multiple, user-defined informational text items.  A new System Preference was added for Company Website, which is automatically included as a link at the top of Property Web pages with the menu bar format.  The Bookings Chart Detail report now provides a summary of Rental Fee sub-totals by Fee type at the end of each reporting group if the Show Fees option is selected.  There is a new checkbox in the Bookings form Payments grid which is used to specify payments made by check or cash.  This allows receiving a mix of cash/check and credit card payments for the same booking and having the processing fee calculated into the booking total accordingly.  The Placeholder called %ActualSale% is being phased out.  The %TotalSale% Placeholder now always shows the actual booking total sale which includes both applied and projected processing fees.  An issue with column sorting in grids was corrected.  You can now specify the account Class to use for Quicken and QuickBooks on the Property Accounts page without having to specify the Class individually in each account.  Blockout bookings are now included in Alerts and Cleaning schedules, and can be suppressed from Alerts and Cleanings like any other booking.  Note: Blockout bookings are intended for things like maintenance and timeshare block outs.  Whereas, Owner (or comped) bookings should have a normal Booking Status.  In the Bookings form timeline view by Property, you can now sort by Location, Beds/Baths and other columns.  The report parameter selection forms have an improved look.  Sorting on columns in the Tenants, Contacts and Document Templates forms have been improved.  The Expenses report now uses the scheduled cleaning date as the transaction date, and the check-out date for unscheduled cleanings.  The Floating Calendar now shows Blockout booking dates as dark grey.  The Bookings Chart Detail report now sub-totals by check-in or check-out month depending on the date type selected.

• 11/13/2009 v.1.0.1939 - If specifying fixed amount payments in Payment Terms you can now specify whether to deduct the fixed amount from either the Next, or All percentage payments.  There is a new Right-click option in Note fields that will insert the current Date/Time stamp.  You can also use Ctrl+D or Ctrl+T. The Property Statement and Bookings Calendar reports have a new Auto-FTP option for automatically posting reports to your FTP website where owners can view them.  There is a new "Block Out Dates" Booking status which can be used for blocking out dates.  It is also used by the "Create Owner or Blockout Booking" option in the Bookings form Options button.  This feature was also improved to make it easier to block out dates for Time-Share properties.  Improvements were made to the Property Web Pages to accommodate extra-wide screen resolutions.  You can now specify up to 10 Photos for each Property which can be included in the property web page.  Online reservations imported from Webervations can now be merged into existing Quoted Bookings whose Property and Dates match.  This is useful if you create Quoted Bookings and then direct guests to book online through Webervations.  There is a new Placeholder for showing the Last 4 digits of the credit card used in Bookings.  Also, the Last 4 digits now display in the Bookings form and Tenants form.  Corrected an issue with the Block Out Dates status.  The Help topic on Placeholders was improved and split into multiple sections for easier reading.  When clicking the Reply button on the Floating Calendar the rates for the selected dates are displayed when choosing between daily, weekly and monthly rate quotes.  New Placeholders were added for the Property Short Name and vertical Address format.

• 10/12/2009 v.1.0.1912 - You can now generate Payment Schedules for one or more payments in the Bookings form Billing Info page.  You can also define default Payment Terms in the Properties form Misc page.  The Next Payment Placeholders will show the earliest outstanding scheduled payment due.  You can still schedule single payments by adding new payments on the Billing Info page.  There are two new placeholders for showing payment schedules: %BookingPaymentSchedule% and %PropertyPaymentSchedule%.  These generate payment schedules based on the payment terms defined in the Booking or the Property.  See Help for more info.  There is a new "Find" button above the Bookings form grid for easily searching both bookings and tenants.  You can now record the date Booked and date Canceled separately from agreement dates on the Bookings form Work Flow page.  There are also new Placeholders for %BookingDate% and %DailyRentTaxed% which can be used in the Payment Terms.  The length of the Company Name, Email and Phone fields have been expanded.  Improvements were made to the Data Import features.  You can now set the Ready-to-Post transaction flag for multiple bookings at a time when clicking on the Ready to Post checkbox in the Bookings form Work Flow.  The Pay Fees and Commissions uses the Check-out date for Commission transactions rather than the Check-in date.  There are also additional pre-defined filters which are selectable at the top of the form.  A issue was corrected in the Webform Assistant when auto-filling CC info.  The Available Properties selection form now has a new option to allow Selecting Properties and changing the order they are displayed in when generating the email properties list.  The photos in uploaded Property Web Pages can now be clicked on to see the original image.  Amenities are also now listed vertically on the Menu Bar format Web Page.

• 9/24/2009 v.1.0.1881 - There is a new GetListItem() and GetTagItem() function that can be used in Expression Placeholders for returning a specific part of any note field.  This allows defining multiple custom fields within any note field, such as multiple web addresses to be shown separately in templates, etc.  Some speed improvements were made to the Outlook Calendar interface.  Generated documents are now created in the user's temporary folder to prevent conflicts with other user sessions on the same computer.  When clicking "Reply" in the Floating Calendar you can now select to exclude Sales Tax or Lodging Tax in the Rate Quote in case it is for a longer term which taxes are not required.  You can now change the "Closed 2 and Closed 3" Booking Status names for your specific needs in the Booking Status form.  Two new checkboxes on the Bookings form Rental Info page allow Excluding Rent Revenue in the Taxable Revenue totals on the Property Statement report, which can be used for long term bookings where certain taxes do not apply.  The Tenants form Options button has a new option to Create a new Booking for this Tenant.  You can now upload Daily and Weekend Rental Rates to Webervations (in addition to Available Dates).  There is a new checkbox option for this on the Properties form Interface page.  The Floating Calendar now indicates whether the Tenant Name already exists or not.  When Replying to Inquiries you can optionally specify a Discount or Adjustment as a percent of Rent by including the "%" sign.  Otherwise the specified value is used.  Bookings synchronized with Outlook Calendar now include the number of Adults/Childs/Pets.  The Web Page format option which includes a Menu Bar, now provides the option of being able to add additional menu items and sections to your web page.  You can also use the Property and Miscellaneous Placeholders within the Long Description of your web page.  See Help topic on Posting Property Web Pages for more info.  Improvements were made to the Webervations interface.  You can now download reservations for invalid properties and assign the property later or delete the reservation.

• 9/2/2009 v.1.0.1866 - A new PaymentSchedule() function is available for use with Expression Placeholders in Templates.  This provides an easy method to show payment terms in documents and emails.  It also acknowledges any payments already made and whether payments are past due.  See the Help topic on Placeholders for info and examples.  A new Property Web Page Format option was added to the Web Post page of the Properties form.  See example here.  New System Preferences were added for Company Email and Phone number.  These are used in the new web page format.  The Interface page of the Properties form has a new Unit ID field for optionally specifying the Webervations "Room ID".  This is also used in the new web page format for incorporating the Webervations Online Booking form.  The Photos page of the Properties form now allows photo descriptions of unlimited length.  You can now also click-and-drag photos between positions.  You can now open multiple instances of the: Bookings, Properties, Tenants and Contacts forms using the "Options" button at the top of each form.  This can be useful for comparing information.  There is an additional web page background color that can be set in the Properties form Web Post tab.  The Webervations Member ID can now be specified in the Properties form Interfaces page for cases where the Member ID is different than the User Name.  Various changes were made to the posted web pages in order to pass Html and CSS compliance standards.  Cleaning Schedules now exclude the Booking Status.  An option was added to the Housekeeping Report to Show Booking Status.  A new top Toolbar button was added which will Resize the screen to the currently Active form and Keep it on Top of other applications.  This is useful for copying information from other applications without having to manually resize and move multiple windows.  An example is when entering a Booking or Tenant information from a scanned contract image.  You no longer need to restart the program after changing System Preferences for them to take effect. 

• 8/11/2009 v.1.0.1847 - Holidays specified in System Preferences can now include line breaks for easier editing.  When deleting Bookings an additional confirmation is now required.  Bookings can now be "synchronized" with Outlook Calendar for All Current and Future bookings using a new option in the Bookings form Options button.  This allows multiple users to synchronize their Outlook Calendars.  Bookings Notes are now also included in the Outlook Calendar entries.  There is a new LineBreak() function for Expression Placeholders in Templates.  The Housekeeping report now includes Un-scheduled Cleanings for check-out dates that fall in the selected date range.  The %PreviousBooking% and %NextBooking% Placeholders now exclude the Tenant Name.  You can include the Tenant Name by using the new Placeholders for Previous/Next Tenant Name.  This allows tenant names to be included or excluded in Cleaning Notices.  Months in the Bookings form Timeline grid are delineated with vertical lines for easier viewing.  The Floating Calendar will now bring Outlook to the front when reading email inquiries from Outlook to make it easier to delete or move inquiries once they have been replied to.  Also, when replying to Plain Text inquiries in Outlook such as VRBO inquires, the email format is now automatically switched to Html format if the Template is defined in Html format.  When editing external Html templates, you can now select to edit them using Word.  You can now Double-click on the Tenant column in the Bookings form timeline in order to view that tenant in the Tenant form.  The Housekeeping Cleaning Schedule Report can now generate a list of Check-ins and Check-outs by date.  This can be useful for planning the cleaning dates.  Minor changes to Bookings Chart Detail Report to remove empty space.

• 7/9/2009 v.1.0.1832 - Additional cleanings can now be scheduled for existing bookings and included on the cleaning schedules.  See Help topic on "Additional Cleanings".  The current Tenant and other booking information is now shown at the top of the Bookings form.  The Document Templates and Properties forms also show the currently selected item at the top.  The Document Templates form has a new "Active" checkbox.  This allows sorting Inactive Templates at the bottom of the list and can be used rather than deleting templates that you wish to keep.  The PDA Sync file now includes the Other Info and Memo notes from Bookings.  The Bookings Chart detail report has a new option to include Commissions on the report.  Also, the Export to Excel option on both the Bookings Chart and Commissions reports will generate separate worksheets for each type of data (Booking info, Rental Fees, Commissions and Payments).  These can be used when preparing spreadsheets for Travel Insurance reporting.  The Timelines in the Bookings form have been expanded from 84 to 128 days/units.  They also have a new new column header.  Cleaning dates can now be scheduled by setting the new "Clean on" date in the Bookings form Workflow 2 page.  This date can be set automatically to the Check-out date by selecting the new option in the Properties form Misc page.  There is also a new Placeholder for the "Clean on" date.  Future changes to Tax Rates can now be specified and automatically applied for future bookings and quotes.  The new tax rates and effective date can be specified in the Properties form by clicking the new button next to the current Tax Rates.  A new "Cleaned" checkbox was added to the Bookings form Workflow 2 page, which can be used to mark the scheduled cleaning as being completed.  This Cleaned status is also shown in the Housekeeping report and Cleaning schedules, and a "Not Cleaned" pre-defined Filter was added to the Bookings form.  Corrected an issue with the Property Statement for multiple properties to foot net amounts to the summary total.

