Updates and New Features in Vacation RentPro

Note: Registered users are entitled to free updates for one year.
Updates are easily installed by selecting "Check for New Updates" in the VRP Tools menu.
To view updates prior to 2010, Click Here.

Updates History:

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

2/5/2012 v.1.0.2483 • You can now specify up to 16 web photos for each Property, instead of 12. There is a new "Guestbook" link in the Properties form Notes tab for specifying a link to your guestbook. This can be inserted in templates or the property web page using the associated Placeholder. The photos displayed in web pages now have a "Next" and "Previous ability when clicking on the small photo thumbnails to see a larger image. Repost your Property web pages to see this. See Example here. When posting Property web pages, you no longer need to specify whether to Skip Photos or not. The posting process automatically checks if the photos already exist on the web server with the same file name and size, and uploads them if needed. • There is a new "Rates Display" option in the Properties form Misc tab. This allows you to specify if you want the Rates lists in web pages and Templates to be displayed "Exactly" as they are defined in the Property Rates form, without merging overlapping date ranges into unique date ranges. This can be used if you want to show different sets of rates for identical date ranges. • Important: If you use the XML Data Export for rates, the format of the property rates in the export file has changed. See the Help topic on XML Data Export. • Additional improvements were made to web pages for compatibility with different browsers. The grid lines were removed from the Rates tables in web pages for a cleaner look. Repost your web pages after this update.
2/2/2012 v.1.0.2478 • Several new features were added for web pages. In the Properties form Web tab, there are 3 new fields for embedding: Maps, Weather stickers, and Videos. For example, Google Maps, Weather Channel and YouTube are some of the sites that easily provide the Html for embedding these items in web pages. You can simply paste the Html into these new fields, and the web page menu items and sections will automatically be created the next time you post the web pages. Previously, you could only do this in the Long Description text. Web pages have a new "Home" menu link now. This defaults to your Company website, and can be overridden in System Preferences under Web Page Settings to point to any other website if needed. You can now specify the Background Color for web page Menus (and Topic titles). You can set the color in the Web Post tab of the Properties and Property Groups forms. Note: The new default color for menus is now Blue. You can easily change your menus to this color if you prefer. There is a new System Preference under Web Page Settings to specify that the Web Page Logo image should be "Stretched" to fill the width of the web page. This allows the logo image to be used as a "banner" image. • Property and Group web pages now use "rounded" corners to display photos and other elements on web pages. This works with the latest version of most browsers. If your browser is an older version you may want to update to the latest. You can see examples of these web page changes Here and Here. • Updated the FlipKey calendar updates to accommodate recent changes on their site.
1/26/2012 v.1.0.2469 • When processing credit cards through VR Payment, if the street address, city and postal code are unknown for the Tenant, you can now process the credit card after a confirmation is displayed. • During the AvailabilityOnline Rates upload, the property "Sync" option has been corrected to remove properties on AvailabilityOnline which are not set to have Rates uploaded. • The unwanted owner-specific text and links in inquiries from VacationRentals, HomeAway, FlipKey, and VRBO are now removed when replying to these inquiries in Outlook. • If your web pages have embedded videos, the html is checked and corrected if needed in order to prevent the video from scrolling on top of the web page header. If you include videos in your web pages, then repost your web pages. • In the Bookings form, there is a new field called "Weekend Adjustment", which stores the difference in the weekend rate for the number of weekend nights booked. This adjustment amount has also been added to all standard rate quotes. If your templates have your own custom rate quotes (where you're not using the %RateQuote% Placeholder), then you should modify these to include the new %WEAdjAmount% Placeholder. • Rate Quotes generated from Bookings now have a column shading effect applied. • The Floating calendar now shows any Special Check-in or Check-out times when hovering the mouse over bookings so that you do not have to switch to the bookings form to see if there is a late check-out or early check-in. • Web pages now use an Arial font for the Header text of the Property name, which matches the rest of the web page.
1/18/2012 v.1.0.2459 - The Web Availability Calendars can now display Rates when mousing over or clicking on available dates. This requires that the "Post Rates" checkbox is selected in the Web tab of the Properties form. When creating Blockout Bookings in the Bookings form (via the Options button), you can now specify the number of days after the current booking's checkout to start the blockout. This makes it easier when blocking out multiple date ranges for Time-shares. The Phone/PDA Bookings List now includes links to each property's website (specified in the Properties form Notes page). There is a new option in the Properties form Interfaces tab to "Show the Book Online option in Web Pages". This can be turned off if you do now wish to allow guests to book online. In the Alerts Manager, the "Go to" button has a new option to set all Bookings past 60 Days old to a 'Closed' Status for bookings showing Payments Due or Return Deposits Due. This can be used if you have a large number of old alerts still showing, which you have not updated. When selecting Photos for web pages or documents, there is a new option called "Select & Resize Image", which uses a new built-in image resizing feature. This can be used for resizing large photos down to an appropriate size for web pages or templates. Within the "Web" toolbar button, there is a new option to 'Start the Web Calendars Auto Updater Process'. This kicks off a separate process which automatically updates All Changed Web Calendars & Availability Interfaces as needed at specified time intervals. This helps to ensure your web calendars and availability are up to date. Note: This feature requires a 20 property license or more. The 2nd image on the right-hand side in Property Web pages, now has a transition blending effect which works in all web browsers. Previously this only worked in IE. Repost your property pages to get the new effect. The legend in Web Calendars has been changed to remove the color names. This allows changing the colors of booked, tentative and available dates using the styles override in order to match your website colors.
