Prior Updates – Vacation RentPro

Note: Registered users are entitled to free updates for one year.
Updates are easily installed by selecting “Check for New Updates” in the VRP Tools menu.

Updates History (prior to 2021):

To see the latest updates, Click Here.

11/12/2020 v.1.0.3390 * Added 2 new checkbox options to the “Find” button to make searching for Bookings and Tenants faster with large amounts of data. * Solved an issue due to a recent update in Outlook 365 when sending emails from the Alerts Manager using the “Send without preview” option. * Added the ability to create expressions based on “Dynamic Dates”, (such as: Last Month, Last Quarter, This Month, etc.). This new “Operator” is available when filtering on individual fields, and in the Query Designer. * Fixed an issue with the new “Change Company” feature when running on a cloud server. * When sending emails from the Bookings form, there is a new option to “Send (WITHOUT Preview)”. Added a “Find” button to the App Notes and System Notes form. Solved an issue when doing “Find in List” when a “Find All” filter is already active, and you select “Clear the current Filter”.
10/30/2020 v.1.0.3383 * Added a link to the BookingPal Channel Connector tool in the top toolbar Web button > Other options. (Used for BookingPal integration). Added options for “Background Color” and “Background Image” to System Preferences > Company Info. This will change the application background color and/or image for all users. Added an option to “Change Company” (in the File menu), which allows switching companies within VRP, (if you manage multiple companies / databases). The Show “Blockouts” option in the Bookings form now stays unchecked when you select a Blockout booking. The Share-from Property selections in the Properties form now show the Property Color to help identify the property.
10/24/2020 v.1.0.3382 * Any resized grid columns in the Bookings form timeline will now keep their size, and will not be reset when the application window size changes, as they were doing previously. The 3 Flags in the bookings form, now show color bars above the timeline, in case the currently selected booking is not visible in the grid. * Fixed an issue when double-clicking empty spaces in the Bookings Timeline, for determining the date that was clicked on. * Various minor improvements to form grids, timelines and Finding / Filtering records. * If you use the automatic “Bookend Blockouts” feature, then these blockouts will now be reflected in iCal calendars and the Private View Bookings List. Added a new pre-defined filter to the Properties form called: “Share-from Properties”. This allows showing all properties which are sharing their Rates, Fees or Commission with other properties. * When turning the Booking Flags on or off in the Bookings form, the booking will be auto-saved if no other changes were made to the booking.
10/3/2020 v.1.0.3376 * Undefined Rates will now show as “N/A” in web Rates lists, (and when previewing rates). This helps to spot dates with unintentionally undefined rates. * Added 3 optional “Flags” to the bookings form (on the right side). These can be used to flag bookings for any purpose. The flags provide a visual cue in the bookings timeline, and they can also be used to filter bookings. For example, you can flag bookings to track cancellation requests. Or you could temporarily select several bookings, filter on that flag, and then use the Bulk Email feature to email the tenants. * Added 2 more Commission “Base on” options to Property Commissions (#18 and 19). When duplicating an Expense, there is a new Date option for “Last Day of Previous Month”. Added a new “IF{}” option to Additional Fee and Commission Calculations. (See Help for more info).
9/13/2020 v.1.0.3370 * When saving Bookings or Properties, the message prompt which sometimes appears saying “Another user has modified this record” will now only occur when another user modified the same record, (not when it’s modified by the web updates process). * Added an option to the “Web Update Reminder” button to “Show Bookings waiting to Upload”. Also, made some improvements on when the button is displayed, and shortened the time for uploading bookings. * Corrected a recent issue when updating OLB Bookings. Added a new “~K” option to the Property Payment Terms, which can be used to Keep specific scheduled payments separate from being merged with other payments, (such as travel insurance payments you wish to keep separate). The Web Update Reminder button will now turn itself back on if the Auto Web Update Process has not ran in the last 12 hours. This will allow the reminder to reactivate if the auto web updater failed for any reason. The OLB channel for older BookingPal integrated bookings will be updated to reflect the actual channel, which wasn’t recorded initially. Check-In alerts are now displayed in a different color in the Alerts Manager.
8/31/2020 v.1.0.3366 * Added a new “Misc” tab to the Bookings form, and renamed “Work Flow 2” to “Reminders”. Fixed a recent issue with the Reconcile Payments form which displayed an invalid license message. Added ability to calculate commissions based on %Channel%. (See Help on: “Additional Fee and Commission Calculations”). Added ability to <Select Active Properties> when copying Fees, Commissions or Amenities to other properties (via Right-clicking on Amenities, or using the buttons in the Property Fees and Property Commissions forms). Also added options to List, or Update Properties with this Fee, Commission or Amenity. * Columns widths and column order within the Grids (ie. bookings form timeline, etc), are now remembered under a single instance of the form. This will help to keep your column preferences across multiple instances of a given form. Also, you can now Right-click on any of grid column headers in order to “Reset the Grid Columns” if needed. * Note: HomeAway has their MarketMaker Recommended rates working again. (Can be accessed via the Property Rates form). * You can now base fees and discounts on “coupon” type fees also, and whether the coupon has been entered or not. For example, you can turn off a standard discount if a coupon for another discount was entered by the guest.