• 6/10/2009 v.1.0.1816 - When synchronizing bookings with Outlook Calendar, the Booking notes: Other Info, Memo1 and Memo2 are now included in the calendar entries in case these contain guest arrival and departure information. Updated the Floating Calendar to accommodate HomeAway PM inquiry changes.  The default Booking Status for new bookings can now be defined at the Property level, using the new drop-down on the Properties form Misc page.  Important: Credit Card CVV codes are no longer stored as per accordance with PCI compliance (see article). This update removes any existing CVV codes from Tenants and recommends removing any from Bookings. This also follows Webervations' recent removal of CVV codes.  When processing payments for multiple bookings, the Web Form Assistant now automatically appears in front of the Bookings form.  There are new "Duplicate this Expense" and "Duplicate this Property" functions in the Expenses and Properties forms under the Options buttons.  These can be used to quickly duplicate an existing Expense or an entire Property along with Rates, Fees, Commissions, etc.  A new Placeholder option [Set Variable] has been added which allows creating user-defined variables within the templates.  These are helpful when using complex expressions.  The Placeholder option [NoLineBreak] was also added, which can be used to remove unwanted line breaks after Placeholders.  This is useful with conditional expression placeholders.  Also, corrected an issue with the Bookings form timeline grid.  The Reply feature in the Floating Calendar now allows a Discount or Adjustment to be specified on-the-fly to be included in the quote.  The Property Statement report will now exclude the Lodge Tax column if the Tax name is set to "N/A" in System Preferences.  Inactive Properties are now at the bottom of the Property selection list in the Bookings form.

• 5/9/2009 v.1.0.1795 - There is a new option in User Preferences to "Show Email Preview form" or not.  This option is available if you have selected either of the Mapi email methods.  Rental Rates can now be defined once for one or more properties and shared by other properties with the same (or similar rates), using the new "Use Rates for" selection in the Properties form Misc page.  This feature also allows overlaying additional rates for individual properties if needed.  A column was also added to the Properties form list grid to show these selections.  The Property Rates report was also updated.  Templates for Inquiry Replies and Generic Emails can now optionally generate a document as with other types of templates.  This allows including attached documents such as rental agreements along with inquiry replies generated from the Floating Calendar.  Other improvements were made with managing the forms displays.  You can now specify text in the Ad Source form to search for in emails in order to automatically set the Ad Source when creating bookings from the Floating Calendar's Paste All button.  The Placeholder option [Proper] was added which can be used to upper-case the first character of names and other text values.  The Import Data feature can now import Properties (in addition to Tenants and Contacts), for use when migrating data from previous systems.  The Booking Charts report has 2 new options for creating 3D graphical charts (in addition to the 2D charts).  See example here.  Another new option creates a 3D Property Comparison Chart.  See example here.  Rate Quotes now exclude the Security Deposit and Tax lines if they are 0 (rather than showing 0.00).

• 4/18/2009 v.1.0.1776 - The Post Transactions form now allows removing multiple transactions in addition to single transactions.  Document Templates created in Word 2007 can now be saved as the default ".Docx" file type.  This also works with Word 2007 "Forms" with Fill-in fields.  The Booking Chart detail report has a new option to only show the selected Rental Fees.  A total for the fees shown has also been added to the report.  This can be used to obtain a total for one or more fees.  In addition, indicators were added to the report for each fee, which shows if the fee was Sales taxed, Lodge taxed or flagged as Revenue.  A new checkbox was added to the Floating Calendar for specifying if you wish to Move the cursor to the top of the email after creating the Reply in Outlook.  Minor improvements to the Property Statement report were made.  The Tenants form now closes automatically when selecting "Create New Tenant" from the Bookings form Tenant selection button.  When posting Property Group web pages, a new Group Cleaning Schedule web page is also posted, which provides a consolidated online cleaning calendar.  See example here.  Also, the format of the web Cleaning Schedule has changed slightly to accommodate the new Group Cleaning Schedule web page.  The Properties form now includes "Property Group" and "Location"  pre-defined Filters in the "Show" drop-down list.  In the Document Templates form, a Reminder can now be specified in the Note field, which will notify you each time the template is generated.

• 4/6/2009 v.1.0.1761 - You can now create Available Property Lists from the Floating Calendar, as you can with the "Available?" feature in the Bookings form.  To do so, click on "Property" at the top of the Floating Calendar.  Corrected a minor issue with the "Find Text in Any Field" (F4 key) feature.  This feature now also remembers the last search text specified.  You can now do initial imports of Tenants and Contacts directly from Excel spreadsheets, rather than first saving them to another file format.  Updated the Floating Calendar's "Paste All" feature so that it can decipher more date variations in VRBO inquiries.  It can also now read HomeAway PM inquiries (in addition to normal HomeAway inquiries).  Changed the status color for Canceled bookings.  Property drop-down selections are now color-coded by property.  The Search for Available Properties feature can now search for Properties with specific Amenities also.  The Send Bulk Email option in both the Tenants and Contacts forms can now optionally send bulk emails directly from within the program using Generic Email type Templates.  The Bookings Chart report has a new option to "Show Payments Received".  Reply template Placeholders were added to access the Tenant Name, Phone and Email fields specified in the Floating Calendar.  All numeric type fields with calculator-style entry were improved.  The Check-in and Check-out date selections in the Bookings form and Floating Calendar have new speed settings for 1 Week and 1 Month.  Htm type Document Templates created in Word are now automatically converted to Web Page, Filtered. 

• 3/12/2009 v.1.0.1741 - The Floating Calendar can now read email inquiries directly from Microsoft Outlook without having to copy the email to the Windows Clipboard.  To use this feature, check the checkbox next to the "Clear" button and then click "Paste All" in the Floating Calendar.  This option will also create email Replies in Outlook automatically when clicking the "Reply" button in the Floating Calendar.  The Interface page of the Properties form has a new field for specifying a list of Property IDs and/or Name text for automatically identifying which property an email Inquiry is for.  This eliminates the need to select the Property when using the "Paste All" feature in the Floating Calendar.  These two features make it even easier to reply to Rental Inquiries than ever before!  The Document Templates form has a new button which can "Import the Latest Sample Templates", in order to get any new or updated Sample Templates, which are periodically included in program updates.  When specifying the Tenant in the Bookings form, the Tenant's default number of Adults, Childs and Pets is now copied to the Booking.  The Web Cleaning Schedule format has been improved.  Corrected an issue in the Property Statement report totals by property when the New Page option is deselected.  A new Received date was added to the User-defined Doc on the Bookings form Work Flow page.  This can be used for example, when you need to request approval from owners.  Clicking on "Show" in the form toolbars will now Requery the Selected Filter.  In the Floating Calendar you can now limit the list of Properties in the drop-down selection to only properties which are available for the selected dates, by clicking on "Property" next to the Property selection (very useful, try it!).  Corrected an issue on the Expenses report when selecting the Cleaning Expense Only option.  A new privilege was added to User Security for allowing Backup/Restore.

• 3/4/2009 v.1.0.1726 - The main screen size is remembered between sessions.  Corrected an issue with the Print Option in the Bookings form.  In the Workflow 2 page of the Bookings form you can now select the cleaner "-Do Not Clean-" in order to exclude this booking from cleaning schedules.  The Bookings Chart Report can now be limited to a selected list of Rental Fees.  A new "Base On" option has been added to Rental Fees, which applies the fee "If the Security Deposit is 0", as in Security Waiver Insurance fees.  The default Rate Type (Daily, Weekly, etc) for new bookings can now be set in the Properties form Misc page.  The graphical Bookings Calendar has a new option to specify the Maximum number of Months per Page.  The HomeAway Calendar interface has a new option to "Import" booked dates from HomeAway as "Blockout" Bookings.  This can be useful if Owners or other parties are updating your HomeAway calendars also.  See the Help topic "HomeAway Calendars Interface" for more info.  The "Expense Fees and Commissions" heading on the Property Statement report has been changed to "Booking Expenses".  A new button shortcut for Posting Imported Reservations has been added above the grid in the Bookings form. Direct links to specific Help topics have been added in various forms.

• 2/13/2009 v.1.0.1711 - The Property Statement report can now be run for date ranges based on Booked Nights, with the rental revenue and commissions allocated accordingly.  (Please see notes in the Help topic on Property Statement report).  The State field in various forms is no longer limited to 3 characters so that you can optionally enter the names of the foreign counties or states.  Backspacing at the beginning of fields will not jump to the previous field now.  The "Print this Record" option in the the Options button at the top of forms can now print multiple records also.  The folder selection dialog used in various places has been updated to work with Vista 64bit OS.  A new option was added to the Property Statement report to Page Break on each Property.  In the Bookings form Timeline grid, Right-clicking on Property or Tenant will open the selected form.  Notes entered on default Property Commissions are now copied to new Bookings.  An automatic check for new program updates is performed every few days and displayed on the bottom line of the main screen.  Monthly Extension bookings are now created with a default checkout day of the same day in the following month.  Multiple Commissions for the same Resource can be differentiated using the new "#" column in Commissions if necessary.  A new System Preference was added to use the Check-Out Date when Posting Accounting Transactions.  Fixed an issue with Funds on Account on the Property Statement report.

• 1/20/2009 v.1.0.1695 - You can now specify a fee based on the number of Pets which is then calculated automatically.  The Floating Calendar will also accept the number of Pets so that the Fee can be included in Rate Quotes.  A new "Quoted/Tentative Followup Reminder Date" has been added to the Bookings form Work Flow page.  Along with this, you can specify a default number of Days in the Properties form Misc page, in order to automatically calculate this reminder when creating new bookings.  The purpose of this reminder is for those who wish to be reminded to follow up on Quoted or Tentative bookings.  When setting the Next Payment date in the Booking form, there are three new options for setting the next payment amount.  When viewing Alerts, the Print button now creates a formatted report that can be printed or emailed.  The Expense Report can now be limited to selected Vendors.  There is a new "My Photo" specification in the User Preferences.  This can used for a self portrait or company log and included in various Templates and Emails using the %MyPhoto% placeholder.  Some improvements were made to the Filtering features.  The Expenses form can now include Planned/Scheduled Work, including Reminders.  This provides the ability to schedule planned maintenance and other types of repairs.  The Expense Report has also been updated.  The Web Form Assistant can now be used with the PPI payment processing website (Check the new checkbox on the Browser form to allow popups).  The Expense Report has a new option to only show Cleaning Expenses.  The Ad and Referral Sources report now includes the Date the booking was Entered.  You can select on this date too.  The Pay Fees and Commissions form now exlcudes Cleanings for bookings with less than a Booked status.  The Floating Calendar has a new "Clear" button.

