Reconciling your bank accounts can forever more be hassle-free thanks to a new feature we’re rolling out this week. Assisted account reconciliation is now available for all Rentec users managing their bank accounts through Rentec property management software. If you’ve ever used products like Quicken or Quickbooks, you’ll feel right at home with the new reconciliation features. Just have your bank statement handy, enter the account ledger you want to reconcile and click the new Reconcile button at the top.
For those not familiar with the account reconciliation process, click the link to see our knowledge-base and complete instructions on how to get started reconciling your accounts..
It is now easy to quickly locate a tenant, property, owner, bank account, or even individual transactions from anywhere in the application. Just click the search icon 
in the upper-right corner. The layout is familiar and easy to use. Simply start typing what you want to search for and click Search. That’s it!
Here’s some example uses of the new search.
- Want to find tenant “Joe Smith” quickly? Type in Joe Smith into the search bar (or just a portion of his name) and click Search.
- Trying to figure out what the $95.23 charge on your bank statement was? Just type in 95.23 in the search bar and it will bring up every transaction in the system matching that amount.
- Want to find the tenant with phone number 541-690-8667? Just type in 8667 into the search bar, and optionally filter only by tenants and it will automatically search by phone numbers.
- Need to find the expense for check number 1022? Type in 1022 into the search.
To the right of your results will be quick actions you can take. For properties and tenants you can edit, enter ledger, post payments and charges right from the search results (see icons on the right). Transaction matches give the option to edit the transaction from the search results, and owners/accounts give edit and ledger quick actions from the search results.
Note: The match ’123′ above matched numerous entries that don’t have ’123′ in their names. This is because those entries had the value ’123′ somewhere within. For example, the transaction for ‘Rental Income’ matched because the check number entered was check number ’123′. You can use the filters to reduce the results in your searches too!
After a brief delay in taking new merchant applicants, we are now again accepting EasyPay (with merchant account) applications. We’ve updated our vendor for merchant accounts to a vendor very familiar with the property management industry. This amounts to lower per-transaction costs, and a more stable platform for property managers. Along with ACH, you can also accept payments by credit card for both rent and rental application payments.
The cost structure has also been simplified and per-transaction costs reduced. Here’s a sample of what the cost structure looks like:
Monthly: $19.95
ACH Per Transaction: $0.75
CC Per Transaction: $0.10 + 2.5%
With your own merchant account, ACH payments fund to your account in 4 business days, while CC transactions are even sooner. Compared to a traditional EasyPay account, this can be as much as 10 business days sooner.
To get setup with your own merchant account, login, then visit Settings, Setup EasyPay. Download the application, and return all the supporting documents as explained on Page 3.
Sometimes a deposit entry get flubbed and the best way to fix it is to just undo the entire deposit and start from scratch doing it right the first time.
Previously this process was not very intuitive and involved individually modifying each transaction. Now it’s much easier. When you are viewing your deposit you’ll now see a link labelled [undo]. Clicking this link will open up a confirmation window and when you click Undo Deposit, all the funds are removed from the deposit and placed back into your Undeposited Funds account where you can then re-do your deposit correctly.
Not currently using Rentec to manage your deposits? It can save a lot of time and keep your records straight. See our original feature post on undeposited funds and deposit support.
New for June, 2011! Rentec Direct helps prospective tenants find your vacancy faster by publishing your listings to the world’s most popular and most frequently used real-estate rental listing websites. Rentec Direct’s distribution network consists of nearly 20 distribution partners including Zillow, Trulia, Yahoo, Trovit, Oodle and many more. See the image below to view the entire network.
Automatically when you select to create a rental listing in Rentec Direct your listing is transmitted to this network which all automatically link back to your listing here on Rentec and include basic contact information to reach you to apply for your vacancy.
In the short time we have been beta testing this program managers with listing syndicated to Rentec’s distribution network received double to triple the number of leads they would have through ordinary existing advertising methods. This means your vacancies could fill 2 to 3 times faster than average.
Because this feature shares property listing information and your contact information with third-party listing sites, we’ve also added an option for you to opt listings out if you wish. When creating your listing within Rentec Direct, simply click the ‘No Syndication’ option to opt out.
Note: Rentec Direct helps you make stunning craigslist ads; however, craigslist policy prohibits automatic posting, therefore craigslist postings still have to be copy/pasted into their post interface. Other sites within the distribution network place listings on a schedule from 24 to 72 hours after the listing is published. If any details are left out of the listing (description, price, amenities, etc) or any special characters (html or otherwise) the listing may not be accepted by the network.