12/26/2011 v.1.0.2446 - The %RateQuote% Placeholder can now be aligned Left, Center or Right within Word or Html document templates, and the generated rate quote will maintain the same alignment on the page. If you prefer center alignment, edit your template and center the %RateQuote% text. There is a new Placeholder %RateQuoteV% which generates a Vertical format rate quote within Word or Html documents and email templates generated from the Bookings form. The Booking Chart Detail report has a new date selection option based on "Occupied" dates for selecting bookings booked during the period selected. In the Alerts Manager, when clicking the "Go to" button for an individual alert, it now automatically puts you on the related tab of the related form. In the Bookings form Billing Info page, there is a new "Reverse Deposit" checkbox. This can be checked if your payments include any returned security deposit, and/or the Fees include any withheld deposit charges. The Amount Due will be calculated accordingly. See the Help topic on "Security Deposits" for more info. The Property Group Web Page format with "Embedded Calendars" now synchronizes the calendar scrolling between all properties on the page. This allows guests to scroll any calendar to the months they are interested in, and then scroll down the page and view availability for each property. The web page borders have been changed slightly in order to allow using a Web Page Logo image (specified in System Preferences), with rounded corners. If Property web pages are displayed within an "iframe" on your website, the menu bar links will now scroll the iframe to the top of the browser window automatically so that more information in the frame is visible. Repost your web pages to incorporate these changes. Improved the photo and file selection options throughout the application.
12/9/2011 v.1.0.2436 - In the Floating Calendar there are 2 new checkboxes next to the Reply button. These allow saving the Last Inquiry information automatically for each inquiring guest, and optionally setting a Follow-up Date. There is a new sample Template called "Tenant Inquiry Follow Up", which can be imported and used for sending Inquiry Follow-ups within the Tenants form. See the Help topic on "Saving Inquiries" for more info. Commissions have a new checkbox called "Sub Rev". which will Subtract the commission amount from the Revenue shown on the Property Statement report. For example this can be used if you build a cleaning fee into your Rate, and you do not wish to show this to the owner as a commission on the Property Statement report. Various improvements were made to accommodate databases with a large number of Tenants. The FlipKey interface has a new field called "Frontdesk ID", which is required. See the Help topic on "FlipKey Calendars" for more info. In the Properties form on each of the Interface pages, a new "Globe" button has been added which can be used to test each interface separately. A new System Preference called "Enable Auto-Save Inquiry" was added under the Floating Calendar category, which enables or disables the Auto-Save Inquiry checkboxes on the Floating Calendar. When replying to HomeAway, VRBO or FlipKey inquiries within Outlook, the owner-specific "junk" in the inquiry (which the guest does not need to see), is now stripped out when the reply email is generated. Corrected an issue with the HomeAway and FlipKey calendar interfaces. There is a new Commission Base-On option for calculating a percent of Rent+Fees minus any Commissions which are flagged as "Sub Rev". This can be useful when you have commissions that are subtracted from revenue, and others that are not. In the Floating Calendar, you can now create a New email with a quote without replying to an existing email. For example, when providing a quote over the phone, you can enter just the guest's email in the Floating Calendar, click the Reply button to generate the quote, and then select "New Email". Also the Floating Calendar's "Fill Clipboard with..." button has been improved for quickly providing quotes on the phone or in person.
11/20/2011 v.1.0.2422 - There is a new System Preference under External Data called: "Upload Bookings List for Owners". Setting this to Yes, will automatically upload separate Current & Future Bookings Lists for each Owner into separate folders on your web site. These lists have less booking details than the All Bookings List, and provide each Owner with a current list of their own properties, bookings and timelines. Important: If you are already using the Upload Bookings List feature, you will need to create a new Sub-Folder called "allprops" on your website, under the specified Private FTP folder. See the Help topic "Uploading a Bookings List" for more info. Improvements were made to the FlipKey and HomeAway calendar interfaces. A different method was implemented for scrolling to the various sections within Property web pages when menu items are clicked. This new method solves 2 issues: 1) If the Property page is within an "iframe", the browser window will still jump to the topic, but also keep the top of the iframe displayed. And, 2) The menu links within the iframe will continue to work on ipads and smart phones. Also, the company website link at the top of of web pages will now go to the company website (specified in system preferences) only if the web page is not displayed within an iframe. This prevents the iframe from displaying another copy of your main website if a viewer clicks the company link inside a frame. There is a new "Quick Set" button on the Properties form Accounts page, which allows quickly setting the accounts to the suggested defaults for one or more properties. Improvements were made to the web Availability Calendars so that the height of the calendars is consistent between different browsers. This is important if you are displaying calendars within iframes. It is recommended to repost your group and property web pages to incorporate the web page changes in this update.