• 1/5/2009 v.1.0.1678 - The "Available?" button on the Bookings form can now use Templates to generate formatted lists of available properties (including photos), which are available for a specific date range.  See Example Here.  All Html formatted Replies can now be viewed without pasting them into the email first, by using the "Show me" button when generating replies.  The Auto Email Report Templates can now use Html Formatted Email text.  A new Placeholder %PropertyPhoto1%, allows dynamically inserting photos in both Word Docs and Html Docs/Emails.  It can be used with the new Placeholder Option [Width=xxx] to specify the width of the Photo.  There is another new Placeholder Option [Photo] which allows easily inserting any image in Word Docs and Html Docs/Emails.  The speed of converting Html formatted Replies to the Clipboard has been improved. Some improvements were made to both the Word Document and Html Sample Agreements in the Sample Files folder.  When using the "Copy Rate Quote to Clipboard" feature from the Booking form's Options button, you can now select either Html or Plain Text format.  You can also select any of the Reply Templates as well.  In the Floating Calendar's "Fill Clipboard With" button you can also select either Html or Plain Text format.  All Note fields now show Hyperlinks if they contain web addresses.  The Reason and Ad Source codes now have "-Not Specified-" options which can be selected in Reports.  There is a new "Doc Photo" field in the Properties form which can be used to specify a smaller sized photo for use in Document and Email Templates in order to limit the size of generated documents and emails.  Resolved an issue with Templates using Word 2007.  Photos in the Properties form are now isometric rather than stretched to fill the frames.

• 12/19/2008 v.1.0.1665 - This update includes serveral enhancements to the Document Templates:  You do not need to save Word Html templates as "Web Page Filtered" files.  You can save them as "Web page".  Also, you can create both Email Text and Reply Text in Html format.  This allows formatting emails with bolding, tables, photos, etc.  In addition, your email message Templates can be a saved ".Htm" file created in Word or another editor.  See Example Here.  To use this feature, check the option on the Email text page of your Template and select the new Email setting in the Preferences form for "Extended Mapi".  Other improvements include a new Placeholder Option called [FullPath].  This allows you to specify "dynamic" photos in your Html Templates.  For example, including the following Html tag in your Html Template will insert the first photo for the current property: <img src="%Prop.Photo1Path%[FullPath]">.  Posted web pages for Property and Property Groups have been enhanced.  See examples Here.  You can now use Password Protected Word Forms in your Templates (a nice way to send agreements).  There is a new "Password" field for this on the Document page of the Templates form.  The Floating Calendar's "Paste All" feature has been updated to recognize the new Inquiry Reply format from VacationRentals.com.  The Booking Chart Detail Reports  now allow selecting dates based on "Nights Booked".  Booking Reminders in the Bookings form are now cleared when changing the Property.

• 12/11/2008 v.1.0.1650 - Product name changed to "Vacation RentPro".  The Property Web pages format has been improved.  There is a new option to "Skip Photos" when posting property web pages, in case you've only changed the text or layout and not the photos.  There is a new "Format" option in the Property Groups Web Post tab, which allows posting group pages with or without embedded calendars.  Or you can post both formats with links to switch back and forth.  See examples Here.  A new Group Page Summary fields was added to the Properties form Web page.  When Checking for New Updates from the Tools menu, and a new update is available, you do not need to re-run the application "As Administrator" in order to install the update.  The program does this for you now.  The Rates drop-down selection in the Bookings excludes rates for previous periods.  Forms have a new look with more color to help offset the entry fields.  The Booking Status drop-down now has colors for each status.  There are 2 new Booking Statuses which can be used for your own reporting purposes if needed (Closed 2, Closed 3).  The Graphical Booking Calendar report has 2 new options to show the calendar without any text, and with just the Property names.  The Commissions Report now allows selecting commission recipients.  Improvements to the Bookings grid on startup.

• 12/2/2008 v.1.0.1642 - The icon image used for the application desktop shortcut has a different file name.  Note, if you've created any shortcuts manually, you may need to change the icon by right-clicking the shortcut and selecting Properties.  New Placeholder Options have been added including: [ShortDate], [NoDash] and [NoComma].  These can be useful with the AutoFill Payment Processing feature.  Script Errors are now ignored in the Web Form Assistant.  Also, you can now keep the Web Form Assistant open and logged into your Payment Processing site in order to process a different booking.  There are several new Functions available for the %Expression% Placeholder (See Help).  The Floating Calendar now shows the color of the selected property.  Expression Placeholders in Html templates now ignore html characters that Word inserts behind the scenes.  The Available date range bars in the Bookings timeline now overlay booked dates.  The Housekeeping Report now includes Number of Adults/Childs/Pets for the Arriving tenant in case the Cleaner needs to include extra towels, etc.  The Alerts view popup now shows a portion of the Reminder text without having to open the Booking.  The Property has an additional "Info3" note field.  Some form display improvements were made.  There is a new checkbox in the Floating Calendar to specify Auto Reply when selecting a Template.  Corrected a minor issue with the Property Statement and Occupancy reports.

• 11/14/2008 v.1.0.1624 - A new Template type called "Owner Agreement" as been added and can be generated and sent from the Documents tab in the Properties form.  This can be used to generate and send Management Agreements to Owners.  When creating your template, you can use the sample Owner Agreement html file in the Sample Files folder.  In the Floating Calendar you can now go directly to the Properties from by clicking on the word "Property" next to the Property selection.  The Billing Info form now includes the Property Name in the Comment field for pasting into Virtual Terminals.  A new "Active" flag was added to the Tenants form.  A new Expense Report was added to the Reports selection.  In report headers, property selections are now kept to one line.  There are two new placeholders to show Additional Tenants.  A new and exciting feature has been added to VRP which provides "Auto Form Fill" for Payment Processing web sites.  (Note, AutoFill requires a 3-user license).  This feature is available from the "$" sign button on the Bookings Billing Info page.  It allows you to fill in the credit card transaction details with the click of a button.  Please see the Help topic on Payment Processing.  You can see a video of this feature on the Slide Show page.  A new placeholder option ([ReverseName]) has been added which reverses Last Name, First to First Last.  The Property Statement and Occupancy reports now include a report for each property that has no bookings when multiple properties are selected.

• 10/22/2008 v.1.0.1596 - The Bulk Email options in both the Tenants and Contacts forms have been updated so that the lists of email addresses can be processed in "batches". This is useful since most email servers have a maximum limit on the number of emails addressed in a single email.  There is a new feature in the Tenant form Options for "Collecting Prospect Tenants from Websites".  This can be used to quickly add prospect Tenants or other business leads for purposes of sending bulk email to market your properties.  This feature requires a 5 user license.  There is a new "Ad Notes" field in the Tenants form which is used to record both Prospect Collection Info and Bulk Advertising Emails Sent.  Minor changes were made to reports for spacing and margin requirements on some printers.  The status of "Refund Due" in the Bookings form now has its own display color.  A message with instructions is now displayed when an OLE email error in Vista occurs due to the program running in a different security zone than your mail program.  You can now associate "Additional Tenants" with a Booking by using a new "Right-arrow" button next to the Tenant selection on the Bookings form.  This can be used for example, when you wish to track multiple parties who are paying different portions of a booking, or any other purpose.  Zoom Edit buttons have been added to the Phone and Email fields on the Tenants and Contacts forms.

• 10/8/2008 v.1.0.1585 - The Rental Info page of the Bookings form has two new options to "Ignore Check-in or Check-out Alerts".  These can be used for example, to turn off Alerts for Owner Bookings or Extended bookings.  The order of Tenant Names in the Tenants form is now case insensitive.  Extension Bookings are now created with the same rate, number of guests, and Ad Source as the original booking.  The rows in the Bookings form timeline have been slightly expanded vertically for easier viewing.  There is a new "Reason" drop-down selection in the Bookings form, along with a new "Reasons form" for maintaining different Reasons you wish to track.  These can be used to track why tenants booked or why they canceled (ie. Wedding, Postponed trip, etc).  The Bookings Chart and Follow-up reports have been updated to allow selecting and reporting Reasons on reports.  The date selection popup calendars have been updated to show the currently Selected number of days.  The Bookings form date popup also allows selecting Check-in date plus Number of days, as in the Floating Calendar. "Zip" code fields have been changed to "Postcode".

• 9/23/2008 v.1.0.1567 - The Ad Source Report now allows selecting which Ad Sources to include on the report.  There is a new "$" sign button on the Bookings form Billing Info page, which displays the Tenant Billing info in a "Floating" window on top of your Browser.  This can be used in conjunction with a new User Preference (Options 2 page) field called "Payment Processing website" for specifying your Virtual Terminal or Payment Processing website URL.  This makes it easy to use any Virtual Terminal or Payment Processing merchant you choose by allowing you to view, copy and paste the billing info into your payment processing form.  The graphical Bookings Calendar now includes the user-defined Holidays on the Calendar.  In the Properties form "Misc" page, you can now specify the default booking option for "Keep Web Calendar Dates Open".  This option was recently added to the Bookings form.  The Bookings form Options button has an option that will now do all 3 web calendar update and interface functions for the current Booking's Property.  The Property Statement Report now sorts by Check-in Date, rather than Book ID.

• 9/11/2008 v.1.0.1552 - A new Booking Status called "Canceled w/Revenue" as been added.  This can be used for example, to denote Canceled bookings which have revenue that you wish to record. Such as when a Tenant has canceled a booking after your refund cutoff date. This status can be selected on various reports in order to include this revenue.  When clicking on dates in the Floating Calendar or the Bookings form, a new option was added to "Show Rates for this Date".  The Help for the Query Designer has been updated to a new format.  The application shortcut icons have been changed.  On the Work Flow page of the Bookings form you can now specify to "Keep Web Calendar Dates Open".  This can be used in cases where you do not want to block out dates on your Web Calendars for a particular booking.  The Post Web Calendars function has a new option to post only "Changed" calendars, thus making the calendar updates much faster when posting all calendars.  The system keeps track of the last calendar posted and the web location it was posted to.  A minor issue was fixed when posting Property Groups where the Property web site specified is different than the Group web site.