8/12/2020 v.1.0.3360 * Added a new “View Calendars” button to the Searchable Group web page, which displays a compressed list of properties with a monthly calendar next to each. This allows guests to view all availability in a shorter, condensed list, while still allowing search and sorting options. See Example Here. * The “New” button in the Bookings form has new options for creating or duplicating bookings. * Importing iCal Calendars has a new option to: “Import and Cancel VRP External Bookings if iCal dates are Open on external sites”. This automatically cancels External Bookings previously imported from iCals. * The Private View Bookings List now works with the IE Browser. * The Bookings form > Notes page has 2 new “Paste from Email” buttons next to the Memo1 and Memo2 notes. These can be used if your website sends an email from a “guest contact form”, and you wish to quickly copy that text into the booking.
8/1/2020 v.1.0.3353 * When processing Word document type Templates, any Placeholders within floating Textboxes are now processed also. This is useful if you have 3rd party forms with Textboxes that need to be filled in. * You can now Right-click on Amenities in the Properties form, and select “Copy or Delete this Amenity for Select Properties”. This allows copying or deleting an amenity for multiple selected properties. This feature was also added to the Property Fees and Property Commissions forms, using the newly added button on these forms. Duplicate Property Photos stored in different folders on your local disk are now ignored when posting web pages and updating 3rd party sites.
7/26/2020 v.1.0.3349 * Backups can now be performed while others are in the system, by using the new “Proceed anyway” button in the prompt that is displayed when it detects files are in use. * The Bookings form Timeline will now display up to 4 months (at Timeline Compression level 0), and 8 months (at level 1), depending on your screen size. * Added checks for cyclic references to the Lockout and Summary Properties updates. Added additional dynamic date ranges to all reports for selecting: “1 Week beginning on”, and the same for Month, Quarter and Year. * Added the OLB source channel to the Ad Source Report, Bookings form Workflow 2 page, and the Timeline grid (Adsource column).
7/9/2020 v.1.0.3345 * Added 2 new Property Amenities: “Parking for Fee” and “Parking for Reserve”, which are used by Booking.com (when integrated with BookingPal). When importing Airbnb bookings from BookingPal, the Security Deposit is now set to 0, since Airbnb always handles Security Deposits. * Added an option to jthe Bookings Detail report to Group by “Tenant”. Added a button for “Other Properties” to Property web pages, when property pages are accessed outside of the Property Groups form. This makes it easier for guests to search other properties. Adjusted how the Rate type (Daily, Weekly or Monthly) is determined in web calendar instant quotes when bookings border the monthly threshold. Added the option to “Delete” specific exported iCals from your website (Using the small Globe button next to the iCal Export settings in the Properties form). The Bookings form now remembers which of the 3 “Current & Future Bookings” filters you select, and defaults that that one. For example if you normally use “Current & Future & Canceled”, it will default to this one.
6/12/2020 v.1.0.3342 * Enhancements were made to web pages, including the Search Widget. When selecting the Arrival Date, it now auto prompts for the Departure date also. The Search Widget also works in a side bar if it’s on the same page as the group page. (Repost your Group/Property pages after updating). * The Private View Bookings List has been improved to make it faster. It also has new buttons to jump forward, backward, or to a specific date. * Added an “Inactive Fee” option to the Property Fees > Default fee type, to allow removing a fee from use without deleting it. Both Near Term and Open Days automatic adjustments now limit the specified percentages to between 50% and 200%. * Integrated Availability Online Thank you page, web calendars and VOL to prevent double bookings between these sources when you’re away from VRP.
5/26/2020 v.1.0.3336 * Added Cleaning & Safety (Covid-19) type Amenities, plus EV Car Charger, and Fire Pit. These are also used by HomeAway. * A new option to “Copy Current Totals to the Notes” was added to the Bookings form > Options button. When using the “Clear all amounts” option in the Bookings form, the current amounts are automatically copied to the booking’s Notes for future reference. * Added Tenant Name to the Bookings form top title bar. Added ability to auto upload multiple Cleaning Schedule reports when updating calendars and interfaces. Enhanced the “Custom Save Booking Alerts”, so that criteria can now be based on Property and Tenant info also. When using the Property Group Web Page format: “Embedded Availability Calendars”, the weekly and monthly rates are not shown until the guest views the full calendar with the quote. This is so the guest can see the average wk/mo rates for their selected dates. The “Less Info” button on the Searchable Group web page now hides the timeline only, and leaves the property summary text displayed. The top “Web” toolbar button has a new option to “View Property Group Web Page”.