11/4/2011 v.1.0.2414 - The Housekeeping report has a new option to run the List of Check-ins and Check-outs option as 2 separate reports. A new feature has been added to automatically update HomeAway Connect™ calendars (used by VRBO™, HomeAway™, VacationRentals™, etc.). This does not require a HomeAwayPM™ account. And is available for the 20 property license or higher. There is also a new feature to update FlipKey™ calendars, and is available for the 40 property license or higher. See the Help topic: "Online Calendar Interfaces" for more info. All of the Web Calendar interfaces have been greatly improved in speed when using the option to Update All Calendars & Web Interfaces. This is due to new logic that only processes properties with recent changes. Administrators are no longer required to Login at startup, unless the "Prompt Logon" options in both the System Preferences and User Account are set. However, when accessing certain secure functions, you will be prompted for your password if it has not already been entered. See the Help topic on: "Prompt Login ID option" for more info. Property web pages and Group pages have been improved so that the menu links will not cause the entire frame to scroll if you are embedding web pages within "iframes" on your website. After this update, you should repost your web pages to take advantage of this update. There are 2 new Placeholders: %BeginComment% and %EndComment% which can be used to store personal notes inside Templates. There are 7 new [ShowDate] Placeholder Options which allow displaying dates in different formats.
10/17/2011 v.1.0.2403 - The Floating Calendar has been updated to accommodate the new VRBO inquiry format. You can now define Commissions which are based on individual Fees, if necessary. See the Help topic on: Additional Fee & Commission Calculations for more info. The Booking Status color for Partial Paid has been changed to help identify it separately. In the Alerts manager you can remove All old CC info for both Bookings & Tenants by clicking the "GoTo" button on one of the Alerts. When updating All Calendars and Interfaces, if an error occurs with a third party interface, the error is displayed and the process will now continue on to the next interface, rather than stopping completely. This is helpful if one of the third party sites is temporarily down. The Rates list within web pages and Html Templates has been improved. See Example Here. You can repost your Rates or Property web pages in order to see the new change. The Floating Calendar can now read German inquiries from HomeAway FeWo-direkt-Buchungsanfrage. There is a new System Preference: "Web Page Settings - Prefix Web Photos" which allows Photos to be automatically prefixed when posting web pages. This ensures that photos with the same name (ex. livingroom.jpg) for different properties will not be overwritten on your website. There is a new Placeholder Option: [HasHtml] which can be used to insert note text that already has Html formatting. When opening the Floating Calendar, it now checks if it is hidden off screen due to a second monitor being disconnected. Property Web pages have been slightly modified so that they can be "iframed" in with a minimum width of 750 pixels for websites displaying content in the left or right margins.
9/29/2011 v.1.0.2396 - The Additional Fee & Commission calculations now allow referencing other Fees or Commissions within calculations. For example, you can create a Travel Insurance fee that is 20% of the Total Sale minus a Pool Heat fee. This enables creating some very complex Fees, Discounts & Commissions, if needed. See the Help topic on "Additional Fee & Commission Calculations" for info and examples. There is another new Fee Base-On option which allows charging a Flat fixed amount if the Standard number of Persons is exceeded, as when charging for the use of a Sofabed. The format for Dates displayed within Rate Quotes and Templates has changed to now show the full Day of the week name, rather than the first 3 characters. The Month name has also been shortened to 3 characters, which is a common, global standard for displaying dates. Also, Zero amount Fixed Fees are now included in Rate Quotes and Templates. This allows showing guests Fees which you are including for free. Corrected a possible '%' sign in the Property Statement and Commissions reports, and the optional adjustment/discount in the Floating Calendar. The surrounding background color of web pages is now a more neutral color when posting web pages. Also, the Click to Inquire email form on web pages has been improved. There is a new option in the Database Admin Tools to allow Importing of Bookings, which can be used to initially load bookings from another system. The "Print" option under the Options button at the top of forms has a new option to Export the record(s) you are viewing to Excel. Good News: Availability Online now has the ability to define and include an unlimited number of Fees & Taxes by individual Property, with sub-totals on their online reservation form. You can try an Example Reservation form Here. We are working together on other improvements also. When using the "Find" buttons to search for text, you can now use " AND " between search items in order to find text that contains both search items. (You can already use " OR " between search items).
9/21/2011 v.1.0.2388 - In the Bookings form, the Timeline bars in the "View by Property" grid are now updated immediately (as in the View by Booking), rather than waiting until the booking is Saved. On the Bookings form Billing Info page, the "New Payment" button has an additional option to add any unscheduled payment amount to the currently selected payment. This can be useful when adding an additional day or other small charges to a booking without regenerating the payment schedule. There is a new System Preference for the number of Days after checkout to Remove CC info. And the Alerts manager includes any old bookings and tenants which have exceeded this number of days specified. The default is set to 45 days. The Smart Phone/PDA bookings list now shows weekend days in gray. A new feature was added to easily create CraigsList Ads for Properties and/or Property Groups. See the Help topic "Creating CraigsList Ads" for more info. This feature is only available for the 20 property license or higher. When specifying the Export Data FTP Site in system preferences there is a new option to skip uploading and create the file locally instead. All Property web page formats now show Photos in an animated window when clicking on individual photos. CraigsList Ads now use the selected web page colors, and allow spaces in photo file names. Users with Administrator Privilege are now required to logon with a password if one has not already been set. Also, the last logon Username is now remembered, rather than defaulting to the Windows user profile name. In the Tenants form, there is a new option next to the CC info to override the Number of Days to Keep CC Info for individual Tenants if necessary. Minor changes were made to the Bookings Calendar report and the Html Editor. You can now add links to the Menu bar of property and group web pages which link to another web page without adding a new section within the page. See the Help topic on "Property Web Posting" for more info. When Templates encounter an unspecified photo for a photo type Placeholder, nothing is displayed now, rather than showing an empty image box.