• 9/5/2008 v.1.0.1545 - The Floating Calendar has a new option to "Set Check-in Date and Number of Nights".  The calendar now also highlights selected dates and shows overlapping booked dates in Red.  The Bookings form date selection calendar has a new option to "Move Check-In Date", which allows moving the booking forwards or backwards.  The Timeline grid header has also been changed to help identify weekend days.  Web calendars and property pages now show the date and time they were posted.  There is a new "Occupancy Report" with many options, including whether to show average revenue per booked nights, and the ability to merge properties.  You can now create Queries from the booking form that include the Booking Payments table.  The Today Line in the Bookings Timeline now overlays on "top" of bookings for easier visibility.  The Bookings Calendar has two new options to: Set the Maximum Lines per Cell, and to Show Check-out Days.  Using these and turning off the Compact Calendar option will show Properties on a straight line across the week with more or less info that you wish to show.

  8/29/2008 v.1.0.1536 - The Bookings form Timeline has a new "Go To" button allowing you to jump forwards or backwards 1 to 6 months.  The Paste All button in the Floating Calendar has been updated to accommodate VRBO's new format for email inquiries.  A new "Base Fee % On" option has been added to the Rental Fees, and is called "Nights after Min Days".  This allows adding discounts or fees for "each night" reserved "after" the specified Minimum Days.  The Linked Bookings feature has been enhanced for pre-checking double-bookings.  A notice is now displayed in the Bookings form when the Check-in date is set to over 1 week prior to the current date.  In the Properties form Misc page you can now set default reminders based on the Check-out date (in addition to Check-in date).  The Property Rates form has a new button to allow Copying and Deleting Rates for a specified Year.  This is helpful when updating rates for new years and optionally, purging rates for old years.  When saving a Canceled or Declined booking, which has open reminders, a message is displayed with an option to remove the reminders.  Holidays in the various calendars are now displayed in Red.

• 8/16/2008 v.1.0.1522 - Commissions can now be based on different amounts within each booking.  For example, a commission to the rental agent can be 10% of Rent, and the commission to the manager can be 10% of Rent + Fees + Security Deposit. Several customers have asked for this so we decided to provide this feature.  There is a new Cleaning Note on the Bookings form Work Flow 2 page, which can be used to specify special instructions to the Cleaner.  This note is included in the Housekeeping schedule and the Online Cleaning calendars.  It can also be included in Templates using the %CleaningNote% placeholder.  The Pay Fees and Commissions form has been changed so that Cleaning Fees now use a transaction date of the Booking checkout date.  Other minor changes have been made to the form also.  The format of printed Vouchers have changed slightly also.  A new Language option for Australia has been added to System Preferences.  Also State fields have been expanded to 3 characters.  The top toolbar now includes abbreviations.  FTP backups now include any sub-folders in the Vrpdata\MyFiles folder.  There are 2 new hotkeys you can use (F4 and F5) while in the forms which have Filter features.  See the "Filter" button at the top of the forms for which functions these apply to.  (These are two very handy functions, in case you're not aware of them already).  You can now execute various forms using Alt+... hotkeys.  For example Alt+B will open the Bookings form.  Also, the "Esc" keyboard key will now close the currently active form.

• 8/6/2008 v.1.0.1511 - For new users who have existing Tenants or Contacts & Resources from a previous system, these can now be imported from Excel spreadsheets.  A Country field has been added to the Properties form.  In the Properties form Photos page, you can now click on the thumbnails in order to view the photos.  Invoices printed from the Bookings form Options button now include payments received.  Selecting Check-in and Check-out dates in the Bookings form can now be done in a single popup calendar.  Template Placeholders for Number of Adults, Children and Pets have been added.  The "Available?" button in the Bookings form can now show a date range without applying a filter.  Corrected an issue when selecting Contacts in the Email preview form, and also with the Reminder alerts and Webervations import.  The Graphical Booking Calendar has a new option for showing Available days in color.  Also, properties on the calendar are lined up horizontally across weeks.

• 7/14/2008 v.1.0.1495 - By using the Expenses form you can now maintain an "Owner Funds on Account" balance, which will show on the Property Statement report as "Funds on Account".  You can also add "Payments to Owner" transactions, which will also show on the Property Statement report.  See Help for more info.  The Expenses form has been upgraded to show a "Running Total", and also allow selecting pre-defined Filters and Property Filters.  The Floating Calendar can now automatically parse out the Tenant Name, Phone, Email, Requested Dates, and Number of Adults/Children from email inquiries in one click.  See the new Clipboard button labeled "All" on the Floating Calendar.  This feature works with inquiries originating from HomeAway.com, VRBO.com, VacationRentals.com and other sites, making it easier to create new bookings.  Credit Card information is now "Hidden" from view by default.  A new password in the System Preferences can be set in order to allow Viewing and Editing of Credit Card information in forms.  This helps decrease the risks when people walk away from their computers, or laptops are stolen, etc.  The Property Statement report now shows Check-out date if the Check-out date was used in the selection criteria.  Both the Tenants and Bookings forms have a new "Billing Notes" field. A new System Preference for "CC Password Option" was added.  New Bookings will now default the property if you have only one property.

• 6/29/2008 v.1.0.1488 - HomeAway.com calendars (formerly Rentors.org) can now be automatically checked for accuracy, for all properties, at the click of a button.  Any required changes are listed in a window that is viewable while you are updating your calendars.  This allows you to easily keep your HomeAway calendars up to date, and is a useful feature if you use their calendars.  See the Help topic "HomeAway Calendars Interface" for more info.  (Note, this feature requires at least a 2-user license).  Also, Web Availability Calendars posted by VRP now have a new hidden tag containing availability info.  This allows availability info to be easily retrieved by other online sites and servcies.  Currently, JustPerfectVacationRentals.com has an interface utilizing this capability in order to read VRP availability info into their system.  The Bookings form timelines were improved to speed up the display.  Web Availability Calendars will now exclude the "Tentative" legend when the Property is set to not show Tentative bookings in the calendar.  All display messages can now be easily copied to the Windows Clipboard using a new icon or the Right-click menu.  A new User Preference for Envelope Printer Alignment was added.

• 6/18/2008 v.1.0.1478 - All Reports will now generate a report when the selection criteria returns no results, rather than just displaying a message.  The Floating Calendar's Send Future Bookings email features have been changed to display the email form in the main application window, and some features have been enhanced.  The Property Statement for Owner report has a new option to "Group by Property Owner".  This option will sort properties by owner and start the page number at 1 for each owner.  This new option also works with the "Auto Email reports" feature, thereby, allowing you to send only one report/email per property owner, rather than separate emails for each property.  You can now specify the default "Tenant Type" in the User Preferences, which will be used when new Tenants are added.  The Property Statement for Owner report has a new option to "Show Taxes Collected".  Note, that the Booking Status and Check-out date columns have been removed from the report.  A fix was made to the translation of Placeholders in Word Docs.  A new option for posting both the Web Calendars and Interfaces with one click has been added in order to combine these functions.  In the Bookings form, the Next Payment Due date is set to today if it calculates to a previous day.

• 6/8/2008 v.1.0.1465 - Fee names shown in templates (using the %FeesList% or %FeeNames% placeholders) have been expanded to always show the long Fee Name (instead of the Short Fee Name when a Note is added to the Fee).  Please check the column alignment in your Templates if you use these placeholders.  Booked dates shown in the Floating Calendar are now automatically updated if the calendar is currently open while Saving or Deleting Bookings in the Bookings form.  The Property Fees form has a new "Short Note" column which allows you to specify a default note for fees which are flagged to be automatically added to new bookings.  The "Capture Image" feature (see small Camera button in the main toolbar) now captures the screen and forms images as a .jpg file and provides an option to email the image.  Placeholders in Word Doc Templates can now insert large blocks of text such as Note fields, etc.  The Filter Option for "Find text in Any Field" in the Bookings form now searches Tenant fields also, making it easier to search for bookings based on Tenant email addresses, notes, etc.  New Keyboard shortcuts: Alt+F and Alt+O have been added to all forms which have the "Filter" and "Options" toolbar buttons, allowing these features can be accessed quickly without using the mouse.  Negative payments will now export to QuickBooks.  The Floating Calendar is now minimized automatically when previewing generated documents.

• 5/21/2008 v.1.0.1454 - All email functions now provide the option of saving sent emails and attachments into a "Docs folder" stored separately for each individual Booking, Tenant or Contact.  There is also a new button added to each of these forms allowing you to open the Docs folders in order to view, copy, add or delete saved emails or any other files.  The Bookings form popup calendars for both Check-in and Check-out dates now show color-shaded days pertaining to other bookings for the specified property.  This provides another means to easily see other booked dates while selecting dates for the current booking.  The "Options" button in the Bookings, Tenant, and Contacts forms has been moved to the toolbar at the top of the forms.  There is a new "Flat Rate" rate type which can be selected in the Bookings form "Rate Override" or when Replying to Inquiries in the Floating Calendar.  This allows you to specify a flat rate regardless of the number of nights booked.

• 5/13/2008 v.1.0.1447 - The Bookings form has a new "Available?" button above the grid, which provides another means to quickly search for available dates in a specified range across multiple properties.  This also allows printing or pasting into emails - the list of available properties along with their descriptions, rates, and available dates.  See the Help topic on "Searching Available Dates" for more info.  The Floating Calendar now shows Tentative status bookings in shades of Red.  Actual/confirmed bookings are shown in other colors in order to help identify dates that are "open or Tentative" vs. Unavailable.  Holding the mouse over the Status column in the Bookings grid now shows the Total Sale amount of the bookings without having to open the bookings.  There is a new pre-defined filter in the Bookings form for "Payments Due".  There is also a new option in the Bookings "Options..." button to "Send emails for the Bookings listed".  This option can be used for example to send Payment Due notices for all Bookings with payments due.  See the new Help topic on "Emailing Multiple Bookings".

• 5/4/2008 v.1.0.1441 - Important: This version includes a new Template Placeholder and a change to an existing Placeholder.  The new Placeholder is %ActualSale% which is the Total Sale of the Booking - and acknowledges any processing fee or discount based on if the booking is marked as 'Paid by cash/check'.  The existing %TotalSale% Placeholder was modified to now be the Sale amount plus the processing fee or discount - regardless if the booking is marked as 'Paid by cash/check' or not.  Therefore, you may wish to change your templates that use the %TotalSale% placeholder to use %ActualSale% instead if you intend to show the "Actual Sale" (acknowledging if it was paid by cash/check or not).  For Rate Quotes and Inquiry Replies you'll want to continue using %TotalSale%.  However, for Rental Receipts you'll want to use %ActualSale%.  Please review your Templates and change them as preferred. In addition, this version allows setting up Default Booking Reminders in the Properties form "Misc page".  Also, the standard Rate Quotes used in Word and Html Templates now suppress printing of the Adjustment and Processing Fee amounts if these are zero.

