Tenant Portal Repairs Tab

This has been one of our most frequent requests by property managers; to allow tenants to place workorders via the tenant portal.  We’re pleased to report that this new feature is released!

Tenants will have a new tab called ‘Repairs’ when they login to their tenant portal. Within this tab they can see a list of workorders associated with the property they are renting.  Clicking on any of the items will give them limited details (only what a tenant should see).  Tenants can also click the link at the bottom to Report an issue, where they can enter details of the problem which will automatically enter a workorder inside your Rentec Direct account, and email you about it’s existence.

By default this functionality is enabled for all new workorders.  If you want to prohibit tenants from placing workorders or modify the email preference, you can easily adjust these settings at Settings, Program Defaults.  You can also prohibit a tenant from seeing an individual workorder by de-selecting the ‘Tenant view‘ option when creating or editing workorders in the upper right.

For standard monthly rentals, just leave the selector on ‘Monthly’; however, for those renting more short-term choose Weekly or Daily from this drop-down menu.  The system will then take care of all necessary calculations for you and place the appropriate values into the tenant ledger and the recurring transactions.

Additionally, this opens up the ability for you to backup your own data if you choose.  Any time, to use this new feature just open up any ledger.  At the bottom of the ledger is a link that says download this data.  If you have Excel installed it can be opened directly into Excel, or saved to your computer where you choose.

If you want to add multiple tenants to a single property or unit, you can do so just by choosing Place New Tenant from the Properties tab.  What’s new is as you add additional tenants, they will all show up right on the properties tab so you can easily see all of the tenants instead of just the primary.

Additionally the reports have been expanded to support roommate scenarios.  Both the All Tenants Report and the Rent Roll Report now show in sequence all tenants associated with a property.  Here’s a snippet of the Rent Roll Report with the three tenants moved into the test property 1429 SW Foundry.

For more information on how to use this feature, choose need help? in the upper right once logged in, and select the topic labeled How can I add multiple tenants or roommates to a single property?

By default, your Income account and Expense accounts are the same as you have already defined, or set to None if you have not previously set them.  To update the defaults, click the Properties tab, then right-click on your property, and select Edit Property.  From the drop-downs here you can specify your default income and expense accounts individually for each property.

In addition, any workorders expensed to a property will automatically also post to the default expense account for that property.

From the Rentec Team, we wish everyone a very happy new year!!

I figure this has to be expensive for the shop.  Envelope, invoice, stamp, plus return stamp and the time it may take to cash the check.  What if there was an automated way?  Enter Rentec Music Rental Software.  We are leveraging the already powerful engine which drives Rentec’s property management software and soon making components available to other rental industries.

This will not only provide a new service to an industry desperately in need, but it will continue to help improve the core Rentec Direct product with new features and improvements that may benefit both industries.  Keep an eye out for new improvements in 2010!

To use this new feature, simply select the box that says ‘this is a depreciable improvement’ when entering an expense for a property.  Alternatively if you want to track depreciable expenses without affecting the property ledger, you can do that too.  Just right-click on the property, choose Depreciation, and add any items you wish.  Both methods will show up on the new depreciation schedule report within the Reports tab.

For more detailed help in setting up depreciable items, click ‘need help?‘ in the upper right after logging in, and find the FAQ item listed as ‘How do I enter and track depreciable improvements? ‘.

From here you can click the attachment icon to view the deposit slip or deposit summary which will provide you with the granular details of the deposit.

A summary of changes:

1. Section 2.3 added to define support services and costs.
2. Section 2.4 added to define data import/export services and costs.
3. Section 3.2 updated to include a link to our products and pricing page.
4. Sections 3.6 and 3.7 added.  Adds language about fees for any returned payments and defines circumstances where an account may become locked for non-payment.
5. Section 6.3 added.  This defines how we handle accounts which have been inactive for 6+ months.

Here is a brief run-down of how easy it is.  When you are taking payments simply put them into the undeposited funds account.  When you are ready to go to the bank, enter the undeposited funds account and choose Make Deposit.  The system will let you select which items you wish to deposit into which account, and then print out a deposit slip for you to bring to the bank.

For existing Rentec users who want to see a complete step-by-step tutorial, click the need help link in the upper right after you are logged in.   Find the FAQ item labeled ‘How do I use Rentec Direct to track undeposited funds and bank deposits?’.