5/13/2020 v.1.0.3329 * There are 2 new options for blocking out days between bookings, which can be useful to allow extra cleaning time (for Covid-19). Either Automatically: using the new “BookEnd Blockout Days” option (in the Properties form > Interface > Instant Quote tab). Or Manually: using the “New” button in the Bookings form > Create or Remove 1-Day BookEnd Blockouts. BookEnd Blockouts automatically adjust when changing booking dates. And remove themselves when canceling or deleting a booking. * When creating BookEnd Blockouts, if a “normal” Blockout already exists for the same dates, then it is converted to a BookEnd Blockout, to prevent duplicate blockouts. The “Web Update Reminder” button is now enabled after creating or removing Bookend Blockouts. * You can now limit fees and discounts to specific dates (in addition to mmdd-mmdd ranges). See Help topic on “Additional fee and commission calculations”. Changed the rate calculation within VRP so that if some dates of a booking have weekly or monthly rates and the others have only daily rates, it will calculate the missing rates. This mimics the web calendars and integrated sites.
4/30/2020 v.1.0.3325 * The Property Rates form’s button to “Copy, Delete or Adjust Rates” has several new options which allow copying, deleting and adjusting rates across multiple Properties at a time. * Removed the interface options for Webervations.com, since they no longer exist. * Added a “Go to Recently Saved Items” button to the Properties, Tenants, Contacts and Templates forms. This allows quickly jumping back to any of the last 25 recently updated records. * Added a new “Recommended Rates” feature to the Property Rates form. This pulls rates from HomeAway’s “MarketMaker”, and allows comparing rates and optionally updating rates. See Help topic: “Recommended Rates” for more info. You can now “Print to PDF” from the various popup message forms and displayed results by using the Print button (if the message form has one) or the small printer icon in the bottom left corner of the message form. The BookingPal Channel Manager interface is enabled. See Help topic on: “BookingPal Interface” for details.
4/8/2020 v.1.0.3319 * Added a pre-defined filter for “Current & Future & Canceled Bookings” to the Bookings form. When saving a Booking with a status of “Canceled with Revenue”, an option to “Delete scheduled cleanings” will appear if any cleanings have a “Pay amount” specified. * When doing a “Find in List” within any of the forms, if an existing Find Filter is already active, a prompt will display allowing you to Clear the current Find Filter first. * The Property Rates form has a new option to “Delete Rates for All Properties UP THROUGH a specified Year”. * The Searchable Group web page has been changed to a 1-column format, along with other minor enhancements. See Example Here. (Repost your Group/Property pages after updating). * The Property Statement report now shows “Rent this Period” in the Rent Revenue column header when the “Booked Nights” option is used. Also, the report has a new option to “Re-calculate Rate to match Rent”, which can be useful if your rent revenue includes adjustments or commission deductions. When using the option to “Clear All Amounts” in the Bookings form, you can now select to “Keep Cleanings” or not.
3/29/2020 v.1.0.3314 * There is a new “Split View” Timeline option in the Bookings form. This allows viewing by Booking and by Property simultaneously. You can now do Right-click > “Update All” on Reminder Dates within the Bookings form > Work Flow 2 tab in order to update multiple Reminder dates based on the Default Reminder settings in the Properties form. * The small “Bookings” button at the top of the Floating Calendar now allows doing a “Find” in the currently open bookings form. This can help when guests for existing bookings on VRBO, etc. send inquiries, (such as asking to cancel). You can quickly find those bookings from the Floating Calendar after doing “Paste All”. * After sending an email, the Floating Calendar will now automatically restore itself if it was automatically “minimized” before previewing the email. * Added option to Duplicate a Blockout Booking to multiple Properties, (via the Bookings form > New button > Duplicate this Booking > Duplicate this Blockout Booking). This also allows updating and deleting multiple Blockout Bookings. * There is a new ‘Go to Recently Updated Bookings’ button in the Bookings form (next to the ‘View by’ buttons). This allows jumping back to any of the last 25 bookings your team was working on.