8/26/2011 v.1.0.2372 - The Property Statement report has a new option to Show Cleanings for Owner Stays only, which can be used if you only charge Owners for cleanings during their stay. Improvements were made to the Smart Phone / PDA bookings list, and also to the related Help topic "Uploading a Bookings List". Six additional User-defined fields were added to the Properties form Notes page. There is also a new "Internal Note" field for Fees. The Bookings form now maximizes to slightly less than the full screen, in order to allow other forms to be placed at the top or bottom for easily navigating back and forth between active forms. When defining Default Payment Terms for properties within the Properties form, you can now also define multiple "Alternate Payment Terms" which are shared by all properties. This allows selecting from user-defined Alternate Payment Terms, without having to manually schedule special payment schedules. In the Bookings form, the "Go to" button above the Timeline grid, has a new option which will slide the timeline to the Month of the currently selected booking. Three important changes were made to both Fees and Commissions. The first, is that you can now specify "Additional Calculations" in the Internal Note field if needed. These calculations allow further calculations to be made, on top of the existing "Base On" options. See the Help topic on "Additional Fee & Commission Calculations" for more info. Second, the Fee Amount and Com Amount fields are now disabled. In order to specify a Fixed Amount Fee or Commission, you can now select the new "Fixed Amount" Base On option. Third, the "Add to New Bookings" column is now called "Default Fee" or "Default Com". The Floating Calendar has been updated to accommodate the latest Inquiry format change from HomeAway.
8/9/2011 v.1.0.2363 - When running the Property Statement report using the "Booked Nights" option, any pro-rated taxes are now prorated within the Non-Revenue and Gross Receipts columns also. If you select: Base Net amount to owner on Gross Receipts and use the Booked Nights option, this may affect the Net calculation. Feel free to call Support if you have any questions. When processing payments through VacationRentPayment, the property short name and check-in date is now included with the payment Reservation number on the receipt. Corrected a sorting issue in the Bookings Chart detail report option. Corrected a minor issue with the "Find Next" feature when searching for text in note fields. The Properties XML Data Export includes additional fields, including Long Description, Info1, Info2, website URL and calendar website URL. A new feature was added which allows uploading a list of Current & Future Bookings to a single web page in a secured folder on your own website. This provides the ability to view a scrollable availability timeline and brief details of bookings for All Properties from a web-enabled Smart Phone or browser. See the Help topic on "Uploading a Bookings List" for more info. You can see an Example Here. The speed of generating availability information for various interfaces and websites has been improved. The Options button in the Bookings form has a new option to "Create a New Booking for this Tenant, Property and/or Dates", which can be helpful when creating multiple bookings for an event or a large group. There's a new option in the Properties form Options button to Copy the Web page colors of the current property to All properties. The Property Groups form also has this option, plus a new option to create a Duplicate of the current Group.
7/8/2011 v.1.0.2351 - A new interface has been added to provide another option for credit card processing using a direct link to VacationRentPayment.com. You can access this interface through the "$" Dollar sign button on the Bookings form Billing Info page. This option provides full credit card processing, including pre-authorizations, refunds, cancels and charges, and requires an account with VacationRentPayment.com, and a 3 User license and higher. VacationRentPayment.com offers the best service and lowest cost available that we could find. Please see the Help topic on "Payment Processing" for more info. When saving a Booking, any property limit exceeded type notices that are displayed have a new option to "Stop the Notice" so you can hide these notices each time you click Save while on a booking. A new option to Base Commissions on "Commissionable Fees only" has been added. When sending future bookings to the property Owner from the Floating Calendar, you can now select whether to include the Tenant contact info. Resolved an issue when generating email replies with blank lines, caused by the latest Internet Explorer 9. A new option to "Notify if Exceeds Standard Persons" was added to the Properties form Misc options page. The Report Parameters forms now remember their previous position on the screen the next time they are opened. Resolved an issue with Internet Explorer 9's aggressive caching, so that now the Xml data is loaded from the server when Property Group Web pages with the searchable list option are Refreshed. If you use these group pages, you should repost them. The Housekeeping Report has new options to include the Tenant Note fields on the report. The Alerts Summary popup is now sorted by earliest to latest for all alert types. The credit card type is now shown next to the last 4 digits of the card number. Corrected an issue with Skype calling due to one of their recent updates. When processing Refunds through VacationRentPayment in the Bookings form, you can now specify the amount to refund if it is different than the original payment.
