Propertyware Knowledge Base

Document Link Icons for Tenant and Owner Alerts – Portals

The following Tenant and Owner Alerts now provide icons instead of text hyperlinks when referring owners and tenants to documents uploaded to their portals.

• Owner Notification: Report Published to Portal
• Owner Notification: Statement Published to Portal
• Owner Notification: Document Published to Portal
• Tenant Notification: Document Published to Portal

Payer Names on Payment Records – Leases, Setup, Money In, Reports

In compliance with the Oregon Department of Real Estate (ORDRE), Propertyware now includes a Payer Name on the Tenant Ledger and Tenant Ledger printouts.

In addition, under Setup > Administration Setup > Accounting Preferences, there is now an option to Require Entry of Payer Name on Tenant Payments.  

There also is now a Payer Name drop-down menu in Quick Collect, under the Money In tab.

If “Other” is selected from the Quick Collect drop-down menu, a New Contact form will appear for completion.

The General Ledger report now includes Payer Name as a column option. 

Propertyware also now stores contact name data from Scanned Checks and ePayments as Payer Name for use in Reports, Ledgers and other records.

Data Added to Tenant Ledger and Mail Merge Templates – Leases / Setup

In compliance with the Oregon Department of Real Estate (ORDRE), Receipt Numbers added to the Tenant Ledger are now consecutively numbered.

A Payer Name field to identify which contact paid rent has also been added to the Tenant Ledger, and the Lease Name is now recorded for use in various records.

Finally, in Setup > Templates, Receipt Number and Portfolio Abbreviation options have been added to Available Fields for customizing Mail Merge Templates. 

Single Convenience Fee for Credit Card & ACH payments – ePayments Setup

Credit card company rules require that only one convenience fee may be charged, whether the payment is by credit card or ACH.  To enforce these rules, Propertyware has modified its convenience fee system in the following ways:

• Convenience Fee Global Settings have been established in Administration Setup > ePayments Settings.
• An explanation that convenience fees cannot be charged on auto-payments via credit cards or ACH payments is now included next to this setting.
• If the property management company does not accept credit card payments, Convenience Fee Global Settings will only refer to ACH payments.

ENTERPRISE CUSTOMERS ONLY: Additional Data Pushes from Master User Accounts to Child Accounts

The following information now pushes from Master User Accounts to Child Accounts:

• Addresses
• Phone Numbers
• Signature
• Alert Override information

1/13/2012 – Feature Release

Improvements to Income Statement Standard – Reports

Propertyware has added a Sorting function to the Income Statement Standard report.  In addition, the PDF has been changed to a portrait orientation, to match the look and feel of other financial statements such as the Balance Sheet.

1/11/2012 – Feature Release

Conversations v2 – Desktop, Portfolio, Building/Unit, Prospect, Lease,  Work Order, Management

A brand-new Conversation Stream has replaced the old Conversations format throughout Propertyware! Conversation Streams are now available on the Desktop, Portfolio, Building/Unit, Prospect, Lease, Work Order and Management screens.  

• Profile Pictures in Conversations

Not only does the Conversation Stream look and feel similar to Facebook, it actually allows users to pull their profile picture from Facebook via a Set My Photo button. This button will only pull the user’s profile picture from Facebook; no other data transfer to or from Facebook will occur.

Profile pictures can also be set and deleted by going to Setup > Personal Setup > My Account, and can be Reset either via that same Setup path or directly from the Conversations tab on the Desktop.

• Permissions and Conversation Visibility

Any user can create a Conversation, whether they are Administrators or not. However, User Profile permissions are required to delete Conversations or Comments (which are the subsequent notes added to Conversations), whether they are one’s own posts or those of others.

Conversations are also visible according to Building Restrictions, which means that anyone with access to view a Building will be able to see all Conversations that pertain to that Building, regardless of who created the Conversation or what that team member’s assignments may be.

• Conversations Use and Application

When creating new Conversations, you can decide who will be able to see the Conversation by selecting from the Start a Conversation with: drop-down menu. Messages can be sent to the Management Team, Tenant(s) or Owner(s). A comment to the right of the field will explain the option you have selected.