3/10/2020 v.1.0.3310 * Added FirstName and LastName fields when printing (or exporting) Tenants and Contacts from the Options button in the Bookings, Tenants, and Contact forms. * The new BookingPal interface is now live for a limited number of users only. A full release will be available soon. There is a new “Cancel fee” option (in the Properties form > Interface > Terms and Text). This allows specifying a “cancel anytime” fee and is also displayed to guests on Homeaway/VRBO. The Floating Calendar’s “Paste All” button has a new Right-click option to “Show found text which determined the Property”. This can be used if the Floating Calendar is not selecting the correct property based on the “Unique texts” you have specified for that property. The “Display Summary” option in the Property Statement report now includes “Total Cleaning fees” multiplied by both Tax rates. This can be useful if you expense owners for the taxes on cleanings. * The Searchable Group web page now restores the Search parameters when returning back from a Property page, regardless if the site is secure or not. (Browsers do this automatically for insecure sites only). The RedAwning interface now requires Bedrooms to be configured for the type of beds, etc. Previously, defining bedroom configurations was optional. * The Property Groups form has a new option to “Scroll Up Pixels”, which can be used if your website uses “sticky headers” which hides the top of the Property pages.
1/23/2020 v.1.0.3304 • Resolved a recent issue with Instant Quotes when calendars are displayed within an IE11 browser. When double-clicking on open dates within the Bookings form Timeline, there is a new option to “Get a Quote”. This uses the Floating Calendar to quickly view or copy a quote. (Try it!). * Added “Paste” buttons to the Tenants form > email and phone fields to make it easier when pasting text. Added additional filters for special characters to prevent issues when importing bookings with foreign languages. * When duplicating Expenses, the notes, workflow and postdate fields are now not duplicated. Other minor enhancements. * When creating new bookings via importing, the Floating Calendar, or from the Tenants form, the booking ID is now remembered so when the bookings form is opened again later, it will be positioned on this booking. Previously the last booking displayed was only remembered when the booking form was opened normally. The Alerts Manager now maintains the original sort order when sending emails directly from the Alerts Manager, so the alerts do not change position when their status changes.
12/26/2019 v.1.0.3299 • When double-clicking on open dates within the Bookings form Timeline, there are new options including: Show Available Properties on this Day, and Show Vertical Bars around this Day. Fixed an issue in the Pay Fees and Commissions form’s Filter drop-down selection. * The ending day for Alternate iCal calendars is now calculated as the next Sunday after the number of days specified for the Alternate iCal. See help on: Alternate iCal Calendars for more info. * You can now Double-click on the Timeline header days in the Bookings form to access the same options when double-clicking on open days. * Rate Quotes in templates now use the same font size used for the %RateQuote% placeholder. Plus other minor enhancements. * Added 3 new options to the Housekeeping report, (to Hide: Cleaner, Previous Check-ins, and/or Next Booking Details).
11/30/2019 v.1.0.3292 • Made some improvements to the Timeline display in the Bookings form. Updated the Help topic on “Google Analytics Tracking”. • There is a new “Save & Run” button in all reports, which saves the parameters and runs the report. Use the “Run Report” button if you do not wish to save the parameters. * Added a “Note” button to the top of the User Defined Query form, to allow entering notes for individual queries. * Updated VR Payment links to new URL’s. Web Links (in the Properties form > Notes > Web Links tab) can now also be used to store links to folders on your PC, (such as your Docs folders for individual properties). * You can now Double-click on open days within the Booking form Timeline grid in order to view rates or change booking dates. The “Delete Bookings Password” is now also required when deleting Expenses. Corrected a date selection prompt issue in the Followup Report. * Additional improvements to the Bookings form Timeline when double-clicking on open dates in order to change booking dates.
10/31/2019 v.1.0.3283 • The “Find” feature in all forms has been enhanced so that you can quickly do “Find All” after doing “Find In List” in case no matches are found in the current list. Added a new interface option in the Properties form to allow interfacing with HelloHere.com, (which is currently in beta testing). They provide an added service to guests via an app so guests can see more info about a property and any attractions in the area on their phone or tablet. See help topic on: “HelloHere interface” for more info. The Allprops Private View Bookings List now excludes the main booking notes, by default. If you wish to include booking notes, there is a new option in System Preferences > Private View Data. • Added an enhancement to the web calendar’s “Book it Now” button so that Google Analytics can be used to track conversions “cross-domain” to Availability Online’s reservation form and Thank You page. See the VRP Help topic: “Google Analytics Tracking” for more info. Appnote Placeholders can now be used within Property Long Descriptions which are integrated with HomeAway and other sites, without receiving an error about Html content. Fixed a temporary issue with displaying the current date in the the top screen title bar. • Increased height of the top toolbar in all forms. • Fixed a temporary issue with the screen background image display.