• 4/29/2008 v.1.0.1438 - In the Bookings form you can now Filter on the Fees and Commissions, either from the Fees page or Commissions page, or from the Query Designer.  Report Previews are now shown in a separate window so that it is easier to close the preview display.  You can now use the new %MyFilesFolder% Placeholder in the Property Photos page, too.  After posting web pages, you can now Ctrl+click on the links shown in order to view the posted web pages.  The last Backup folder selected is now remembered between backups and restores.  In all Accounts/Categories you can now include the 'Class' to post transactions to in QuickBooks and Quicken (using '%C=Class').  The grids in both the Bookings and Properties forms now maintain the color coding of the currently selected row in the grid.  There is a new option in the Bookings form 'Options' button which allows 'Locking in the amounts'.  This allows you to change the dates of the booking without effecting the total rent.  This can be used for example when a tenant leaves early and you want to open up the dates without changing the total rent, and other scenarios.

• 4/16/2008 v.1.0.1426 - The Housekeeping Report can now be run for selected Cleaners.  The Booking Chart report has a new option to show Tenant detail information.  A new %MyFilesFolder% Placeholder exists for specifying the "MyFiles" disk folder location, which can be used to specify attachment files, logo or signature images in Document Templates.  In the various Calendar popups, you can now jump forward or backward 6 months by clicking on the month name.  Inquiry Reply template text can now optionally have Html formatting.  A log of Backups and Restores is now kept by the system.  You can view the Backup log in the File menu.  There is a new User Preference for Days to Remind between doing Backups.  There is a new User Preference for automatically changing the Booking status from Quoted to Tentative when the Agreement is sent.  You can now embed %Expression% placeholders within %Expression% placeholders in Document Templates to allow more flexibility with expressions.  The Booking Chart report has a new option to include Security Deposits in the Gross Receipts.  You can now export to Excel Tenant and Contact info (See the Options button on both forms).  This can be used for Word Mail Merge, etc.

• 3/26/2008 v.1.0.1412 - The Security Deposit Return Date can now be overridden in the Bookings form, and changed from the calculated date based on the Property setting.  The Housekeeping Cleaning Schedule report now includes the number of Adults/Childs/Pets.  FTP backups now also keep a copy of the backup zip file on the local drive.  In the Bookings form, you can now designate the originating booking for "Extension bookings".  Extension bookings can be generated when tenants extend their stay by selecting a new option in the Bookings form's "Options" button.  See the Help topic on "Extending Bookings" for more info.  When specifying "Special Check-in or Check-out Times" in the Bookings form, a new Red box is added to the beginning or end of the Bookings form timeline grid.  There are two new options for "Printing Invoices" in the Bookings form's "Options" button.  See the Help topic on "Printing Invoices" for more info.  When defining Htm formatted Document Templates you can now specify whether to convert the document to a PDF file or not.  The Booking Chart reports has a new option to chart Total Sale in addition to Total Revenue.

• 3/12/2008 v.1.0.1403 - The Bookings form now alerts you when manually changing the Booking Status to "Fully Paid" when there is still an Amount Due.  You can now resize the Bookings form "Horizontally", in addition to vertically.  It can also be "Maximized" to fill the entire screen.  The columns in the Time Line grid can also be resized.  There is a new option to "Base" Rental Fee percentages on - called "Security Deposit".  This can be helpful if you charge Tenants a Processing Fee on the Security Deposit separately.  Also, you can now specify the default "Apply Processing Fee" setting in the Property Fees form.  The Floating Calendar now allows you to choose the type of rate up front when clicking the "Create a New Booking" button.  Added validation for JCB credit cards.

• 2/24/2008 v.1.0.1395 - This version adds the option to Interface with Webervations.com for Online Bookings & Interactive Availability Calendars.  This requires that you already have an account and properties set up on Webervations.com.  Currently, they charge $80/year, and this includes multiple "Units".  "Units" in Webervations is the same as Properties in VRP.  Note, that the interface feature in VRP requires a 3 user or more license.  You can upgrade to this license on the Purchase page if needed.  We are excited about our relationship with Webervations and their experience in this area.  We think this is a great site with outstanding features at a great price.  Note, that Webervations is close to rolling out a new interface on their site that will provide more options and ease of use.  Along with this, the Properties form has a new "Interface" page, for specifying your Webervations Account and interface options.  Please see the new Help topic in VRP for "Online Booking Interfaces" for more info.
   

  Click on the link below to view a sample of how you can have your Webervations Online Bookings site appear. You can add a link such as this to your existing Property web sites, (after changing the "memberid=" portion to be your Account ID).

  http://www.webervations.com/magic-scripts/resbook.asp?memberid=bbbinnres

  Webervations offers many different options for how you want your booking site to appear. You can learn about these options on their site.
   

• 2/18/2008 v.1.0.1387 - You can now designate that a Booking has a "Special Check-in or Check-out" by checking either of the checkboxes next to the Check-in and Check-out times in the Bookings form.  This will also cause the Check-in and Check-out dates in the Bookings grid to show bright red in order to alert you when viewing the grid by Bookings.  The Property Linking feature has been changed to only block out linked properties when the Booking status is set to "Signed Agreement" or higher and not "Closed".  This is so that bookings for related properties will only be created automatically when there is a firm booking.  The Available Dates inserted in the Inquiry Reply templates (using the %AvailDates% Placeholder) now ignore Tentative bookings, meaning that Tentatively booked dates will show as available in Inquiry Replies.  Fixed a recent issue with posting Property Group web pages.  The Book ID column in the Bookings from grid now shows with a grey background for Linked bookings to help identify these at a glance.  In the Query Designer and Filter Recall you can now modify someone else's saved Filter if needed.  The Commissions & Payments Received report now identifies cash and credit card payments seperately with totals for each.  When sending emails from the Bookings form, you can now select to "Send Email without Document Preview". The selection for "Show/Hide dates outside the current month" in the Floating Calendar is now remembered when rerunning the form.

• 2/7/2008 v.1.0.1382 - There is a new item in the Tools menu to View the Current Users and when they last accessed the application.  When creating a new booking, any Credit Card info for the Tenant is now copied to the new booking.  When specifying the Next Payment Due date in the booking, an alert message is displayed if the Credit Card expires before the payment due date.  The Credit Card# in the Bookings form now shows the CC Type (as determined from the CC#).  The Contact and Resources form now includes a "Country" field.  This form also includes a new "Options" button, which allows printing envelopes and doing mass emailings for Contacts (the same as Tenants).  If you use the option in the Floating Calendar's Tenant Name field to include a mailing address after the Tenant Name, then you must now include the Country as the last item of the address.  See Help on "Creating a Booking from the Floating Calendar" for more info.  The Bookings form Filter drop-down selection at the top of the form now remembers the "most recently used selections".  This can be turned on and off by right-clicking on the drop-down box.  Other minor changes.

• 1/20/2008 v.1.0.1377 - Holidays can now be specified in the System Preferences and will appear in all date selection calendars and the Floating Calendar.  Individual Booking Fee amounts can now be referenced in the Templates by using a new Placeholder: "%Fee.FeeShortName.Amount%, where "FeeShortName" refers to an individual Fee's Short Name.  This is also available to "Inquiry Reply" Templates.  See Help on Placeholders.  There is a new option to "Exclude Cleaning Expenses" on the Property Statement reports.  The download time when doing "Check for updates" is reduced to approx 50%.  Also, you can now specify a disk location to download the updates to, and then subsequently install the updates from this location.  This is helpful for network installations so that one user can download the updates to a network drive and then other users on the network can install from that disk location.  A new "camera" button in the toolbar allows you to capture / print an image of the screen or the currently active form.  The Property Statement report has a new option to "Show Rental Rates" on the report.

• 1/8/2008 v.1.0.1372 - There is a new feature to allow tracking "Owner Pre-payments" in the Commissions page of the Bookings form.  Owner pre-payments are not actually commissions, but are deducted from the Net Due to Owner amount on the Property Statements.  As such, the Property Statement report now includes a new section to show Owner Pre-payments and the amount deducted.  Other minor changes: The Bookings form grid rows have been made slightly taller to make the grid a little easier to read.  Also, the Filter of "Current & Future Bookings" now includes "previous bookings" as you click the "Back" buttons in the Timeline.  The "Property" and "Reply" drop-down selections in the Floating Calendar have a new Right-click option to turn on and off the "Recent Items" list when making selections.  The graphical Bookings Chart reports now include months in the selected date range which do not have bookings.  There is also a new option on this report to specify how to calculate average nights and average rental revenue.  Various reports have been modified to exclude "Linked bookings" generated by the recently added Property Linking feature.

• 12/26/2007 v.1.0.1361 - A new feature called "Property Linking" has been added.  (Note, this feature requires a 3-user license or higher).  This allows defining Parent/Child Property relationships for purposes of automatically blocking out dates when booking adjoining properties of a larger suite, and vice versa.  Property relationships can be defined in the Properties form Misc page.  Added a new Booking Status called "Declined" in order to provide the option of distinguishing between bookings that were only Quoted and then declined by the tenant, and those that were actually booked and later canceled.  Use of this new status is optional.  There is a new System Preference option called "Explicit Edit Mode".  Turning this mode "on" will require pressing an "Edit" button at the top of each form before making any changes.  There is a new "Quoted Bookings" option in the Bookings form pre-defined Filters.  Selecting this option automatically selects the "Show Quotes" check-box also.  There is a new option in the Bookings form Options button to "Create a New Owner or Blockout Booking".  This provides a second and faster method to block out days for a property.  Other minor changes.