Once you’ve chosen who you want to have a Conversation with, simply type what you’d like to say in the Write a comment… field and click Share.

Conversations with Tenants or Owners can be started from the Contact Record, Lease, or Management screen, will be published to the appropriate Portal, and will send an Alert to the person you are contacting. 

Conversations that are published to a portal are identified by an icon, as shown below.

• Linking Related Items to Conversations from the Desktop

While all Conversations started on the Desktop will display there, those Conversations can also be linked to related items in other areas of Propertyware, for one-step entry to entity records and portals.

To do this, click on Link a Related Item, select the type of entity you want to link the Conversation to, enter your data in the field provided, and click the Search button.  Once the results are displayed, click on the Name to complete the link. 

• Other New Conversations Features

•  The Conversations tab at the Portfolio level is the same as the Conversations tab in Management.

•  On the Management and Prospects screens, Conversations has been moved to the first tab position.

•  Conversations are limited to 100 posts per page.

 

User Interface changes – Prospects

• The buttons on the Prospects list view have a new look. 

• The Prospects detail screen also has different buttons, a different screen color, and a new design with tabs at the bottom.  

• The Marketing field and Custom Fields including Tenant Screening have been moved from the screen’s far right to the middle of the screen.

User Interface changes – Management

• On the Management screen, the set of buttons beneath the management summary has been removed; their functions are available via the buttons at the top of the screen, which are now blue.
• The look of the tabs has also changed, and their order has been rearranged to place Conversations first. 

1/7/2012 – Feature Release

Last Payment Date Filter for Lease Views – Leases

A Last Payment Date Filter is now available when creating a View in Leases. This will help property management companies to issue notices and perform various in-house procedures regarding delinquent tenants.

Auto-Enable Tenant Portals for New Leases – Leases

It is now possible to automatically enable tenant portal login for all contacts when converting new leases. This option, which only applies to Active Lease creation, eliminates the need to manually enable Tenant Portals every time a New Lease is created. 

Expense Account GL for Tenant Refund Checks – Leases

Refund checks issued via the Adjustments button on the Tenant Ledger can now be coded under an Expense Account GL.

Portfolio View of Consolidated Building Budgets in Income Statement Budget Comparison – Reports

When filtering this report by Portfolio, a new Sum Building Budgets checkbox provides the option to add all Building Budgets together for comparison to the Portfolio’s actual financials. It defaults as checked; when unchecked, the report will only use Portfolio budget data

New Columns for Accounts Receivable - Tenant Balance – Lease Reports

The following Column options have been added to the Lease: Tenant Ledger category of the Accounts Receivable - Tenant Balance report.

• Last Payment Amount – Shows the most recent payment to the Ledger.
• Current Month Unpaid Charges – Displays the sum of all unpaid charges dated in the current month.
• Sticky Note – Shows the full text of a sticky note on the Lease Summary or Ledger Page View.

Sticky Note has also been added to the Column options under Lease Summary.

Portfolio Abbreviation in Owner Statement Simple – Reports

A Portfolio Abbreviation has been added to the data displayed when Display List of Managed Properties is selected under Other Options. 

Copyright 2012 changes

Propertyware’s web pages have been updated to reflect 2012 copyright dates.

12/21/2011 – Feature Release

Improvements to Sticky Notes – Portfolios, Contacts, Buildings/Units, Leases, Vendors, Management

With increased character capacity, longer Sticky Notes can now be posted in Portfolios, Contact Records, Buildings/Units, Leases, Management and Vendors. Also, when a Sticky Note has been created in any of these areas, it now overlays the screen until the Close button is clicked.

Additionally, User Profiles can now be enabled to Edit Sticky Notes under Global Settings, and to post a different Popup Sticky Note within each individual module they can be created in.