9/15/2019 v.1.0.3277 • You can now send Scheduled Emails from the Alerts Manager. See Help topic on: “Sending Scheduled Emails” for details on scheduling and sending emails. You can send emails individually, or in bulk. You can also schedule custom emails within Booking Reminders. (Texting options are planned). • Fixed an issue with emailing Cleaning notices from the Alerts Manager. When selecting to send “All” email alerts, Tentative and lower status bookings are now excluded. (Tentative status bookings can still be emailed individually). • Made some additional changes to the Alerts Manager when sending multiple emails to now display a preview of the emails that will be sent and the ones that will be skipped. Also, Welcome Info / Confirmation emails must be sent individually now (not in bulk), to prevent sending confirmations unintentionally. Internally, made some changes to the Outlook interface, to resolve issues with older Outlook versions. Added a new option to the Bookings Chart and Detail Reports (in the “Additional Parameters 3” tab), to allow limiting the report to Bookings which were “Booked” within specific date ranges. Also added 2 new dynamic date ranges (in the Report Date selections) for: “Last Year Today Forward” and “Last Year Inception to Date”. These changes allow running reports to compare how many bookings you had booked by this time Last year versus This year.
8/29/2019 v.1.0.3274 • Added a new option to the Occupancy Report to “Show occupancy for Selected Dates (not Months)”. This allows getting occupancy statistics for a single day or any period of time, without breaking it down into separate months. Resolved an issue in Outlook emails when using the [width=xxx] or [height=xxx] Placeholder Options with images. • When saving a booking which caused other linked or summary bookings to be updated, a new prompt will be displayed asking if you want to requery the current filter (if the current filter is not Current & Future bookings and Active Properties). FTP backups are now stored as 2 versions, (either with or without the Myfiles folder), depending on the Backup option selected. This allows restoring the MyFiles folder from an older backup, if the last backup excluded the Myfiles folder. • When updating VRP Online, a message is displayed if a property is not set to post to the web. This ensures that any updates to photos are not being missed in case the property was removed from a Property Group. Added a warning message when saving a Booking, if the “Keep Web Calendar Dates Open” option is checked on the Work Flow 2 tab. Resolved an issue with Outlook signatures not being removed in emails when this option is specified in User Preferences.
8/12/2019 v.1.0.3269 • Added a new interface option in the Properties form > Interface tab for EmeraldCoastByOwner.com, which is a regional advertising site in the Gulf area. Sending email with Outlook should be faster now due to a new method being used to generate emails in Outlook. (Please check a few of your emails before sending to make sure they are formatted correctly, and let me know if you find any issues). Added the ability to easily include 360 photo slideshows within Property web pages, by supporting Momento360.com 360 slideshows. See Help topic on “Property Web Info” for instructions on publishing 360 slideshows using the “Video” link/embed option in the Properties form > Web tab. See Example Here of a 360 slideshow. 360 slide shows are a much easier way to publish 360 photos than creating complex “tours” with links in multiple directions. If preferred, you can still publish Matterport and other 360 tours in your property web pages using the Video link/embed option.
7/6/2019 v.1.0.3268 • When clicking on the Tenant options button in the Bookings form (or right-clicking on a Tenant in the timeline), 2 new options were added to: Copy the Tenant’s “email” or “phone number” to the Windows clipboard. This can be used for example to paste into Outlook’s search bar to quickly find all emails for a tenant. The currently selected Booking in the Bookings form Timeline now has a “Red” box around it to make it more noticeable. • When expanding the timeline grid in the Bookings form (using the Expand button on the right), the current booking’s information is now displayed at the top.
6/24/2019 v.1.0.3263 • Offsite Backups are now required every 14 days in order to prevent a complete loss of data in the event of malware, disk crash, etc. The Properties form has 2 new checkbox options on the Property Info tab, next to the Tax Rates. These allow specifying the default option to “Exclude Rent Revenue from Taxable Revenue” when new bookings are created. Fixed company logo image stretch option in web page settings. The Rental Info page in the Bookings form has a new link to “View Sub-Totals” which displays additional sub-totals for the booking. • The “Find” feature within all the forms has a new option to “Find in List”. This allows finding the first or next matching record in the current list, (without changing the current filter). For example, you can quickly find and jump to a specific reservation without changing the list of bookings already displayed. Today’s date is now displayed in the application’s top title bar for easy reference. • The Searchable Group web page now shows Available properties for the selected dates (which meet the min nights), above/before any Available properties which do not meet the min nights. • Added Ad Source to the summary bar above the timeline in the Bookings form. When the option to “Hide web page header when the Group is displayed in an iframe” is selected (in the Property Groups form), a bar with links to: Refresh, Expand, and Contact Us is now displayed at the top in place of the larger header. Changed the “Find in List” default prompt when text is found to “Ok”, instead of “Find Next”, since the first record found is usually the one you’re looking for.