• 12/20/2007 v.1.0.1357 - The Floating Calendar can now be "expanded" to show multiple months (up to 5) by clicking on the new Expand button.  You can see an example here.  Note that this requires additional overhead and can slow down the calendar slightly when changing months and properties.  When adding new Payments in the Bookings form, the payment amount defaults to 0 now, not the amount due.  This is so the prompt for clearing the Next Payment Due can be triggered when a payment in is made in full.  The Cleaning Notice placeholders for %PreviousBooking, %ThisBooking% and %NextBooking% now include the number of Adults, Children and Pets.  The Bookings form grid has been improved as follows: 1) Setting the Timeline Compression factor to 0 spreads out the days.  2) Columns for each day, (not just weekend days), now have alternate shading.  3) The Check-in and Check-out dates in the grid have been changed to the format as in "Dec 01".  These changes should make it easier to identify days in the grid and view more days in the timeline.  Also, the grids in all forms are now a little more "mouse-wheel friendly" - by not requiring you to first click into the grid if the grid does not currently have the focus.  There is a new Property Title field on the Properties form Web page for specifying the web page title bar text.  Three new fields have been added to the Property Groups form: Title, Short Description and Long Description.  These allow you to add text to the property group web pages, similar to the property pages.  The field Right-click menus now show the Copy, Cut and Paste options.  Fixed an issue when emailing multiple attachments using the Smtp option.

• 12/13/2007 v.1.0.1345 - The Floating Calendar has two new buttons to show the "Calendar Web Site" and "Property Web Site".  These provide a means to quickly access your calendars on Rentors.org, for example.  The web sites can be specified in the Properties form.  You can also specify the number of Adults / Children in the Floating Calendar now.  This enables the inclusion of Fees based on Extra Persons in the generated Rate Quotes.  The number of Adults/Children is also used when Creating a New Booking from the Floating Calendar.  Added an option to the Bookings and Properties forms to specify whether Security Deposits are Commissionable or not.  Implemented verification of current licenses for program updates.  The uploading speed of multiple web pages has been increased.  You can now post a Property Group web page (without reposting each individual property page). The maximum length of the Property Summary field has been increased.  Other minor changes.

• 12/7/2007 v.1.0.1340 - For users who have a 5 user license or higher, there is a new option in the Tools menu for designing queries and reports using "any" tables in the database.  This is for experienced SQL users who need to export or report on information for which the current system does not already provide.  This update also includes other enhancements including the following: The Name of the various Note fields in the Bookings form can be customized in System Preferences so that the use of these notes can be specified.  The Bookings Calendar Report has a new option to post the report directly to an FTP web site.  The Bookings Calendar also has two more options for specifying what information to include on the Calendar (ie. Tenant Names).  The FTP Backup System Preference can now include the backup filename.  The Bookings form grid has two new buttons for Fast Backward and Fast Forward.  The Bookings Chart Report can be run now directly from the Options button on the Bookings form.  Fixed an issue with auto emailing reports and printing envelopes.

• 11/29/2007 v.1.0.1335 - You can now design and send your Document Templates as Microsoft Word documents.  This provides a third option for creating Templates, and provides the benefits of: 1) Allowing you to format your documents anyway you want with images, footers, etc.  2) Allows you to make any special changes to the generated document before clicking the email Send button.  See the Help topic on Word Document Templates.  Fees can now be created for "Extra Persons" and "Extra Fees per night".  See the "Base % on" selection in the Rental Fees.  The Extra Fees can be useful, for example, if the tenant wants to rent a parking space, or have coffee served each morning.  Also, you can now specify the "Standard Number of Persons" and an amount to "Pay Cleaner per Extra Person" in the Property form's "Misc" page.  The extra amount to pay the cleaner will get calculated in the Bookings form automatically.  The background image in the Floating Calendar has been changed to a gradient color.  A few people said it was hard to read the the text over the image.

• 11/20/2007 v.1.0.1328 - Your Company Name, (optionally specified in System Preferences) is now included in the header of all reports.  The Floating Calendar's Property and Reply drop-down selections now "remember" the most recently selected items, and lists these at the top of the drop-down lists.  This facilitates selecting commonly used items.  Other minor changes.

• 10/31/2007 v.1.0.1325 - A new check-box has been added to the Rental Fees in order to designate whether or not to include each fee in Commission calculations.  Previously, the "Is Revenue" check-box served this purpose.  This allows you to designate these two categories independently now.  The Property Statement report has been changed to: 1) simplify the columns shown, and 2) include Taxes and Processing Fees in the Total Revenue according to the designation in each Booking.  This may or may not effect your Net Check to Owner amount, depending if you have Taxes and Processing Fees flagged as Revenue in your bookings.  Please double-check your next Property Statement reports.  A new Placeholder Option called [Value] is available.  (See Help on Placeholders for more info).  Also, you can now do date calculations on Placeholders.  (ie. %CheckInDate%[-30] will insert a date 30 days prior to the check-in date).  The graphical Bookings Calendar report has a new option to show the Check-In/Out times and Other Info.  This allows the report to be "another" option for Housekeeping use.  A new Placeholder %PaymentsList2% has been added which includes payment notes.  Added a "Reply-to" tab to the Document Templates form, which allows overriding the default Reply-to for emails sent.  The default Reply-to is specified in User Preferences.  Web pages can now be posted to an FTP site without a folder name specified.  A new Report Option was added to the Booking Chart Report, which shows Taxes Received.

• 10/24/2007 v.1.0.1320 - The Filter button's "Find Text in Any Field" option now includes the Tenant name in the Bookings form and Vendor name in the Expense form when it searches.  This Filter option can be very handy in case you haven't used it before, and is available in all forms.  A "Lock-in Rate" option has been added to the "Rate" drop-down box on the Bookings form.  This new option "Locks-in" the rate regardless if the Booking dates change to a different Rate period.  A new option has been added to the Bookings form (Options button) to allow changing the Rate Calculation Method for existing bookings.  A new "Property Rates" report was added to the Reports menu.  The application has been updated to the latest underlying technology released by Microsoft this month.  New runtime libraries are included in this update.  If you notice any issues, please report them to us promptly.  Actual bookings now overlay any Quoted and Tentative bookings in the "View by Property" grid on Bookings form.

• 10/20/2007 v.1.0.1313 - You can now specify the Rental Rate Calculation Method for each Property.  This determines how default rates are retrieved from the Property Rates table.  The two methods are: "Use the Check-In date" or "Use an Average of rates that match the booking dates".  This allows rates for bookings that cross multiple rate date ranges to reflect the different rates.  As before, you can always override the rates on Bookings or Inquiry Replies.  Changing the rate method does not affect existing Bookings.  See the Help topic on Property Rates for more info.  The Bookings Chart Report was modified to show the Total Non-Revenue and Sale before Security Deposit in order to make it easier to reconcile.  Fixed an issue with using images in Html Templates.  Expanded the Short Note on Rental Fees by 1 character.  This effects the Rental Fee lists returned by the %FeesList% and %FeeNames% Placeholders.  Please check any custom Rate Quotes in your Templates to make sure they line up as expected.  A new "Company Name" system preference was added which will display in the screen title bar.  A new check-box option to "Show Quotes" was added to the Bookings form grid, allowing Quotes to be included in the list or not.

• 10/15/2007 v.1.0.1309 - Rental Fees can now be entered as a Percentage based on either Total Rent, Total Sale, or other options.  This allows you to add fees such as Travel Insurance, which are calculated based on the total sale as opposed to the rental amount.  The total for fees based on Total Sale will show on the Billing Info page of the Bookings Form as "Additional Fees".  Also, you can now specify a "Min and Max Days" for each Fee.  This in effect "triggers" when the fee will be applied.  For example, this can be used to add a fee (or issue a discount) if the number of nights occupied meets a certain criteria.  In addition, both the Bookings, Properties, and Tenants forms now show who initially entered the Booking or Property, and when.  These fields will be initially set to the "Last Update By" fields.  The graphical Bookings Calendar includes a few minor changes regarding sorting and default property colors.  The Calendar also has a new option to "Compact" the calendar or not.  This basically removes space on the calendar for days that are not booked.  An option was added to the Bookings form to "Create a New Booking for this Tenant", which can be useful for month-to-month type bookings.

• 10/9/2007 v.1.0.1305 - This update requires a download and re-install of the software from the website, as the message shows when doing "Check for Updates".  A new 3rd-party component was purchased and incorporated in this version which allows generating PDF files from your Html Formatted Templates (if you use the Html Formatted Templates option).  This has the benefit that any images used in your Html Templates will now be included in the PDF document file generated.  Previously, if you used the Html option with images, you had to store and reference your images on the web.  There is a new section in the Help on Html Document Templates.  Please read this if you use this option.  Also, going forward, each update will be installed using an "installer", rather than unzipping and replacing files as it used to do.  This will make it easier for us to include new components in the future.

• 10/4/2007 v.1.0.1302 - The Property Statement report has a new option to "Summarize Commissions".  A new System Preference to "Show Tenant in Cleaning Schedules" was added.  (We recommend setting this to the default: "No", so that Tenant names are not shown, unless necessary).  A new Security Privilege is now available to "disallow" certain users or groups from running Financial type reports.  See the Help topic on Security.  Added a new Report to generate a graphical "Booking Calendar", which can be run for one or more months and one or more properties at a time.  See a sample here.  You can also generate Booking Calendars from the Booking form's "Options" button.  Added a "Click to Refresh" button to the Availability and Cleaning Calendar web pages.  A new predefined Filter was added to the Bookings form which will show "Current & Future Bookings excluding Quotes".

• 9/25/2007 v.1.0.1298 - The Sales Tax and Lodging Tax fields displayed throughout the application can now be changed in the System Preferences to any tax names you like.  In addition, the Tax Calculation Method can also be specified for each property.  Note, this will not effect existing bookings unless the booking is changed to a different property.  These changes are to accommodate Canadian and other tax requirements.  Other changes include a new option in the Tenant form's Options to allow printing Envelopes for one or more Tenants.  There is also a new "My Return Address" field in the User Preferences form.  Fixed a couple of issues involving Weekend Rate Adjustments, Mapi emails, and copying Templates.  Added a pre-defined filter in the Bookings form to show "This Tenant's Bookings" so you can quickly see all bookings for a tenant.

• 9/21/2007 v.1.0.1292 - Added user-defined "Booking Reminders" to the Bookings Workflow page.  Any reminders that are due will be included in the Alerts popup.  Also added a pre-defined filter in the Bookings form to show only bookings with Outstanding Reminders.  The Floating Calendar now allows an optional "Address" to be included along with the "Tenant Name" (using semi-colons as delimiters), as in: "John Doe; 111 Some St; Some City, HI 99999".  See the Help topic on the Floating Calendar for more info.  Added a new "Weekend Daily Rate" field to the Bookings form.  Having this in the Bookings form allows you to see the weekend rate that was used and also allows you to override it.  In addition you can include it in the Document Templates using two new Placeholders.  The standard rate quote used in the agreements, and the rate quote used when replying to rental inquries have both been modified to include the Weekend Daily Rate if it is not zero.  Note that previous bookings are not changed during the update and will not show the new weekend rate.  However, you can set the weekend rate manually or by changing the rate, the check-in/out dates, property, etc., which will cause the weekend rate to be pulled in from the property rates.  Also added a new option on the Tenants form to allow copying the Tenant's name and address to the Windows Clipboard.  This can be helpful for pasting the tenant's info into a Word doc as when printing envelopes.