Improvements to Tenant Ledger – Leases

The Tenant Ledger has been enhanced, with updated button names and added functionality. First, the buttons at the top of the Ledger have been renamed:

• Record Payment is now New Payment
•  One Time Charge  is now New Charge
•  Refund, Discount, Adjustment is now Adjustments
•  New Journal Entry is now New JE
•  Calculate Late Fee is now Late Fee

In addition, New Charge now allows a charge to be split into Iterations, spaced as designated by a drop-down menu:

And New JE now allows for these charge Iterations to be recorded in a Journal Entry:

12/16/2011 – Feature Release

Updates to Form 1099-MISC  Printout  – Money Out/Management

Printed versions of Vendor and Owner 1099s now separate the Address 1 and Address 2 fields onto two rows. This applies to both Payer and Recipient address data, on both Vendor and Owner 1099s.

Exclude from 1099 – Chart of Accounts

In Setup > Customize > Chart of Accounts, a new option, Exclude from 1099, is now available. This applies to both Income and Expense Accounts.

Calculation Changes for Owner 1099s – Management

Propertyware has improved its calculations for Box 1 and Box 3 of Owner 1099s.

• Box 1 - Rents: This includes income from all account codes set as Rent, plus offsets to that income, identified as Income accounts set as Discount.
• Box 3 - Other Income: This includes income from all Income accounts NOT set as Rent or Discount. This box cannot contain a value below zero, so if the balance is negative it must be reported as $0 in Box 3, and the negative amount should be reported as part of the sum in Box 1.

Note: This feature only applies to 1099s for owners not excluded from 1099 reporting. See Exclude from 1099 feature, above.

Improvements to Audit Log – Reports

The Audit Log now records many more activities, including Campaign creation, CRP generation, Rent Bump, Saving Late fees, Edits to Sites, Budget changes, Copy Budget, Tenant Contact edits in Leases, Prospects changes, Alerts changes, Bill Payment entries, and the deletion of Custom folders in Reports. 

Also in the Audit Log, the activity previously labeled Reassign Building Portfolio now displays as [Reassigned Building X] from [Portfolio A] to [Portfolio B].

Return Batches for ePayments – Banking

Because some ePayments returns are processed in batches, Propertyware now also groups these returns into batches. The batches, named by type (i.e. ACH Return Batch, Credit Card Return Batch) in Banking, Reconciliation and Reports, show each transaction in a nested list.

12/9/2011 – Feature Release

Total Added to Bank Balance Breakdown – Reports

In compliance with North Carolina Real Estate Commission requirements, Propertyware now shows a Total sum of balances by portfolio on the Bank Balance Breakdown report.

Payer Name Added to General Ledger – Reports

The North Carolina Real Estate Commission requires that bank accounts on the General Ledger include the payer name with each deposit account debit item. Propertyware now accommodates this requirement.

Unique Deposit Numbers Across Org – Accounting Preferences

The North Carolina Real Estate Commission requires that, when closing a bank deposit, the system assign a sequential Deposit Number that is unique across the organization, rather than just to each bank account. To accommodate this, Propertyware now provides an option to increment deposit numbers across all of an organization’s bank accounts. This can be done by going to Setup > Administration Preferences > Accounting Preferences > Deposit Number Unique Per and selecting Org.

12/2/2011 – Feature Release

New Property Views – Properties

To provide more flexibility in how properties can be viewed and grouped, Propertyware now offers a list view of Portfolios, Buildings and Units on the Properties home page. Multiple Property Views are available in a drop-down list, and custom views can be added as needed.

Once a Portfolio, Building or Unit is selected, the view returns to the familiar Navigator format, with a link back to the main list.

Updates to CRP Forms – Leases

Certificate of Rent Paid (CRP) tax forms for Minnesota and Wisconsin tenants have been updated for the new year. 2011 and 2012 have been added to the Select Year drop-down menu for generating CRPs, and all CRP forms have been updated to the 2011 17% calculation rate.

In addition:

• The Total Months Rented figure is now added to Minnesota forms, calculated based on the Lease Start and End Dates. Similarly, Wisconsin forms now add a figure for Number of Months in this Rental.
• On Minnesota forms, Place an “X” in box if count includes married couple is now automatically checked if residents have same last name and Titles of Mr. & Mrs. in the Contact Record, OR if the Is Primary Contact Spouse? box in the Applicant Information section of the Contact Record is selected.
• Minnesota forms will also now have the box pertaining to partial payment by a government housing agency checked if the Public Assistance Program field on the Lease is set to anything other than NONE.
• For both types of CRP forms, the number of occupants includes only those who are named on the Lease, and married couples are counted as 1.

