Rentec Direct

Reports now include your contact information in the upper right to help differentiate and identify your reports. This has been a direct result of user feedback to our support department. Keep up the great suggestions and our developers will keep improving the software to better meet your needs.

To setup your name and address, visit Settings, Your Contact Info.

We’re pleased to announce a new, updated, and more powerful reporting system. One of our frequent requests from property managers was to make historical renter reports available. In order to accommodate this as well as some additional reports which we’ll be releasing over the next few months we’ve updated the reports interface.

Updated Reports Are Now Available!

We’re pleased to announce a new, updated, and more powerful reporting system. One of our frequent requests from property managers was to make historical renter reports available. In order to accommodate this as well as some additional reports which we’ll be releasing over the next few months we’ve updated the reports interface.

What’s new?

1. Updated Interface. Next time you click the Reports tab, you’ll be presented with the new interface. Instead of reports all being grouped into a single page, they are split into separate frames controlled via the buttons at the top. Your current category is highlighted. Here’s what it looks like.
   
2. New Reports. Within the Renter / HOA Reports frame, nearly all of these reports are now available by both account and date. Previously these type of reports (in the right-hand column of the previous report system) were only available based on the current date. Now you can run Rent Roll, Deposits, and all other reports marked with the calendar for any date in the past. Also new closed workorders and property listings reports have been introduced in the Misc Reports area.
3. Legend. A legend (key) is available in the bottom-left which lets you know at a glance the capabilities of each report.

While we are always very excited to roll out new features to benefit all of our users (at no additional cost), we’re also very sensitive to your workflow. Because this new report system is significantly upgraded and different from the previous report system, we’re leaving the old system for you to use indefinitely. To go back to the old report system permanently or temporarily, just click the link at the top of the page; it looks like this . You can get back to the new report system, or switch back and forth as much as you like.

We’ve added a new report to the system to assist landlords and property managers easily compile all necessary information to provide 1099′s to the IRS, vendors, and owners.  Under the Reports tab is the new report labeled 1099 Assistant.  Click the image to the right for a full size example of the report.

To use this new report simply enter your expenses and distributions as normal into the system.  Any time after January 1st, visit Reports, choose ‘Last Year’ for a date range, and choose the 1099 Assistant report.  All your expenses will be summarized with the necessary information to fill out your 1099s quickly available at your fingertips.

A couple tips to make this report the most useful.  Be sure to visit Settings, Setup Vendors and have all your vendors defined in the system with complete address and tax id information.  Same for any owners you provide distributions to.  If the system is unable to match a qualified expense to a vendor or owner it will provide an option to link that payee to an owner or vendor for your convenience.

Along with this we have also improved the auto-suggest feature when posting or editing expenses.  While the feature was always very reliable in Firefox, Chrome, and other browsers with excellent Javascript support, we’ve update it to work better for IE now as well.  IE users will notice the auto-suggest list, and auto-populate of address fields work much smoother now.

We’ve added a new report to the system to display in both a numeric and graphical sense some important performance statistics about your properties.

Highlights of the new report:

• Occupancy Rate Graph
• Income / Expense Graph
• Tenant Statistics
• Workorder Statistics

This report is property and date bound.  To try it out, visit the Reports tab, select a property or all properties, then a date-range and choose ‘Property Performance’ report.  Note, due to the complexity of this report, it is in beta for the time being until we’re clear it is providing the most useful data for our property managers.

We’ve improved the report interface!  When viewing a report, statement, invoice, or receipt you now have the option in the upper right to download any report in PDF (right red pdf icon, see screenshot below).  Lately we’ve been asked a lot of  questions like these.

How can I email a copy of a ledger to my accountant?
How do I send this report to an owner?
How can I save reports?

The answer is, print to PDF.  PDF is a universally recognized document which stands for Portable Document Format.  There are many readers available for PDF and chances are your computer already has one installed.  If not, Adobe Acrobat is the most popular and it is free.  Once the document is saved, you can easily attach it to an email, or save it onto your computer or flash drive.

This update does not require you to purchase the full version of Adobe Acrobat.  We create the PDF files on the server and you download them and view them in the FREE PDF reader.  Customers of other property management software solutions who want to do the same may need to pay the $300/annual license to create PDFs; however, with Rentec Direct we’ve done this for you and included it in all of our professional releases at no additional cost.

There is a new report available within the Reports tab: Open Workorders.  Choose a property from the property dropdown and then choose this report to view all open workorders for the property or properties selected.

Choose Print in the upper right to send it to your printer.  Note, the display on page puts each workorder right after the next; however, when sent to the printer it will page break each workorder to its own page.

Sorting property names, especially when considering large numbers of sub-units, can be somewhat complicated.  The typical methods to sort available on the web are alphabetically or numerically.  The challenge presents itself when there might be a property, or multiple properties within an account that look like the following lists:

Computers can be told to sort numerically, which would not have any idea how to sort the first set of data.  Likewise, they can be told to sort alphabetically which presents a problem with the 2nd set of data.  Even a straight numerical sort on the 2nd set of data would produce an unwanted result.  Alphabetical sorting also has the complication of ordering like this:  1,11,12,13,2,3,4,5,6 (see why the 11, 12, 13 are before the 2? hint: it’s because they start with 1 which comes before 2)  Add to this that within the property name field we see other notes which may not relate to the property address.  Now picture these same lists with 100 or 200 properties or unit in them.  It can end up looking disorderly.

Rentec Direct has developed a custom sorting methodology to address all options and display the list in the most universally ordered method available.  The explanation of how it works is as follows:

1. If a property has a numeric value within it (any number), that number is stored and used as the primary sort, followed by a alphabetical sort; otherwise if a property has no numerical values it is considered to start with a zero, so it’s at the top of the list and then sorted purely alphabetically.
2. Following any alphabetical only addresses are the numbered addresses, or addresses with any number in them at all.
3. In the case of properties with subunits, each list of subunits is sorted independently and listed directly below the primary property (or in the case of many reports, the subunit’s first units shows first).  The sorting of subunits follows the same rules as items 1 and 2 above.

If that’s too technical (or long) to read and understand, suffice it to say the sorting in Rentec Direct works much better now.  Thank you Sam (one of our terrific customers) for your feedback and help reporting the sorting issues.  This update should provide a more consistent look and feel across the board when looking at lists of properties.

This update affects all editions of Rentec Direct.

We’ve added some great reports, based on user feedback, to Rentec Direct.  These new reports are available to you today!  We base a lot of our development on user feedback.  If you have any ideas for reports which would help you manage your properties, please email them to us at support@rentecdirect.com.

• Account Summary – See all of your banking accounts in one spot with their total income, expenses, and balance.
• Property Summary – See all of your property accounts in one spot with their total income, expenses, and balance.
• General Ledger - Customizable general ledger report by property or account.  Fully sortable by your own custom dates.
• Current Deposits – Quick report to show you deposits held per property.
• Lease Expiration - Quick report to show you which properties have leases and when those leases expire.
• Rent Roll – At a glance report of properties and tenants, their rent due, and current balance.
• Vacant Properties - Quick report to show you all vacant properties.