6/7/2019 v.1.0.3256 • Searchable Group web pages have a new “Block” type format, which is cleaner and more commonly used in other sites. See example here: http://vacationwebpro.com/wp/demosite2/rentals/. There is also a “Less Info” link within each block which toggles between less details or more details. • Improvements were made to Private View Bookings List. Added mouse-over effect to images on the Searchable Group web page. • In the Private View Bookings List, you can now click on Check-in days in the timeline to see details for that booking. • The Amenities list in web pages now shows 2 columns when displayed within our custom websites. The XML Data export now includes Site and Location photos. • Several improvements to web pages, which resolve some compatibility issues on Apple devices. There is a new option to “Pay cleaner an extra amount if Pets” (in the Properties form > Contacts page). • The ‘Find Any Dates Selected’ option in Searchable Group web pages will now sort Fully Available properties on top, followed by Partially Available properties. The Photos page within Property web pages has a larger slide show, which can also be clicked on the right or left in the image to move to the next or previous slide. The thumbnail images are also larger. Note: We have asked Availability Online to update their reservation information form to be more mobile friendly, which they have now completed. • Fixed the calendar link button in the menu bar format Property web pages. Also fixed a small calculation error in the instant quotes for fees when which have processing fee is applied on total rent.
4/18/2019 v.1.0.3246 • Several improvements were made to web pages. Added an option to the Bookings Chart and Details Report to allow selecting specific Tenants to report on. When generating Quotes in the Floating Calendar, you can now enter a percentage for the Rate in order to adjust the default rate. This is useful for verifying quotes on HomeAway sites or other channels where you are using an “Adjusted rate” in the interface settings. • Corrected an issue with the Show Rates button in the Private View Bookings List, and the Rate Guide popup display when editing Rates. Added an “@XS” option to the Online Payment Terms, which overrides the Security Deposit payment being applied to the Final payment on HomeAway OLB bookings. • The Private View Bookings List now includes Booking Notes. All web pages include a “Copy Link” link at the bottom. In addition, the Searchable Group page includes this link right below the Search box, and will include any search parameters used. This allows copying a link to filtered Search Results, which can then be pasted into an email.
3/31/2019 v.1.0.3240 • There is a new @MaxDays option when checking or importing external iCal calendars. This can be used to get around a bug in AirBnb’s iCal calendars when you tell AirBnb to block dates in the future (ex: 365 days out). See help on “Checking and Importing iCal Calendars” for more info. The Search Widget on web pages has a new look (smaller, so it can be overlaid on top of web pages). Some of the less common search options were removed from the widget. (Repost your Group web pages after updating). There is a new Template type called: “Property Welcome Document”. This can be used to automatically upload Welcome Info PDF Documents to your website for each Property. This option is available in the Properties form > Documents tab. You can then include a link to your welcome info in guest emails, rather than attaching PDF documents to every Welcome email sent. When exporting records (from the Options button at the top of forms), the number of rows exported is now displayed. Corrected some report column header alignment issues on a few reports when the report title included lots of selection criteria, which caused the title to wrap to another line. • Resolved a recent issue with iCal calendar importing when a property has no future bookings. When clicking the “New” button in the Bookings form, you now have the option to create an Owner Stay, Blockout or Extension Booking. (These options were only in the Options button previously). When previewing Html emails within the application, which have links to .pdf files, you can now click on those links to view them without getting a “browser busy” popup notice.
3/5/2019 v.1.0.3234 • Payment schedules generated for HomeAway online bookings now force any secuirty deposit into the last payment in order to match what HomeAway displays to guests at time of booking. Resolved an issue with Property field name type placeholders. Added 5 new “Safety” type Amenities used by HomeAway, (ex: Smoke Detector, Deadbolt, etc). • Made some minor improvements to the Bookings form > Options button > Print Invoices option. Added an option to web pages that can be used to display properties on multiple websites if needed. (Contact support if interested in this option). All popup prompts and messages have a new “printer” button in the lower left corner. This allows Printing or Copying the displayed text.
2/17/2019 v.1.0.3232 • A new “Owner Timeshares” module has been added, (which can be accessed from the Forms menu, or the “Options” button in the Properties and Bookings forms). This allows reporting to owners of individual properties which have “Fractional ownership”. It also allows historical reporting to previous owners of a property when there is a change in ownership, (without having to create a new property or change the primary owner). See Help topic on “Owner Timeshares” for more info. The Property Statement and Bookings Reports have a new option to select one or more “Owners”. This allows running reports for specific owners (without having to select each of their properties). The Data Import feature was updated to allow importing “Name” columns from Excel with only digits in the name. • Increased the maxiumum characters for Long Descriptions uploaded to HomeAway from 4000 to 6000. Made some improvements to web pages, to increase photo sizes, and adjustments when viewing on mobile devices. (Repost your Group/property pages after updating). • Added a Language Code option in System Preferences > Other, which is used by HomeAway and other sites to define your language, (if it is not English). • Corrected an issue in the Private View Bookings List when a property has no rates defined.