• 9/17/2007 v.1.0.1290 - Added a gradient color appearance to all forms.  Added the ability to automatically email reports (ie. Property Statements) to multiple parties using a new Template type called "Auto Email".  See the instructions when creating a template of this type.  Added an "Alert upon Booking" flag to the Tenant form, which will display an alert whenever new Bookings are made for the tenant.  (Useful for flagging problematic tenants).  Changed the Floating Calendar and the Show Available Dates option in the Bookings form to ignore "Quoted" bookings.  Added an option to the Preferences to set the Default Bookings Status to use when new bookings are created.  The Web Cleaning Schedule now includes the "Other Info" Booking Notes and the number of Adults/Children/Pets.  This allows special instructions and the number of guests to be provided to the Cleaner in the cleaning schedule.  Added calendar date popup buttons to the Property Rates form.  Also rates can now be modified similar to a spreadsheet without having to Save each individual rate.  Removed the requirement to "Refresh lists" on all drop-down selections when the underlying lists have been updated.

• 9/4/2007 v.1.0.1284 - Added 2 new Template Placeholders (%PreviousBooking.Fieldname% and %NextBooking.Fieldname%).  These can be used to include any field from either the Previous Booking or the Next Booking in relation to the current booking into a document or email Template.  Also added 2 new Placeholder Options ([FirstWord] and [LastWord]) which can be used to include just the First Name or Last Name of a Tenant, Contact, etc.  Added 3 new fields to the Property Notes page, which can be included in the Document Templates for specifying the property web site and other info.

• 8/20/2007 v.1.0.1282 - The Data Restore was improved to remove any "read-only" attributes which can occur when files are backed up to "write-once" type CDs.  Updated the Commissions Report to prevent duplicate records when Payment dates are selected.

• 8/08/2007 v.1.0.1281 - Added a new "Property Groups" form so that properties can be assigned to user-defined "groups" (in addition to "Locations").  In addition, you can now post Property Group Web pages, which list each property in the group along with links to each property's web page.  See a sample here.  There is also a new "Property Web Page Format" option on the Properties form with an option that allows Availability Calendars to be "embeded" in Property Web pages.  See a sample here.  You can also specify the FTP information once for each Property Group rather than having to specify it for each Property.  Also, the format of the Availability Web Calendars has changed to accommodate showing "In-line" calendars on web pages.  Added a "Check-out date" selection to the Commissions report. Expanded the Tax Rate fields from 3 to 4 decimal places.

• 7/23/2007 v.1.0.1275 - Added Security Deposit Amount Returned to the Bookings Workflow page.  Enhanced the Bulk Email List functions in the Tenants and Bookings forms so that you can track which email campaigns were sent and when.  The Status column on the Bookings Grid now shows Alerts in Red when Payments are Due or Security Deposit Returns are due.  Tested and verified integration with the new Outlook 2007 calendar.  Corrected a grid display issue in the Document Templates form.  Changed the Post Availability Calendar so that the "Avail Calendar Columns" preference cannot be set to zero.  Added a new option to the Filter button at the top of forms to allow filtering on a specified text value contained in any text field.  This is helpful for quickly locating tenants or other information based on text in a note field, name, etc.  Fixed an issue with the Check for Updates function.  Other minor changes.

• 6/26/2007 v.1.0.1258 - You can now schedule when to return security deposits by setting the new Number of Days to Return Deposits after Check-out in the Properties form.  The Alerts popup will also notify you of past due or upcoming Deposit Return dates.  The Follow-up Report has 3 new reporting options which show: Outstanding Security Deposits not Returned, Unpaid Cleaner Payments, and Balances Due from Tenants.  The report can also be run based on Check-in or Check-out dates.  The Bookings form now allows Inactive Properties to be selected in the Property Filter drop-down.  A Country field was added to the Tenant form.  Also, the option to build a list of tenant email addresses for mass mailings was fixed.  The Options button in the Tenant form has a new option to "Show all Bookings for this Tenant".  Fixed minor issue when entering negative values.  An option was added to both the Property Commissions form and Property Fees form to quickly copy records to another property.  The Help file is now stored on the local drive, even in a network installation.  This allows the Help to be opened faster on a network and avoids security issues that can prevent proper display of remote help.chm files.

• 6/13/2007 v.1.0.1250 - A new Housekeeping Cleaning Schedule report was added.  This report has several options, and shows a prioritized view of cleaning schedules for the properties and time period selected.  It also includes a separate Check-Ins list which can be used for a final "room check".  The Property Statement report has two new options to include the Gross Receipts and Adjustment & Fees or not.  All forms now have the ability to quickly print out the current record and select which fields to include.  This option is in the "Find" button at the top of all forms.  All reports now have “dynamic date” ranges that can be selected (ie. This Year, Last Quarter, Last Year, Next 7 Days, etc.).  New checkboxes were added to both the Bookings form and Properties form to specify whether Taxes Received and Processing Fees are to be included in Commission calculations.  The Bookings Chart Detail report now optionally includes a list of the Rental Fees.  Both the Booking Chart and Property Statement reports can now use either the Check-in or Check-out dates for report data selection.  A duplicate booking check is not performed if the current booking status is less than "Tentative".  There is a new option in the Properties Web/Misc page for specifying the number of monthly columns to display in the Web Availability Calendar.  Other minor changes.

• 6/4/2007 v.1.0.1243 - When entering partial payments, the Booking status changes to Partial Paid.  The Alerts popup excludes purged bookings.  The Bookings Chart detail listing report now also shows totals by month as well as property.  There is also a new report option to include Revenue type fees in the total rent amount.  Highlighting issue with drop-down boxes was fixed when running under Vista.  The web Cleaning Schedules now show the "internal" booking status, rather than the "display availability" status, (which the Availability calendar displays).  Minor changes to the Registration form and the version Update process.

• 5/24/2007 v.1.0.1235 - You can now change the final sale amount on bookings and bypass any processing fee calculations due to a new column in the Booking Fees page which allows turning off the processing fee or cash discount calculation.  This can be useful if a tenant pays part of the booking with a credit card and part with a check.  Another change in this release allows "Canceled" bookings to be posted to QuickBooks or Quicken with all the amounts reversed.  This is only useful if you've already posted a booking which is later canceled.  The Alerts popup screen now lets you go directly to any of the bookings listed that have alerts.  There is a new field in the Properties form for setting the default number of days for Payment Due prior to Check-In.  There is also a new button in the Bookings form on the Billings page for setting the Next Payment due.  Some minor changes to the report preview, backup, restore, filtering and post transactions.

• 5/17/2007 v.1.0.1230 - A new reporting preview engine was implemented, which provides outputting reports to any of the following formats: PDF, Html, RTF, Excel, and image.  A new charting engine was also implemented for the Booking Chart reports.  The booking chart graphs now show both the nights rented and the rental revenue together on one page.  Also, the graphs can be generated for each selected property or in summary form.  You can see a sample here.  The Document Template previews now match the PDF output, where the line spacing used to be slightly different, it is now the same.  Two additional photos (8 total) can now be specified in the Properties form, and posted to the property web sites.  The Availability and Cleaning calendars have a slightly changed background color.  Tax rates with 3 decimal places are now displayed without rounding.

• 5/12/2007 v.1.0.1227 - If your application database currently resides within the 'Program Files' folder, a message will be displayed upon startup.  This message asks you to change the database location by using the option in the File menu.  This will prevent problems if you ever upgrade to the Vista operating system in the future.  Also, some minor changes.

• 5/7/2007 v.1.0.1221 - A new form was added (in the Forms menu) called "Pay Fees and Commissions".  This form provides the ability to print "Payment Vouchers" and to set the "Paid Dates" for cleanings and commissions across multiple bookings.  Expenses can also be printed and marked as paid using this form.  See the Help topic for information on using this form.  A "Received Date" was added to the Welcome Info/Confirmation, and a "Confirmed Date" was added to the Cleaner Notified workflow areas in the Bookings form.  A "Cleaner Charges" amount field was added to the Property form.  This is used as the default "Pay Cleaner" amount for new Bookings.  Basically, these new features provide more tools to monitor and pay for cleanings, commissions and expenses owed.  Also, two new buttons were added to the Property form to copy Document Templates and Accounts from another Property to the current Property, thus making it easier to create multiple properties using the same templates and accounts.

• 4/28/2007 v.1.0.1217 - This update brings several important changes in order to comply with the new Vista operating system standards.  You can now specify and change the location of your database.  See the option in the File menu.  If you are running Vista, you may be prompted in various places to run the application with an elevated privilege when trying to run certain functions such as updating the software, changing the data location, etc.  Beginning with this version, the logic for determining the maximum number of users per license has changed.  User licenses are now on a per User ID basis.  Registered users prior to this date are automatically given 2 extra user licenses in order to help with this change.  Licenses used to be based on the number of concurrent users, but that logic is more difficult in Vista, and the new method frees up some processing overhead.  There are 2 new pre-defined filters for "Un-paid" and "Paid Commissions" in the Bookings form.  Placeholders can now be used in the 3 file specifications in the templates, allowing attachment and image filenames to be generated based on the property.  For example you can create generic templates with different attachment and image files included automatically based on the property.  There are several new Placeholder "prefixes" that allow you to access all fields in the Bookings, Property, Tenant, Cleaner, Owner, and Manager records.  Examples are: %Cleaner.Name%, %Owner.WorkPhone%, etc.  One benefit is that you now have access to the Cleaner, Owner, and Manager information in the templates.  See the template instructions for the new placeholders.  You can now post property calendars as well as property web pages from the Web Post page of the Properties form.  The Booking Chart Detail and Follow-up reports have property subtotals added.  As usual, please report any issues.  Mahalo.

