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.
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9/1/2010 v.1.0.2162 - The %RatesList%
Placeholder has been updated to include the Rate Name along with the rate
information. See
Example Here.
It is now unnecessary to save a booking first when generating templates
using the %BookingPaymentSchedule% Placeholder. Rate Quotes generated
in Word documents using the %RateQuote% Placeholder are now centered
horizontally and shorter in width. New Filters were added to the
Tenants form for showing: Tenants with Bookings, Tenants with Quotes only,
and other filters. These can be useful when sending bulk email.
When creating bookings from the Floating Calendar, there is a new option to
Create Tenant Only (without a booking). This provides an alternative
to creating Quoted Bookings by only capturing the prospect guest info and
isolating them as Inactive Tenants until they actually book a unit.
You can now directly select Weekend Daily rates when creating bookings and
replying to inquiries. This can be used for instance when you are
booking a weekend only or you wish to quote your higher weekend rate without
having a weekend adjustment calculated. When using the Database Admin
Tools Import options, existing Tenants, Contacts and Property Names are now
skipped. Normally, importing is for initial data loads, but can now be
used after the fact if needed. Some improvements were made to the Bulk
Email sending and calendar popup date selection features.
-
8/20/2010 v.1.0.2157 - The Bookings form
Check-in and Check-out dates selection has been improved to work faster when
a large number of bookings are displayed in the timeline grid.
Improvements to various reports were made relating to page margins and
printers. When changing a booking to "Do Not Clean" a prompt is now
displayed asking if you want to also remove the cleaning expense. In
the Alerts Manager, when clicking the "Go To" button for Cleaning Alerts, a
new option is provided to mark the Cleaning as Done without having to open
the booking. The Occupancy Report has a new "Show Other" option which
adds the ability to show Commissions and Net Revenue by month. This
may be useful for reporting lost revenue to BP. The Commissions Report
has a new option to Show Selected Commissions Only and their totals.
The report was also modified to show the correct totals paid by Cash/Check
for bookings with mixed payment types. The Find button in the Bookings
form now also searches the Tenant street address. The Bookings Chart
Reports have a new option to automatically "Group by" Owner or Manager,
allowing separate reports to be generated for each owner or manager.
The report also as a new option to "Auto Email" the reports to the owner or
manager, similar to the Property Statement reports. This allows
user-defined templates to be used for emailing reports. In addition,
the graphical bookings charts can now show up to 5 years of monthly bar
charts, rather than 3 years. Corrected an issue with the "Move
Check-in date" option in the Bookings form dates selection, and in the Floating Calendar when selecting check-in and
check-out dates.
-
7/6/2010 v.1.0.2149 - A new email option called
"Outlook 2007 or higher" was added to User Preferences. If you are
using Outlook 2007 or 2010 it is recommended to switch to this email
preference since it uses an improved method for communicating with Outlook.
Both the Outlook and Extended Mapi email options now require Outlook to
already be open. This avoids possible security warnings and memory
issues, and also generates emails more quickly. The Bookings Chart -
No Financials report option now wraps long Tenant names to the next line.
This report also has a new report type option called "Less Detail - No
Financials". The Notes column on the Bookings Chart detail reports is
now more compact by having fewer line breaks. Also corrected a line
wrapping issue in the report's Fees summary option. If Billing Notes
exist, a reminder now pops up when clicking the "$" button for payment
processing in the Bookings form. It is now possible to Auto-Submit
forms on a web page when using the AutoFill feature in the Web Form
Assistant. This can save extra clicks on sites which have multiple
forms to fill out (such as VacationRentPayment.com). Please see Help
on Payment Processing for info on the "AutoSubmit" option in form
fields. When printing envelopes, the address is now more centered.
Improvements were made to the grid in the Properties form including a new
column to list the Property Short Names. An update was made to the
Skype calling feature to accommodate the latest version of Skype.
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5/30/2010 v.1.0.2137 - A new System Preference:
"Web Page Footer" was added which can be used to specify Google Analytics
Tracking scripts or other Html which is then inserted at the bottom of all
posted web pages. Google Analytics is free and provides detailed info
on visits to your web pages. Also, a new System Preference for "Web
Page Logo" was allows specifying an image which will be inserted at the top
of property and group web pages (see
Example here).
Also, a new "Company Logo image" preference was added along with a %CompanyLogo%
Placeholder which can be used in Document Templates. The Properties
form Web tab has a new "Property Rank" field which can be used to sort
properties within Group web pages. The Group Web page format has been
changed to match the newer property web page format (see
Example here).
You may wish to repost your group pages. Also, a new color option for
the Group Photos Background was added. Minor enhancements were made to
the Alerts Manager and Bookings form. The 3D Bookings Chart report now
includes averages up thru the previous month when the current month is the
last month charted. Modified the automatic Database Upgrade process to
avoid "access is denied" errors caused by certain virus scanning programs
with aggressive, on-access scanning turned on. Note, this type of
scanning should be excluded from the Vrpdata folder if possible, since it
can temporarily block access to files. Please call support if you have
any questions. When posting web pages to a local disk, all files are
now created with lower case names in case you wish to modify and upload the
files outside of VRP. Changed the default FTP mode for backups and web
posting to "Passive mode". Please contact support if you are unable to
upload. The specifications for sharing Rates, Fees and Commissions
from other properties has been moved to the Properties form. This
allows updating rates, fees and commissions without affecting the Properties
form. Corrected a minor issue when importing bookings from HomeAway.