1/21/2019 v.1.0.3225 • Web page gradient colors are a little brighter now, along with some other minor improvements. (Repost your Group/property pages after updating). The Property Rates form has a new “Active” column, which allows deactivating rates, events and minimum night overrides, rather than deleting them. Several improvements and options were added to iCal Calendars checking and importing, especially if you’re checking or importing multiple external iCals for individual properties. (See Help on “Checking and Importing External iCals” for more info). There is a new default “Photo Size” option in System Preferences > Other. The default is 1920 px. This default is used when selecting and resizing photos. Corrected an issue when importing bookings from external sites where one or more “Ad Sites” are specified in the Property’s Fees. • The Expenses form now allows clicking on any of the column headers in order to change the sort. The running total column will adjust depending on which column is the current order. For example, when sorted by Property, the running total resets at the beginning of each property in the list.
1/10/2019 v.1.0.3222 • The Private View Bookings List (for All Properties) includes a new “Show Rates” button, which will display Daily rates of each property for all available dates. Example Here, then click “Show Rates”. See Help on “Private View Bookings List” for more info. • The “Show Rates” setting is now remembered when refreshing the list. • Moved the Show Rates, Refresh and Home links to the top of the Private View Bookings List for easier access. • When specifying iCal URL’s for individual properties (in the Properties form > Interface tab), you can now optionally specify more than one URL. See help on: iCal Calendars Checking and Importing for more info. Also, an optional “\S” switch can be added to an iCal URL to specify that you want individual bookings in the iCal, which have back-to-back dates, to be imported as Separate bookings, (rather than 1 contiguous booking). When changing the order of Photos for Propertys, Sites or Locations, you can now drag and drop just the Photo or Description separately. This is very useful when you are replacing multiple photos at a time, because you can keep your original descriptions and reattach them to the new photos. There is a new email setting option in User Preferences to “Bring Outlook Forward when sending Emails”. This can help if Outlook does not appear on top when sending emails. • Made several improvements to web pages. (So repost your Group/Property web pages after updating).

12/14/2018 v.1.0.3216 • Added an “Email Cleaner” option when clicking the “Goto” button on a Cleaning alert, in the Alerts form. Also added this option in the Bookings form > Cleanings tab > small folder button on the left side. These provide a shortcut to send a miscellaneous email to the cleaner. If your PC is set to use Microsoft’s Edge browser to display PDF files, an error is now prevented when trying to create a new PDF while viewing the previous same PDF file. A “Go to App Notes” button was added to the Properties form > Web tab, to provide a shortcut to App Notes which can be used in Long Descriptions and other text by using AppNote Placeholders. You can now use %AdSource…% placeholders in Inquiry Reply templates. This allows you to use the %AdSource.HideRate% placeholder for example to automatically hide Rate Quotes if the Ad Source is specified to Hide Rates (in the Ad and Referral Sources form). • Instant Quote in web calendars will now charge the full Monthly rate, if Minimum Nights are greater than 27 and there are no Daily or Weekly rates defined. This prevents guests from getting a prorated monthly rate when booking less than a month. The Expenses Report has a new “Paid Status” option, which allows showing only expenses which are Paid or Unpaid. It also has a new option to “Include only Completed Cleanings”.
11/28/2018 v.1.0.3214 • Web pages now use the photo description as the “alt” text in all slide-show photos for SEO purposes. Keep in mind that the main photos on your website are more important for SEO than property photos of bedrooms, etc. When selecting photos, there is a new shortcut to “Select photos from last folder”. • Made some important improvements to the Searchable Property Group web page format. • Added Company Website link to the top toolbar’s Web button. • There is a new setting called “Default Reason for Bookings I create” in the User Preferences form > Options 2 tab. Fixed a recent issue with the “Select and resize image from last folder” option • Added a new option to “Delete Rates which were Last Updated at a specified Date/Time” within the Rates form > Copy or Delete Rates button. This allows “undoing” a Copy multiple Rates operation if needed. • Made additional changes to Group and Property web pages. Please post all Group/property web pages after this update. • The Bookings form now remembers the last “View by Booking or Property” option only when you click on one of the 2 buttons, (rather than when you close the form). Therefore, if you normally prefer to use the View by Property grid, it will remember this, regardless if you do a Find (which automatically switches to the View by Booking grid).