6/11/2011 v.1.0.2332 - Property Web pages have a new Photos section layout using thumbnails with an image and text that changes as you mouse over the thumbnails. Clicking on thumbnails also shows a larger image. Also, the Photos section was moved to above the Amenities section. See Example here. Improved the speed of the Bookings form when a large number of properties and bookings are displayed in the timeline. Also, removed the small tick marks for check-in and check-out days in the View by Property timeline, since they were rarely used. As a heads-up, we are working on a new Bookings Payment option using a direct gateway. This will add another option for payment processing. Stay tuned. A new Placeholder called %RentCln.Fieldname% was added for accessing other types of Cleaning information within templates. The %BookingPaymentSchedule% Placeholder now sorts payments by Due date, plus Received Date. The Housekeeping report now shows checkin and checkout dates for additional interim cleanings. Minor changes were made to the formatting of web pages and the default colors when selecting web page colors in the Properties form. See Example here.
5/27/2011 v.1.0.2321 - The Commissions and Payments Received report has a new selection which allows limiting the report to Payment Notes containing specific text. This can be useful if you need to generate reports for specific types of payments received, such as Travel Insurance reporting. When Saving a Booking, a notice is now displayed if there are adjacent bookings with a Special Check in or Check out Time, so that you can verify the times do not conflict. You can now upload Rental Rates to HomeAwayPM by checking the new option on the Properties form Interface page. Also, any specified Weekend Daily Rates are now included when uploading Rates to either Webervations, AvailabilityOnline or HomeAwayPM. Corrected a few issues with the Webervations import when discounts are defined in Webervations or the Tenant already exists, and when uploading weekly rates. A new "Cleanings" tab was added to the Bookings form which allows scheduling and tracking "Additional Interim Cleanings" within each booking. (Note: this feature requires a 40 property license or higher). All cleaning schedules, cleaning web pages, notices, etc. will include any additional cleanings. There are 3 new Rate Types available in the Bookings form and when replying to inquiries in the Floating Calendar. One is called "Monthly+" which applies the monthly rate for each full month and then prorates any extra days based on the number of days in the last month. This is different than the other prorated Monthly rate, which is based on 30 day months. The other new rate types are "Tiered Flat Rates". These apply monthly, weekly and daily rates in tiers. See Help on Rental Rates for more info. The Tabs in the Bookings form for Cleanings, Fees and Commissions now display in Blue when there are any cleanings, fees or commissions so you can easily see when a booking has these items. When clicking the small Folder button next to the Tenant selection in the Bookings form, there is a new option to Copy the Tenant Name or Booking Info to the Windows Clipboard. A new Placeholder Option was added called [GetListItem]. Please see the Help on Placeholder Options for info.
4/28/2011 v.1.0.2304 - When specifying photos in the Properties form, images over 300K in size are not allowed since posting web pages does not allow large images. When posting web pages without Availability Calendars specified, a warning is no longer displayed, instead a message is added to the final results listing. FYI: We are now recommending Availability Online over Webervations. AO has made several requested changes for us already, and soon, they will have optional fees and taxes included in the totals. We will let you know. You can now use Alt+N and Alt+P hotkeys in forms to navigate to the Next and Previous records (as noted in the "Navigate" menu at the top). This can be handy when updating multiple records. The Occupancy Report has been updated so that when the "Block Out Dates" booking status is selected, any blocked dates are subtracted from the Available Days and related calculations in the report. Also, values on the report are rounded to 2 decimal places. A new pre-defined filter for "Bookings with Alerts Only" was added to the Bookings form. Alerts for "Cleanings Due" were added to the Bookings form Status column. The Bookings Chart detail report can now optionally be ran based on the "Date Booked or Canceled". A new System Preference for the "Floating Calendar Property Selection" can be used to customize the property selection to show the Property Name, Short Name, Beds/Baths, etc. A new User Preference for "Bookings form Date Columns Format" was added to optionally set the date columns format to Text or Numeric format. New Placeholders were added for inserting Property Group and Property Location information into templates. New pre-defined Filters were added to the Tenants, Contacts and Properties form for showing records updated Today or in the last 3 or 7 days. The Property Color, as well as the Property and Group Web Color settings can now be Filtered on, (by clicking the small black box over the color buttons). They can also be updated across All Properties or Groups. This can be used in order to set the colors on all property web pages to the same colors.