11/18/2011 – Feature Release

Modifications to NACHA File Format – Setup > Chart of Accounts

For companies that use NACHA files to pay owners, some files require unique information to be entered into key fields. To accommodate this, Propertyware has added those fields to the New/Edit Account screen. The fields will only be available if Propertyware Subscriptions has enabled the client for NACHA Export. The property management company will need to obtain information from their bank to enter in these fields.

Exclude Charges from Require Pay in Full – Tenant Portals

Property managers can now be more selective as to which charges tenants must pay in full.

On the Tenant Portals setup screen, the Require Pay in Full selection is Yes, a new option, Exclude Charges from Pay in Full, displays.  When “Yes” is selected here, a list of accounts associated with tenant charges drops down for selection. All excluded charges are then listed below.

Merge Multiple Prospects into a Single Record – Marketing

For cases where duplicate Prospects are created or two different contacts are looking to lease together, the Related Activity Merge Prospects is now available.

• Only the same Types of Prospects can be merged, and only two Prospects at a time.
• Any contacts attached to merging prospects will also be merged.
• Data from the deleted record is stored as a Note on whichever Prospect is chosen as the primary Contact Record. This includes the background screening detail report, if any.

Sales Contact Added to Management Team Roles – Buildings

A new Management Team Role, Sales Contact, has been created for cases in which a Building or Unit is listed for sale rather than lease.

The “Send To” groupings on Alerts and “Access Restrictions” on custom Report folders will combine Leasing Agent and Sales Contact roles when editing alert features or running reports.

Published Listings will display either the Leasing Agent or the Sales Contact, depending on whether or not the Building is listed as “For Sale” under Marketing Information. If no Sales Contact is on file, the Leasing Agent will default into the role to satisfy this requirement, but this can be edited.  Buildings also listed as Published Rentals will continue to use the Leasing Agent for published contact information. Building Reports will list the Sales Contact role separately, to ensure proper identification.

More Visible Content in Prospect Activity History – Marketing

Propertyware has increased the number of visible text lines in the Body/Description area of a Prospect’s Activity History. This will largely eliminate the need to click View when browsing a prospect’s activity.

Owner Cost Information for Work Orders and Maintenance History – Maintenance/Properties

To differentiate between actual costs to the property management company and costs to owners due to markups or discounts, Owner Cost information is now displayed more visibly in the following locations:

• Work Orders now display Owner Cost along with Estimated and Actual costs.

• Owner’s Cost is now displayed in Properties on the Building and Unit level under the Maintenance History tab. A ? tool tip is also provided to assist in differentiating the two types of costs.

• When a new Work Orders list view is created, an Owner Cost column option is now available.

ENTERPRISE CUSTOMERS ONLY: Company Names Added for Printing and Doc Export – Reports

Organizations that are part of an Enterprise subscription will now see their company’s name on reports when they are exported to PDF, HTML, and Excel.

11/11/2011 – Feature Release

Improvements to Auto ePayments setup – Tenant Portals/Leases

Auto ePayment setup has been enhanced in both Tenant Portals and Leases.

• To reduce the chance of scheduling errors for tenants setting up Auto ePayments, start dates that occur in the past are no longer allowed.
• When a tenant initiates an Auto ePayment, a confirmation screen that clearly displays First Payment and Next Payment dates now appears.

• For Auto ePayment setup on the management company end, a similar functionality exists in Leases. However, this version requires certification that documented authorization has been obtained from the tenant.

Auto Charges in Draft Leases – Leases

Primarily for student housing, this new feature allows the creation of Auto Charges that begin prior to the Move In date shown on the Lease.  A warning pops up to confirm that the charge is being set up this way intentionally. Late fees will be calculated on these pre-move in Auto Charges.

Improvements to Draft Leases in Lease Grid Edit – Leases

Also primarily for student housing, the Status column can now be unlocked to allow Draft Leases in Leases Grid Edit, which can then be filtered for Move In dates within a certain range. Before any changes are made, the system will check to see if other active leases are attached to that same Unit. If so, the action will not be saved.