• 4/20/2007 v.1.0.1213 - For those who've asked for more workflow flexibility, you'll be pleased with this update.  Many changes in the Document Templates and Workflow area include the following:  Two new user-defined workflow documents with sent dates.  You can now customize 5 of the 7 workflow items with your own descriptions and notes using the new Document Types form.  So if you don't use a 'Thank You Note' or a 'Rental Receipt' for example, you can change it to something else.  All 7 of the workflow document templates now allow you to generate a user-defined document in addition to the email message.  You can also specify the Send To:, CC:, and BCC: recipients (using placeholders), and include 2 images in the document.  Basically, the same logic used for generating the Rental Agreement is now available for all workflow documents, and they can be generated as both PDF or Html.  There are also some new placeholders.  You can now define whether or not the Cleaning Notice displays the Previous, Current, and/or Next booking info, depending on how you want to notify your cleaner (before or after a booking). There are 3 new Placeholders to do this.  A couple of new options were added to the Options... button on the Bookings form.  One is to 'Clear all amounts (Owner bookings)', another is to run the Follow-up Report for the current bookings listed.

• 4/18/2007 v.1.0.1212 - Added Cleaning Fee Payable amount to the Workflow page of the Bookings form.  This cleaning fee amount is also included in the Property Statement report.  The Cleaning fee amount can also be exported to Quicken/QuickBooks as an expense.  Added Cleaner Paid Date to the Follow Up report.  Added ability to specify fixed commission amounts in the Bookings form - by specifying a 0% commission rate.  Added the ability to backup and restore to and from your own FTP web site.  All data including the MyFiles folder is backed up and encrypted for secure storage.  You can now use multiple email attachments when emailing through Outlook using the Mapi preference.  Other minor changes.

• 3/31/2007 v.1.0.1198 - Added the ability to design your own rate quotes used for the Inquiry Reply templates (see the Rate Quote page in the templates).  Added a few additional template placeholders.  Added a 'Location' drop-down selection to the Properties form so bookings and available dates can be viewed by location in the Bookings form (using the Property filter drop-down).  Added an Active/Inactive flag to the Properties form.  This can also be selected in the Property filter in the Bookings form.  Attachments can now be added to the Welcome Info, Cleaning Notice, and Rental Receipt email templates.  Expanded the Properties list timeline in the Bookings form to show more days going across.  Added two new filters for selecting 'Closed' bookings in the Bookings form.  Fixed an alignment issue with the generated Rate Quotes.  Added 'PDA Sync Folder' specification to the Preferences form.

• 3/19/2007 v.1.0.1188 - Added an option to list bookings by property (one row per property) in the Bookings form. (See the 'Show Properties' button).  Also corrected some emailing functions.  There is a new 'Booking Notes' field in the Property form's Notes page.  This is displayed in the Booking form on the new Properties grid as a quick reference when making bookings.

• 3/13/2007 v.1.0.1185 - The standard Rate Quote format was changed to make it simpler to understand.  Some template placeholders were changed (they will be converted during the update), and some were added. Please carefully review your templates and generated documents.  Two Memo note fields were added to the Bookings form Notes page (with correlating placeholders).  You can now Remove Posted History Transactions after they are finalized if you need to re-export them to QuickBooks or Quicken.  Web posting and Check for Updates was modified in order to work on PC's where IE 7 is installed.

• 3/9/2007 v.1.0.1179 - Several new and important features were added. Also, due to a recent 4-day outage by our hosting service we have switched to a new hosting service.  Sorry for the inconvenience.  This switch prompted us to change the mechanism we use for uploading calendars and checking for new updates.  To get this update you need to download the evaluation software from this website and re-install it into the same location on your hard drive.  (Your data will be preserved and automatically backed up).  From then on you can continue to use the Check for Updates function in VRP.
  
  Important changes include:  1) Changes to the Template Placeholders.  Several placeholders have been added and a few have changed.  2) The angle < > brackets used for Placeholder Options have been changed to square [ ] brackets (to allow for the new Html option - see below).  They will be converted during the update  3) Currency symbols are no longer added to monetary values by default.  There is a new [$] option you can use.  4) Leading spaces are no longer removed from numeric values by default.  There is a new [trim] option you can use.  Please carefully review your templates and generated documents and emails.
  
  New features and fixes in this version include:  1) You can now optionally create documents and emails in "Html format".  This allows you to use an Html editor such as FrontPage in order to create even more highly formatted templates.  The Html option is only suggested for those who understand Html and are familiar with using tools like FrontPage.  See the new sample Html Templates in the MyFiles folder in VRP.  2) Tenant addresses now get exported to Quickbooks.  3) There is a new 'Include Notes' option on the Booking Chart reports.  4) Bookings are now viewable in the Alerts popup.  5) You can now set which days are Weekend days for weekend rate calculations (See the System Prefs Help topic.  The default is Friday & Saturday.)  6) Bookings with a status of Closed now have a different color on the Bookings grid.  7) A new "CSC" field has been added to the credit card number fields.  8) The credit card fields have been fixed.  9) A new "Pets" field has been added.  10) New "Beds" and "Baths" fields have been added to the Property form and are also displayed in the Bookings grid.  11) The Bookings form now removes any previous commissions and fees when the Property is changed.  12) You can now view sample email messages from the Document Templates form and select which booking to use as a sample.  Plus, other minor changes.

• 2/27/2007 v.1.0.1173 - Added Expense Tracking form.  Also added a new Property Statement for Owners report which shows the bookings, commissions and expenses for the date range and properties selected.

• 2/20/2007 v.1.0.1169 - Implemented a new Reporting engine, along with new PDF and Zip drivers for Windows Vista compatibility and improved functionality.  Added option to include a logo image on generated rental agreements.  Also added a "Rate Quote" tab to the Rental Agreements Template where you can design your own rate quote format.

• 2/3/2007 v.1.0.1160 - Added ability to create and post Property web pages.  Also added the option to post both calendars and property pages to your own web site using your own FTP site information.  In addition, up to six photos can now be specified for each property along with other web page related info.

• 1/23/2007 v.1.0.1148 - Added Agreement Received Date and Security Deposit Returned Note fields to the Bookings form.  Also added pre-defined filters that show bookings with Checkins & Checkouts occurring today or in the next 5 days.  Added 2 reports to the Options button of the Bookings form so that these reports can now be printed or emailed directly from within the Bookings form using the current filter.

• 12/30/2006 v1.0.1133 - Added a Property filter selection box above the Bookings form grid.  Added an option to the Bookings Chart Report to exclude financial info, which can be used to fax bookings to housekeepers, etc.  Resizing of forms is now remembered between sessions.  A new Preferences option allows Automatically updating Outlook's calendar when bookings are added or changed.  Other minor improvements.

• 12/12/2006 v1.0.1127 - Added an option in the Bookings form to create Microsoft Outlook calendar entries for individual bookings.  Modified the Quicken and Quickbooks Export so that dates are forced to US format in the Import files, regardless of the Regional Settings.  Other minor improvements.

• 10/31/2006 v1.0.1119 - In both the Bookings and Tenant forms, there is a new Options button.  One of the options builds a list of Tenant email addresses for the list of bookings or tenants shown in the current filter.  This is useful for emailing tenants that meet a specific criteria.

• 10/9/2006 v1.0.1105 - New feature to post Availability Calendars and Cleaning Schedules to the Web was added.  Currency symbol and dates format can now be changed (see Help).  New "Web" tab was added to the Properties form.  Added "Other Info" field and a corresponding Template Placeholder to the Bookings Notes which can be used for special instructions to the tenant, manager or housekeeper.

• 9/20/2006 v1.0.1097 - Added option to the Bookings Chart report to graph the number of nights and rent earned per month.  Added an option in the Preferences to specify how many days in advance to remind you of check-ins, check-outs and payments due.

• 9/17/2006 - You can now track Advertising and Referral Sources for your bookings.  In addition, a new Advertising & Referral Sources Report helps you analyze how to better spend your advertising budget.  A new option in the Preferences allows the mobile PDA sync file to be updated automatically whenever there are changes to bookings.  When you set the Security Deposit Returned date for a booking, the status will automatically change from Fully Paid to Closed.

• 9/9/2006 - In addition to Weekly and Monthly rental rates, there is a new "By Week" and "By Month" rental rate.  This allows calculating weekly and monthly rentals both ways, either by the number of nights, or the number of weeks or months.  The Rental Agreement Templates have a new button which allows viewing how the entire agreement will appear without having to go to the bookings form.  Email addresses of Contacts and Resources can now be selected from a list, as in Outlook or Outlook Express.

• 8/18/2006 - All columns on all grids in all forms are now sortable by clicking on the column headers.  The templates form has been improved with specific pages for each type of template.  A new template type called "Generic Email" was created.  This is very useful for things like emailing tenant referral requests to other property owners and managers.

• 8/11/2006 - Several new and powerful Placeholders were added for use with the templates. The Check for new updates and email functions have been improved. The text Zoom windows have a new Print and Find option.  A new Tools menu was added.

• 7/24/2006 - Added Payments Received to the Commissions Report and the ability to select on Payment Receipt dates.  This provides a variety of data on one report that can be used for determining taxes, total rent, payments received, commissions paid and unpaid, and amounts due.

• 7/20/2006 - In addition to the SMTP email server option, you can now specify MAPI type email clients (ie. Outlook and Outlook Express), or Lotus Notes as email sending options.

• 7/14/2006 - Added a checkbox option to Show Available Dates along with more sort options in the Bookings form (Useful for locating available dates among multiple properties).

• 7/12/2006 - Added new Template placeholders (see Help doc). Added a zoom button to Template definitions. Added Property Amenities and an Amenity Types form. Added Backup/Restore functions to the file menu. Added Property Agreement Note. Added sort option to Bookings grid. Modified the Cash Discount to allow either a Cash Discount or a Noncash Fee. The Days/Timeline Unit in the Bookings grid is now remembered between sessions.

• 7/6/2006 - Added Weekend Rates capability to the Daily Rental Rates calculation.  Added a new Commissions Report which also shows the paid status of each commission.

• 7/3/2006 - Added Commissions tracking to bookings. Changed Rental Rates to include specifying the year, and added the ability to copy rental rates from one property to another.

• 6/24/2006 - Added an option to allow users to automatically log on rather than having to enter their user ID and password. Default is automatic logon.  Also, added user-defined color coding for properties.

• 6/18/2006 - Added the ability to define and select an unlimited number of rental fees for properties and individual bookings. These fees can also have the tax calculations specified for each.  Also, added a Payment Receipts template.

• 2/19/2006 - Added the Export to Quicken and QuickBooks feature.  Note: Quicken and QuickBooks are trademarks of Intuit, Inc.

Planned New Features for Vacation RentPro

• Additional reports are continually being considered and added.

• We are always considering suggestions from existing customers.  Thank you for your input.