4/16/2011 v.1.0.2299 - Within the Property and Booking Commissions, the "Owner Payment" checkbox has been replaced with a "Type" drop-down selection. This includes a new commission type called "Revenue Share", which can be used to record things like third-party referral fees which may be shared from the manager's revenue and not deducted from the Owner's revenue. The Bookings Chart Detail report has a new option to show these Revenue Shares. An issue was corrected with Html Templates which have bulleted lists that overflow to the next page. The Bookings form Timeline width has been expanded by 30%. Also, a Property Group column was added to the "View by Property" timeline. Several improvements were made to the Bookings Chart Detail report. Two new options were added to the Database Admin Tools to allow Inactivating and Purging old Tenants which have no bookings. Corrected a recent issue with date fields when pressing the Right-arrow or End keys. Improvements were made when posting group pages, such as you can now post All Groups at once. Two columns were added to the View by Booking timeline for: Tenant Info and Total Amount. Columns can be hidden in the Bookings form timeline if needed by resizing the column widths. The small links to Vacation RentPro at the bottom of web pages and Html Emails are now shown in a dim gray color. The Html Editor has a new option in the "Paste" button to "Paste Unformatted Text", which is useful when copying text from Word or other WYSIWYG editors. FTP Backups now require a password to further secure the backup. Corrected an issue with the Templates form when opened from within another form. When clicking the "$" sign button in the Bookings form, the Web Form Assistant is now brought to the front if it was already open. If needed, you can now flag historical bookings as already posted to QuickBooks or Quicken, by right-clicking the "Posted" date in the Bookings form. A new [NoValue] Placeholder Option was added, which can be used when defining Payment Terms if needed in order to turn off the default [Value] option used in Payment Terms. When updating Webervations and Availability Online calendars, the Property settings for how to show Tentative and Signed Agreement bookings are now acknowledged.
3/24/2011 v.1.0.2288 - There is a new "Property Statement Effective Date" in the Expenses form. This can optionally be set to any future date, allowing specific expenses to be carried forward from months where no revenue was generated, into a future month if needed. This is a simpler alternative to adjusting the Owner Funds on Account balance in order to carry expenses forward. The "Find" feature in all forms has a new "Find Previous" button, which allows recalling any of the last 10 previous searches. When creating a List of Available Properties from the Floating Calendar, there is a new "Reply" button if you are using Outlook, which will auto-generate the reply. Also the text at the top of the Available List reply showing the selected date range has been slightly modified to be more specific. Various improvements were made by Availability Online in order to work better with VRP for online bookings. One of the advantages with Availability Online is that you do not need to create properties on their site first. VRP can create and update the properties. Property web pages now include a link called "Other Properties" which point to the Group web page. The link is located in the web page menu bar on the left hand side. Re-post your property pages with the Menu Bar Format option in order to see the new link. See Example Here. Web Cleaning Calendars now include -Do Not Clean- bookings in the bookings detail list, so that you can always see the next check in. You can now optionally use Html format in the following text fields: Property Long Description, Property Rental Agreement Text, Property Owner Agreement Text, and Property Group Long Description. You will see a new "Html format" checkbox next to each of these fields. Please note, if you use these text fields in your templates and set them to Html format, then your templates must also be Html format. When creating a List of Available Properties from the Floating Calendar, you can now use All of the Inquiry Reply type Placeholders in the header and footer area of your available properties list templates. Any Rates with cents specified are now displayed with 2 decimal places in any generated rates list.
3/5/2011 v.1.0.2279 - In the Properties form Misc page, there are 2 new fields for Minimum Nights and 'Unless Within' days. When saving Bookings or Replying to Inquires for fewer nights, a notice will be displayed. The Placeholders for %AvailDates% and %AvailDatesList% have a new [days/days] Option that can be used to specify a wider date range for showing available dates. This can be used in Inquiry Replies and when generating a List of Available Properties. If you reply with available dates then you may want to start using this new [days/days] Option. See Help on Placeholder Options for details. Also, when generating a List of Available Properties, you can now specify a discount, as with other Replies, which will be included in each Property's Rate Quote shown in the list. You can also override the Rate for the first property shown. The Find feature in the Bookings form now also includes any Additional Tenants in each booking during the search. New Bookings information Placeholders have been added for Additional Tenants, which allow retrieving specific information from any of the Booking's Additional Tenants. See the Bookings Placeholder %AddTenant_X% for info. Some very useful features were added to the small "Camera" button in the top Toolbar. For example, you can now export the entire timeline grid in the bookings form, or any other form's grid, to a PDF file for printing or emailing. Give it a try and see what it can do. See Example Here. Various selections in the Reports allow selecting "No items" in order to specify "All items", such as when selecting Properties. When selecting "All Items" in these selections, a message is now displayed as such. The Bookings Chart Report has a new option to show Processing Fees with totals. An adjustment was made for compatibility with the new IE9 browser. A correction was made to rate calculations using the Average Rate Method option for rates which include Weekend Daily rates and also span multiple seasonal rates. The Floating Calendar now shows the Property Short Name in the drop-down list for easier identification of properties with long names.
2/18/2011 v.1.0.2265 - Vacation RentPro introduces a new Online Booking partner with AvailabilityOnline.com ! You can now choose between Availability Online and Webervations for accepting Online Bookings that integrate with VRP, (or you can use both). Click here for more info. Also see the Help topic: Online Bookings for instructions. In the Expenses form, a displayed message was corrected when duplicating an Expense. Html document templates now have the ability to generate PDF Forms with Fill-in Fields. See an Example Here. For details, see the Help topic on "Html Format Templates". In the Bookings form, the View by Property will now always display higher status bookings on top of lower status bookings. The Searchable Group web page now includes Owner Stay, Blockout and External bookings. It is recommended to re-post your property and group web pages in order to reflect recent format improvements made to all web pages. Corrected positioning of some of the popup menus. The first month displayed in the Floating Calendar now stays in sync with the selected Check-in Date. When closing the Web Form Assistant (after payment processing), you are now prompted if you want to create a new payment received. The screen background image and My Photo in preferences can now use the %MyFilesFolder% placeholder for the image folder. Two additional photos were added to the Properties form Photos page, so you can now specify a total of 13 photos per property. You can also now specify photos by clicking on the image thumbnail. In addition, if the selected image file size is large, a notice is displayed.