11/04/2011 – Feature Release

Improvements to the Income Statement Budget Comparison Summary – Reports

The Income Statement Budget Comparison Summary report now offers the following Options:

• Accrue Payables
• Accrue Receivables
• Exclude Escrow
• Variance % (defaults to display; uncheck to hide)

In addition, a Consolidated view option has been added to this report’s Filters:
 

Improvements to Application Fee Payments – Sites

Greater clarity has been added for prospective tenants paying application fees online. The payment screen button has been changed from “Continue” to “Pay Now,” and once payment is submitted, a “Thank you for your payment” message displays.

Columns added to Audit Log – Reports

New column options have been added to the Audit Log: Portfolio, Building, Unit and Details.

Improved Filtering in Bills – Owner Portals

Payment Date is now a Filter on the Bills statement in Owner Portals, allowing paid bills to be viewed with their corresponding Bill Date.

Prior Year to Date Column – Reports > Owner Statement Month and YTD by Building

The new Prior Year to Date column option in the Owner Statement Month and YTD by Building reports can provide data for both the Portfolio summary and the individually listed Buildings.

Preferred Owner Statement – Portfolios

Individual Portfolios now offer the option of setting a Preferred Owner Statement under Management Settings.

Note: This offers a new alternative to the global Owner Statements setting under Setup > Customize > Management, which applies to all Portfolios. 

10/21/2011 – Feature Release

New Column Options for Units with Leases report – Reports

The Units with Leases report now offers more column options under Contact: Summary. Additional tenant contact data, based on information recorded in Leases > Units, can now be displayed in the report.

Selective application of Vendor/Portfolio credit – Money Out

A credit can now be applied across portfolios, provided that all the portfolios use the same default bank account. If there is an attempt to Apply Credits across portfolios but the portfolios do not default to the same bank account, the credit will not be applied and a message will appear:

In addition, Propertyware now allows the selection of specific bills in Apply Credits. The credit will be applied first to bills that have been selected via check-box, then to remaining bills by date if there is additional credit left.

Note:  If a credit is to be applied to just one particular bill, that bill must be selected during the same Bill Pay session as the one in which the credit is applied. The only way to ensure that credit will be applied just to that bill – as in the case of a building-specific credit – is to run a Bill Pay session solely for that one bill and credit.

10/14/2011 – Feature Release

Income Summary option for Owner Statement Simple – Reports

You now have the option of beginning an Owner Statement Simple report with an Income Summary Page. When selected, Income Summary Page appears on page one as an alphabetical summary of each type of income or expense that has affected the owner balance during the report’s selected period.

10/7/2011 – Feature Release

 

Email Statement Fields – Owner Contact

The Email Statement option is now available to set for new owner contacts created from a Portfolio record.  This option was previously only available when creating and/or editing owner contacts from Contacts.

Portfolio Level Budgets  – Budgeting

Budgets can now be created for Portfolios as well as Buildings.  Reports that display budget information will also include a Portfolio filter option to display the Portfolio budget information.

Note: The Portfolio budget is a unique budget record.  Building budgets cannot be used to create the Portfolio budget’s balances and these balances may vary from the sum of the associated Building(s) budget balances.

Vendor Information and Sorting  – Properties: Maintenance History Tab

The Maintenance History tab on Buildings and Units now has an added Vendors column which will display the vendor(s) associated with the Work Order.  This tab has also been updated to sort information by the Date Created, with the most recent items at the top.

Enterprise Version Only: Restrict Editing of Email Address The ability to edit User account email addresses will be restricted or disabled. MASTER ACCOUNT: Setup > Administration Setup > Manage Users > User Accounts.  Only users with Administrator privileges will have the ability to edit existing user email addresses.  This field will be disabled for all other users.   CHILD ACCOUNT: Setup > Administration Setup > Manage Users > User Accounts.  The Email field for users created through the Master Account will be disabled for all users.  This contains the auto-generated alias email address which should not be changed for proper functionality.