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5/1/2010 v.1.0.2121 - When entering Owner
Funds or Owner Payment transactions in the Expenses form the Vendor is
automatically changed to the Property Owner. A new pre-defined Booking
Filter was added which shows Quote/Tentative Follow-ups that are Due.
Corrected an issue with the New Update available notice. There's a new
%RatesList% Placeholder which can be used to list rates in a document (or on
a web page - in the Long Description text). You can see an
example here.
Added a new %BookingStatus% Placeholder. Options were added to the
Booking Chart report to include Booking Memo's and Number of Persons.
Note: If you are using any of the recently added Booking Status types
such as "Owner Stay", make sure you add these Status types to your report
parameters if you want these bookings included in your reports. Almost
all reports have a Booking Status types selection. The Web Cleaning
Calendar now shows 4 months instead of 6. Speed improvements were made
when uploading information and web pages to the web. The Property
selections in the reports now show, (and allow sorting on) the Owner,
Manager and Cleaner in order to help you select properties to include on
reports. Corrected a minor display issue with the email preview form.
When clicking on a form's toolbar button, the form is now automatically
restored if it was minimized at the bottom.
-
4/20/2010 v.1.0.2103 - A new Commissions "Base
On" option was added which can be used to give the owner a fixed amount per
day booked by creating a commission for the remaining amount per day. The
Property Statement report has a new option to Subtract Commissions from the
Revenue shown. This can be used in order to show owners their portion
of the revenue only. This also prevents commissions from displaying on the
report since they are already taken out of Revenue. While in the
Bookings form, typing Ctrl+T provides a shortcut to the Tenant options menu. There is a new Bookings Status called
"External Booking" which can be used to track bookings created by someone
else, such as an owner. There's also a new option in the Bookings
Options button to create a New External Booking. The Web Availability
and Cleaning Calendars have had the underlying Html source trimmed down
substantially, which should improve update times. While in any of the
note type fields, typing Ctrl+D provides an shortcut to insert a Date or
Time stamp into the note. When adding payments received, a new option
provides setting the amount to the total due. The font size of the
main toolbar was increased. Phone extensions can now be included in
stored phone numbers following a Space+'x' and will not interfere with Skype
calling. The Help menu has new options to email or phone support using
Skype. A new User Preference was added to specify how many Days to
Auto Check for New Program Updates. Corrected an issue with the [GetTagItem]
Placeholder Option. The Expenses form has 3 new Options to: 1)
Duplicate an Expense across multiple Properties. 2) Duplicate all Expenses
for a given Transaction Date to the Next Month, Next Quarter, Next 6 Months,
or Next Year. and 3) Delete all expenses for a given Transaction Date and
Account. A new "Pets per Night" Fee option was added. Corrected
an email format issue when using the "Send Future Bookings" button on the
Floating Calendar. New Property Placeholders were added for number of
Beds and Baths. A new Database Tool was added for purging old Bookings
and Expenses.
-
4/1/2010 v.1.0.2087 - A new Booking Status
called "Owner Stay" was added which can optionally be used in order to
highlight owner bookings. Both this and the "Block Out" status will
show on Web Calendars with Grey colored day numbers instead of Black.
This allows owners to distinguish these types of bookings if needed.
There is a new Web Calendar Update button on the Bookings form next to the
Property selector. This provides a shortcut for updating web calendars
for the selected property. When importing reservations from
Webervations or HomeAway, the import info goes into a new Source Note on the
Bookings form Notes page, rather than the booking Notes. Also, the
Billing Name is now included in the import. The Property and Tenant
drop-down selections in the Bookings form will now accept typed characters
in order to search for properties and tenants without changing the value on
each character typed. The Contacts page of the Properties form has a
new field for "Required Funds" on account balance. This is
used on the Property Statement report when calculating the net amount due to
the owner. There is also a Placeholder to include this amount in owner
agreements if needed. The HomeAwayPM calendar update now posts the
check-out days as booked also. This is required in order to show their
calendars correctly. Cosmetic changes were made to the Property
Statement and Housekeeping reports. Improved the entry of numeric
field values. A "Find" button was added to the Tenants, Properties,
Contacts and Expenses forms. The Property Statement now shows "Due
From Owner" if the net amount is negative. In the Bookings form
Billing Info page, context menus are shown when adding new payments or
generating payment schedules. You can now Create and Update
Tenants from any Contact in the Contacts form using the Tenants form Options
button. This can be helpful when creating Tenants from Owners or other
Contacts. Clicking the "Skype" buttons a second time will now hang up
the current call. Also, a message is displayed if Skype Client is not
installed. When downloading new program updates, the Download button
will proceed to the Install when the download finishes. The Bookings
form Timeline Forward and Back buttons now move twice the number of days as
before.
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3/11/2010 v.1.0.2060 - 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.
You can now edit generated Word documents on the fly when sending emails
using Word Doc templates. There is now a "View Sample" button on the
Html Editor so you can view a sample of the generated output while in the
editor. Also added some new Table options to the Table button in the
Html Editor. There are some new Placeholders for Payments Received,
allowing you to show the payment dates and amounts in separate columns of a
table. For an example, import the latest sample template called "Rent
Receipt - Html format". There are also 3 new "Last Payment"
placeholders so that you can reference the last payment received (or
returned). When clicking any of the buttons to specify a photo file or
other external file, you now have an option to open the "MyFiles" folder to
select the file.
-
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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2/19/2006 - Added the Export to Quicken and
QuickBooks feature. Note: Quicken and QuickBooks are trademarks of
Intuit, Inc.