1/30/2011 v.1.0.2248 - The Property Rates form has been improved to allow specifying daily, weekly, monthly and weekend rates on the same line. In addition, there is a new "Rate Option" allowing you to specify percentages based on the Daily rate. This simplifies the task of maintaining and organizing rates. The Rates report has also been improved with additional options and formatting changes. A new Fee "Base on" option was added allowing you to apply fees or discounts which are a "Percent of Rent - for every X number of days". This allows you to offer "tiered" percentage discounts using one Fee and is similar to the other tiered type fees. The Floating Calendar has been updated for changes in VRBO.com's inquiry format. The "Available?" button in the Bookings form now allows quickly finding Available properties using the Dates specified in the Floating Calendar. The "W" (Webervations) button in the Bookings form can now be used to both Download and Post imported reservations. Improvements were made to Searchable Group web pages. The red color in availability calendars was slightly toned down. A new Right-click feature has been added to various fields on the Properties form, which allows "Updating All Records listed with the current value". This is useful for quickly making changes to multiple properties, and requires a password. See the Help topic on Updating All Records for more info. You can now create and add Additional Tenants from the Additional Tenants pull-out in the Bookings form. Posting Property and Group pages has been speeded up by not posting the same image more than once, such as Background and Logo images. Also, you can now post Property and Group pages with only Changed Calendars or Rates, rather than always posting calendars and rates when posting property pages. The Alerts report now shows past due alerts in Red. An update was made for displaying generated PDF files on Macs using Parallels. Changes were made to the standard Rate Quotes in order to highlight any Discounts being offered. There is also a new Placeholder %TotalDiscFees% which can be used to access the total of any negative amount fees (discounts). There are 3 new fields in the Properties form Misc page called "No Pets", "Notify if Children" and "Max Number of Persons". These are used to display a message if relevant when saving a booking or replying to inquiries. All generated web pages are now Xhtml1.0 Transitional compliant.
1/10/2011 v.1.0.2233 - The Searchable Group web page has a new option allowing guests to search for properties with "Any" or "All" Dates Available. It also remembers the selections when navigating away and returning to the page. The Property Statement Report has a new feature when exporting to Excel, which prompts with a new option allowing you to export Owner or Vendor Tax form 1099 data to Excel. This can then easily be used with tax form software such as EZ-W2 and W2 Mate for printing or e-filing 1099, 1096 and other forms. These programs allow printing approved forms on plain paper and also provide e-filing. In addition, the Contacts form has a new encrypted "Tax ID#" field on the Notes page, which is included in the 1099 Excel export along with names, addresses and summary data. The Tenants form has a new encrypted "Note" field next to the CC# fields, which can be used to store additional credit card numbers or other info if needed. The Floating Calendar was updated to accommodate inquiry format changes from VacationRentals.com. You can now precede Amenity names with a forward slash "/" in order to hide them from public view. This allows internally searching available properties based on internal classifications if needed. Rates posted to the web or displayed in templates are now sorted by Date rather than Rate type. Copying and Deleting Rates by Year within the Rates form, is now based on End Date rather than Begin Date. In addition, you can now Copy Rates forward and Delete Rates by Year for All Properties, or for just one property. The Bookings Chart report now includes a summary of Commissions by Recipient in the report totals when the option to Show Commissions is selected. Changes made to emails are now saved when Saving emails to the Docs folder. A new option was added to the Property Statement report to "Show Totals only". This can be used along with other report options to provide a 1 page year-end summary for owners. Next to each pair of email addresses and phone numbers (in the Tenants and Contacts forms) is a new small Arrow which you can click on to quickly "Exchange" or swap the two items.
12/22/2010 v.1.0.2221 - If you use Extension Bookings (such as for long-term bookings), there is a new feature when generating documents or emails for a booking that has Extensions. You are now prompted if you want to include the booking's Extensions when resolving Placeholders for any booking amounts, payments list, fees list, rate quote, etc. For example, this allows generating a single Agreement that reflects multiple Extension bookings of a long-term lease. The Alerts list now includes a column showing number of Days until the Alert date and highlights past due alerts in Red. Also, Alerts greater than 3 days in the future are now summarized together in the Alerts summary (not the detail list). Resolved an issue when pressing the Delete key in drop-down selections, and also placement of popup menus. The XML Data Export now includes the Property Info3 note. You can now record, track and report sales that are not associated with bookings, by creating a booking with the new Booking Status of "Other Sale" or "Tentative Other Sale". Bookings with these statuses do not effect availability calendars, double booking checks, etc, and still allow you to track payments, commissions, fees, reminders, as with other bookings. See Help on Booking Status Types for more info. The format of the Searchable Group Web page has been improved. There is a new Option in both the Tenants and Contacts forms to "Copy current Address & Info to the Notes". This is useful when there's a new address and contact info, and you want to save the old info before updating the new, without having to copy and paste each field. The "Inquire" links on posted web pages now include the Property ID in the inquiry. Also, if your Web Inquire Link (in System Preferences) is set to an Http URL address instead of an email, then a parameter containing the Name and ID is appended to the URL which can be used in your own web email form to determine the Property being inquired on. Some cosmetic changes were made to posted web pages (See Example). When selecting external files for Photos or Word Docs, there is a new option to "Copy File to the MyFiles Folder". Some people have changed the Current Century setting without changing the Rollover Year. This update resets those preferences. The XML Data export now includes the property photo names and descriptions. Important: The semi-colon delimiter used in the exported Rates and Amenities Lists has changed to " | ".