9/23/2011 - Feature Release

Set Forwarding Address – Leases

The new Related Activity Set Forwarding Address allows the user to update the Lease record address at any time.  This address will be used on any refund checks and on a Move Out for this Lease.

 

Portfolio Search View – Setup

The Portfolio List view has been updated to a Portfolio Search view in Setup > Administration Setup > ePayment Settings.  The Portfolio Settings section is now located below the Application Fees section and will only display those properties with exceptions to the default global ePayment settings established above. To add or edit a Portfolio in this section, type to search.  To view all Portfolios, click the List View option.

 Eviction Status Prompt – Leases

Editing a Lease Status to the default status of Eviction will now result in a prompt for more options before the change in status will be saved.  The options Do not accept any payments and Do not allow portal access will be selected by default.  If the option Do not accept any payments is selected, any auto-payments associated with the lease will be updated with the current date as a stop date.

Note:  Changing the lease status from Eviction to any other status will not automatically update these settings.

Select Profile Type – Manage Users

The User Profile type will now default to Please Choose when creating a new User.  This is to ensure the proper default security settings are enabled by Profile as new users are added to an account.

Note: This also applies when adding a New Team Member from a Building.

 

Prior Year to Date – Income Statement Portfolio Comparison Report

The Income Statement Portfolio Comparison Report now includes the option to add the column Prior Year to Date.  This column will display balances based upon the period selected, but for the prior fiscal year.  The report version must be updated in order to have this option.

Document and Report Link Routing – Owner Alerts/Owner Portals

The document and report published links within Owner Alerts will now direct the owner to the appropriate document or report within the Owner Portal.  If the owner is not logged in to the portal, the login page will display.  After successfully logging in, the referenced document or report will display.

Payee Options on Tenant Refund – Leases

Tenant refund checks now provide the option to select a payee of Primary Tenant or All Tenants on Lease.  Selecting All Tenants on Lease will add all contact names designated as “Named on Lease” to the payee field of the check.  This is available on the Refund, Discount, Adjustment feature as well as a Security Deposit Refund.

 

 

9/16/2011 - Feature Release

Canadian Format Templates – Mail Merge

Eight new Lease Mail Merge Template documents will be available in the Template Gallery.  These documents are formatted and contain options that meet Canadian property management standards; however, they may be used by all users.  These templates can be added to an account by going to Setup > Templates > Mail Merge > Template Gallery.  The available mail merge templates include:

• Canadian – 1 Month Notice to End Tenancy
• Canadian – 10 Day Notice
• Canadian – Condition Inspection Report
• Canadian – Notice of Final Opportunity to Schedule Condition Inspection
• Canadian – Notice of Rent Increase Form N1
• Canadian – Notice of Rent Increase Residential Rental Units
• Canadian – Residential Tenancy Agreement
• Canadian – Schedule of Parties

 

Statements Tab Reformatted – Owner Portals

The Owner Portal Statements tab receives a streamlined look and feel.  Owners will now have the ability to sort statements by Portfolio and/or Period Dates.  Actions are simplified to two links, Download and View Bills.  Optional Portfolio Summary sections display real-time  balances, income, expenses, and fees.  The selection option to display the Portfolio Summary sections is available in Portals > Owners. If an owner owes a balance or would like to make a contribution, the new Make Contribution Online link located in the header or in each Portfolio Summary box adds to the Contribution button at the bottom of the ledger.  Clicking this link from a Portfolio Summary section will direct the owner to make an electronic payment to the Portfolio in which the link displayed.

Note: The Portfolio Summary information will include ALL transactional activity and will not hide pass through account activity/balances.

Before

After

 

View Bills Links – Owner Portal/Alerts

Clicking to View Bills related to a statement will now direct owners to the Bills tab, which will be automatically filtered to match the date range of the related statement.  The View Bills link is available from the Owner Portal Statements tab and will redirect the owner to the Bills tab when clicked.  The View Bills link is also available in the Owner Alert.  When clicked, this link will direct the owner to the Bills tab of the Owner Portal.  If the owner is not logged in to the portal, the login page will display.  After successfully logging in, the Bills tab, filtered by the statement dates will appear.