EZPZ Landlord 5 - What's New

Version 5.03.02 - 06/09/2008

New Features/Enhancements

Paid records - major changes have been made to the way the software records allocations between invoices and receipts and payments using paid records. Much of the system has required some rewriting to enable use of these new format paid records but, as these are internal changes, the user will not see any difference in the software interface.

Credit Control - major revisions have been made to the Credit Control options, including improved screens.

Note: The credit control assessment can now optionally be carried out when the system starts and pening credit control actions shown on the "Things To Do List". Users need to select which basis they want to carry out credit control assessment on by selecting either "Tenant" or "Tenancy" in the Global Defaults option, Tenants tab, on the Settings menu.

We are much indebted to Julian Godfrey for his assistance and feedback with the new screens.

Post Rent Charges - the Post Rent Charges screen (Tenancies menu) has been revised. The "Create what?" dropdown, previously at the bottom right of the screen, has been removed and replaced by the "Post charges" and "Create demands only" buttons at the top of the screen. The controls concerned with changing the due date of selected rent charges have been replaced by a single "Change Due date" link that will take the user to a screen where a new due date can be entered. We are much indebted to Julian Godfrey for his suggestions.

Reminders/Events - event records have been removed from the system and are represented instead by a reminder record having a "pending" or "completed" status. Existing event records will be converted to completed reminders. The Reminders list, and the Reminders page on the record for a property, tenant, tenancy etc, have been revised to enable the user to view pending and/or completed reminders. Event reports have been removed from the system.

Bugs fixed

Microsoft Word - we have reverted to the old program code we used to use when "talking" to Microsoft Word as the revised code was generating errors when used with Microsoft Word 2007. The old code appears to work just as well with the new version of Word.

Bank Reconciliation - the option to unreconcile transactions has been revised and corrected. This option was previously unreconciling all transactions with the selected reconcile date, not just those for the selected bank account.

Version 5.02.02 - 23/07/2008

New Features/Enhancements

Property record, Utilities page, linking to utility provider - meter type 'Key' has been added as an option.

Tenant record, Main page - Link added allowing selection of address to use for letters from previous, forwarding, registered office, or property the tenant occupies/has occupied/will occupy, as applicable.

Editing rent charge screen - description of calculation added.

Picture Manager - option added to Utilities menu. All picture controls revised.

Reminders - now have an associated user so that they can be allocated to a specific user if user records have been created on the system. At start-up reminders are checked for the logged-on user if applicable.

Tenancy types - now have associated user code to control creation of tenancy expiry reminder.

New fields added to property record
The following new fields have been added to the Advertising page of the Property record:

• PROPERTY ADDRESS - this is how the property address will look in the lists and reports used throughout the program.
• TO LET LIST - this is how the property address will appear on the Properties To Let list. Note for users having customised To Let list: edit this report and change the name of the field at the top of the Detail band from 'propadrs' to 'tletadrs'.
• USER-DEFINED MEMO x 3 - these fields can be used to enter freeform notes of your choosing and can be added to the reports used by the software for advertising your property (see the Property Full Details report).

The following new fields have been added to the Miscellaneous page of the Property record:

• USER-DEFINED TEXT x 3 - these fields can be used to record details of your own choosing and can be added to property reports (see the Property Full Details report).

Property Defaults option - this new option has been added to the Properties menu. The option lets you set the text labels used to describe the user-defined memo and text fields on screen and in reports.

Safety Certificates - 'Failed' added as an option for certificate status to indicate failure of the safety check. Notes field added.

Things To Do List - can now be opened from File> Open menu as well as appearing at start-up.

Job Filter - enhanced to include additional filtering as in Properties list filter.

Portfolio Filter - enhanced to include additional filtering as in Properties list filter.