Not too long ago we added a feature to create stunning craigslist ads which assist landlords and property managers to insert great listings onto craigslist using existing data already entered into the Rentec property management system. Well, the feedback on the craigslist ads was so positive and the format looked so good we’ve taken the same layout and applied it to your rental listings at rtd4.com.
This update produces as more consistent feel for prospective renters as well as significantly improves on the design. To learn more about making your own online listing see our property management knowledge-base article.
Here’s an example of what the listings now look like.
We’ve expanded the EasyPay system to now accept credit card payments. Any tenant wishing to pay with a Visa, MasterCard, or Discover can now use the tenant portal to make those payments. Once logged into the tenant portal, a tenant will click the EasyPay tab, which now gives them the option to pay by check (ACH) or by credit card.
By default, accepting credit card payments is off. You must enable it by going to Settings, Setup EasyPay. Select the type of credit card payments you wish to accept, then save your settings. Most landlords should select all three(VI/MC/DISC). In order to pay for processing costs, Rentec Direct will add a 5% convenience fee to the charged amount. Then the full charge amount, minus the convenience fee, will automatically deposit into your checking account.
If you already are setup with EasyPay all you have to do is enable credit cards, nothing more. If you aren’t yet enrolled in EasyPay, there is no cost to get setup, just visit Settings, Setup EasyPay and return the application. ACH transactions using Rentec EasyPay are a flat $2.00 and credit card payments are just $0.50.
More exciting news! We’re now accepting a limited number of applications into the merchant service program! This program sets your property management operation up with a merchant account which allows all EasyPay transactions to go directly to your checking account without interacting with ours. This shaves valuable days off the clearing process for ACH transactions and for larger volume accounts has a much more compelling fee structure to save you processing costs on both ACH and credit card transactions. To inquire, please email easypay@rentecdirect.com and we will reply with the necessary information and documents to you.
We have updated the application system to allow for collection of application fees directly via the online form. We take care of all the work with the bank and merchant processing so your setup is as simple as telling us how much to charge. To use this feature, first you must be already setup with EasyPay (which allows us to process transactions on your behalf). Our basic EasyPay account has a setup fee of $25 and no monthly fee. If you aren’t setup, you can get setup quickly by downloading the single page setup form at Settings, Setup EasyPay.
Once you are setup with EasyPay (or if you are already), visit Settings, Rental Application Defaults. Scroll to the bottom for the new options under the Applications Fees heading. Specify your fee, and if you would like us to automatically post a income entry under the associated property for you when it is received.
Once a tenant completes their application, we credit 95% of the fee received to your account (the remaining 5% is used to pay for our transaction costs). You can then either use those funds for tenant screening, or allow them to remain as a credit on your account which will pay future invoices.
Ready to easily create beautiful, attention grabbing craigslist ads? We’ve just made it as super simple with our new craigslist listing generation tool.
To use:
- Right click the vacant property, choose File Library, and upload photos. Select the check-mark to make them available for external listings.
- Right click the vacant property, choose Edit Property.
- From the property menu (upper-right), choose Profile / Marketing. Enter the information here that you would like to see in your listing. When done editing, click Save Changes.
- Click the link to Preview and setup your Craigslist listing on the right. Choose your theme, then follow the simple instructions to post your craigslist listing on the right panel.
That’s all there is to it to have the best looking craigslist listings in town! Listing your property on other sites that accept HTML? Feel free to use the same process and paste the code into any other site that accepts HTML formatting.
One of our goals at Rentec Direct is to make your property management easier! A lot of property managers and CPAs are accustomed to using a chart of accounts to manage their categories and accounts. It’s an accounting standard. We’ve always had full support for this standard; however, we omitted the numeric values in the past. To better comply with accounting standards, and also provide a familiar look and feel to property managers familiar with other applications such as Quickbooks we’ve added support for an officially numbered chart of accounts.
One additional, and very compelling, benefit of this is you can now define your account reference numbers for both bank accounts and categories. Reports and pages within the site are sorted by these reference numbers, so along with properties, you now have full custom sorting capabilities for all accounts and categories now.
This is a free upgrade for all Rentec users. The next time you login, numeric values will be assigned to all your categories and accounts automatically. To edit them, visit Settings, Setup Categories (may be renamed to Chart of Accounts someday soon). To edit account reference numbers, edit the account and the reference number option is in the upper right.