11/18/2010 v.1.0.2202 - When creating Extension Bookings from the Bookings form Options button, there is a new option to create multiple Extensions, and generate their scheduled payments. This is helpful for month-to-month type bookings. There are 3 new user-defined fields (Info1, Info2 and Info3), in the Notes page of both the Tenants and Contacts forms. There are also Placeholders to reference these fields within Templates. You can also customize these field names in System Preferences. A new System Preference for "Web Page Inquire Link" was added. This allows specifying a URL to your own inquiry web form, (or a different email address) to use in the Inquire and Contact links of posted web pages. The HomeAwayPM interface has been improved to run more efficiently. The Bookings, Tenants, and Contacts forms now allow printing 3-column mailing Labels from the Options button. The Bookings form also allows Exporting Tenant info to Excel for the currently listed Bookings. A new Format option for posting Property Group Web pages was added which provides a "Searchable List" of properties by Available Dates. This uses the XML Data Export feature to supply the search data to your website. Therefore, this feature is only available for the Unlimited properties license. See Example here. The XML Data Export now uploads to a specific folder name. See Help topic on Exporting XML Data for info on this change if you are already using the XML Data Export. The Searchable List feature has been tested with Firefox, IE and Safari browsers. When updating Linked Bookings for related properties, both Owner Stay, External, and Blockout bookings are also updated now. The Expression Builder (used for creating Filters), now remembers the last expression when redefining an expression for a particular field. The Rates XML Data Export is now called Property Data Export and includes rates, amenities, descriptions, number of beds/baths, and other property info which can be used as needed with your own web site.
10/20/2010 v.1.0.2187 - A new feature in the Web Interface button allows exporting Availability data and/or Rates (in XML format) to your own website for use with your own custom online database if needed. This feature is available for the Unlimited Properties license only. Also, there should be a noticeable speed improvement when using the Web Interface button's "Update All Changed Calendars and Availability Interfaces" option. A formatting issue was corrected in the Bookings Chart Detail report totals. The Housekeeping report has a new option to sort by Property (in addition to Scheduled Cleaning Date). This report also has a new option to Group by Assigned Cleaner or Property Manager. It also has an Auto Email option so you can email reports using templates. There are 3 new Miscellaneous type Placeholders: %RptGroupBy.Name%, %RptGroupBy.Email1% and %RptGroupBy.Email2%. See the Help topic on "Auto Email Templates" for using these with the Auto Email report options. When doing Change Database Location from the File menu, you can now Copy to and Replace an existing database if one already exists in the new location. There are now Placeholders for: %NextBookingTenant.Fieldname% and %PreviousBookingTenant.Fieldname% which allow you to reference any of the Tenant information in templates for the next or previous booking. These can be useful in templates for sending cleaning notices for example. Corrected an issue with the Housekeeping report when no cleanings are found for selected properties.
9/27/2010 v.1.0.2176 - The Housekeeping report has some formatting improvements. The Bookings Chart detail report now includes scheduled payments which are unpaid along with totals when the Show Payments option is selected. There is a new option on the Properties form Web tab which allows posting separate web pages containing Rates Lists. These Rates pages can then be incorporated into your existing websites using "iframes" or links. Note, if you're currently using the %RatesList% Placeholder in your Property Long Descriptions, you may want to remove these since a Rates page will automatically be included in the property web pages posted by VRP when the Rates List option is selected. In addition a new "Rates Info" field was added to the Web tab of the Properties form which can be used for specifying other info that will be displayed along with the posted Rates Lists (such as taxes, deposit required, etc). Property web pages using the Menu bar format now have a photo slideshow feature in the Property Info area of the web page. See Example Here. They also show the full calendar, rates and online booking form sections more seamlessly. Repost your group and property pages in order to apply these updates to your website. The Commissions report now shows totals for each commission Recipient. The generated Rates list now shows "Nightly" rather than "Daily" rates.
9/14/2010 v.1.0.2166 - The %RatesList% Placeholder has been updated to include the Rate Name. 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. The Bookings Chart Detail report has a new option to show Security Deposits and deposits returned along with totals. Also, the report now includes totals for payments received and commissions, plus it has a new option to "Sub-total by Month". The format for Property Group web pages with Calendars was changed to use less vertical space. Web Availability Calendar colors and day headings were changed also. See Example Here.
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.
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.
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.
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.

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