New Reports
The following new reports have been added:

• Rents for Period (Daily rates) - Tenancy reports
• Rents for Period (Non-daily rates) - Tenancy reports
• Tenancy Charging Records (Current)- Tenancy reports
• Tenancy Charging Records (History)- Tenancy reports
• Local Authorities and properties serviced - Property reports
• Properties and their Local authorities - Property reports
• Utility providers and properties serviced - Property reports
• Properties and their utility providers - Property reports
• User-defined values - Property reports
• Properties grouped by Mortgage provider - Portfolio reports
• Target Rents (Current)- Property reports
• Target Rents (History)- Property reports
• Tenancies (Current)- Property reports
• Tenancies (History)- Property reports
• FASTSMS CSV file report - Contact, Landlord, Supplier and Tenant reports

Bugs fixed

Print Remittance Advice - Now runs via form to enable report editing (Special Report). Error 'M.csbus_logo not found' fixed.

Property record, Inc & Exp page - Income & Expenditure totals were including deleted transactions.

Transaction Split Wizard - error message advising class not registered now fixed.

Word document wizard - was using electricity reading details for both gas and water as well.

Key records - revised, problems adding keys with same key code for different properties.

Version 5.02.01 - 25/05/2008

New Features/Enhancements

Country
A country field has been added to the address details for the following records:

• Area
• Business
• Contact
• Property
• Supplier

The country field for these records will be initialised to "United Kingdom (GB)".

The inclusion of the country in an address is controlled by a setting in Settings> Global Defaults. This setting can have one of 2 values:

1. always include the country in an address
2. only include the country in an address if the country is different to that of the business (default)

A list of countries can be accessed via Settings> Lookup tables.

Safety Certificates
Records for gas and electricity safety certificates can now be added and maintained via the Safety Certificates option on the Properties menu.

A new reminder type, "Safety certificate expiry", has been added to reminder types. A reminder that a certificate is due to expire will be created a set number of days before the certificate expires. This number of days can be set using Settings> Global defaults. The default value is 30 days.

Tenancy record - Reminders page
A Reminders page has been added to tenancy records. The user can use this page to mange reminder and event records for a tenancy.

Reminder Schedules
A reminder schedule enables the user create a "batch" of reminders for an object starting from a particular date. Each reminder schedule consists of 1 or more reminder types, each of which is set to create a reminder on a number of days after the start date.

Reminder schedules are managed via the File> Open> Reminder schedules option.

Reminders can be created from reminder schedules using the button on the Reminders page for the following records:

• Property
• Supplier
• Tenancy
• Tenant

SMS Text Messaging
A new option, FASTSMS, has been added as a provider of SMS email to text services.

SMS text messages can now be sent to Contact records.

Properties Filter
The following criteria have been added to the Property list filter screen:

• property type
• number of bedrooms
• furnished type

Version 5.01.14 - 29/04/2008

New Features/Enhancements

Credit Control - new credit control entries can now be added as single entries in addition to being added as follow-up entries, completed entries can now have their details edited. The number of pending credit control entries due for processing will appear on the Things To Do list at start-up if this option is selected in Popup Control.

Posting Rent Charges - rent charge can now be edited from this screen in addition to the Rent Charges page of the tenancy record.

Bugs fixed

Posting Rent Charges - when posting rent demand only, demand was given invoice number. When later posting transaction, a different invoice number was being generated. Same invoice number is now used.

Version 5.01.13 - 21/04/2008

Bugs fixed

Waiting List - returning no matches where the date required in the enquiry is before today's date.

Version 5.01.12 - 16/04/2008

Bugs fixed

Tenancy record - error message when changing "stop charging rent" date, and credit note not posted.

Version 5.01.11 - 13/04/2008

Bugs fixed

Balance Sheet report - incorrectly calculating balances for bank accounts where sales receipts included VAT element (cash accounting).

Properties To Let List - including properties where "allow tenancies" set to false.

Property Finder - incorrect code was excluding multiple properties from available list if one of the properties had a current tenancy.

Property reports with pictures - error message when trying to delete temporary picture files created where property pictures are embedded and failure to delete temporary picture files.

Property Investment Sheet - not displaying purchase date and price where these details had been entered.

Tenancy record - error when trying to change term of a tenancy.

Version 5.01.01 - 23/03/2008

Initial version launched.