10/29/2018 v.1.0.3203 • Added a new “Default fee” type in the Property Fees and Discounts form called “Arrival fee”. Arrival fees are displayed on HomeAway/VRBO listings as fees collected after arrival, and are not part of the original booking costs. HomeAway integrated properties can now be separately set to “Instant Book” or “Not Instant Book”. (Previously, “all” properties had to be one or the other). The Pay Fees and Commissons form now includes any commissions in “Canceled with Revenue” bookings. • Added a “Minimum Age” field to the Properties form > Interface > Terms and Text tab, which is displayed on HomeAway listings. Pet Policy text is now limited to 50 characters per HomeAway’s requirements. When setting “Received” dates in the Bookings form > Work Flow tab, an entry is now also added to the Workflow Log list. • When selecting Word documents in Templates or Doc Photos in Properties, the last folder selected is now remembered when selecting documents or photos next time. • Changed the Commissions Report to show Total Rent (plus Commissionable Fees), and added an Additional Parameters page with options to hide any of 3 columns on the report. Date stamps in the Work Flow Log, and when pressing Ctrl+D in Note fields, now includes the hour of the day.
9/1/2018 v.1.0.3195 • Changes for the new version of HomeAway’s integration, which is called “Guaranteed Pricing” (aka GP) have been completed. Some users have been migrated already. This change allows HomeAway/VRBO to more accurately advertise your prices in search results. It also allows the ability to enable “Instant Booking” for specific properties rather than all properties. Notices will be sent out shortly with details on what to expect. There is a new “Cancellation Policy Type” selection (in the Properties form > Interface > Terms and text). In the Property Rates form, if you are using the “% of Daily Rate” option, there is a slightly different calculation for Weekly and Monthly rates now. The change is that Weekend Rates are now included in the calculation, rather than just the Daily Rate. This is a more accurate calculation. Please review and verify your generated rates where you are using the “% of Daily Rate” option. The Instant Quote in web calendars will now display a “Total Discount” amount (in Red) so guests can easily see the discount they are receiving. The Total Discount includes any Weekly or Monthly discount plus any Discounts defined in Fees. When specifying Holidays (in System Preferences), you can now specify events using date ranges in the format: yyyymmdd-yyyymmdd, event name. When using the Bookings form option to “Send Separate Emails for the Bookings Listed”, there is a new checkbox option to “Skip Prompts on Remaining Emails after the First Email is Sent”. This allows not having to click “Send” for each email after you have reviewed and sent the first email successfully.
8/8/2018 v.1.0.3194 • The Private View Bookings List now shows bookings details only when clicking on a property name in the timeline. You can optionally override this, and either show or hide all booking details using a new “Toggle View All” link on the page. Also, the lists are now larger and easier to read when viewed on a mobile device. See the Help topic “Private View Bookings Lists” for more info. • Posting accounting transactions to Quickbooks or Quicken has a new option to post payments “before” bookings are posted. There is also a new “Find” button on the form to search for transactions. See help topic: Posting Accounting Transactions for details on the new “-UP” switch.
7/21/2018 v.1.0.3192 • Company address was added to upper left corner in the Commissions Report and Bookings Reports. When changing dates on a booking with Locked-in Rates, and the new dates result in a different rate, a popup will appear asking if you want to unlock the rate and use the new rate. • Added a new Booking Status called “Canceled by Owner”, which can be used by integrated sites such as HomeAway to determine whether to return money to the guest or not. • Resolved possible OLE error when generating emails on very fast PC’s. • The Properties form was expanded slightly to be less crowded and to show larger photo thumbnails. Photo thumbnails will now show a Red border if their size is less than the recommended dimensions. This helps identify which photos need to be updated for optimum compatibility with other sites. • When uploading icalendars, rates and booking calendars to the web, the progress bar is not displayed now since these uploads go very fast. This helps reduce the processing time. • Added new Pet Policy Note to Properties form > Interface > Terms and Text. The Housekeeping Report has a new option to show the Next Booking’s number of nights. • The Property Statement report now allows using the <Properties with matching data> option with the Auto FTP and Auto Email options.
browser emulation now uses ie 11000. so html editing will now show lower case, and web form auto fill will be able to handle more websites. also added co address to commissions rpt, and bookings rpts. was already in prop stmt rpt. added popup prompt when rate is different after changing dates. (for keli sims).
5/13/2018 v.1.0.3183 • Changes to accommodate HomeAway’s latest integration requirements include: 1) A new “Model Property” checkbox added to the HomeAway interface settings, which is used to specify which property has your most common rates and configuration. 2) Rental Agreements used by HomeAway now must be in PDF format. Therefore, you can specify either your own PDF link, or select a template (or text) which will be used to auto-generate and upload a PDF when posting web pages. (See Properties form > Interface > Terms & Text tab). The Check-in Days option (in the Properties form > Interface > Instant Quotes tab), has a new format, which allows specifying not only check-in days of the week, but also check-out days. See Help on Instant Quotes for examples if you need to limit check-ins and check-outs to specific days of the week.
4/5/2018 v.1.0.3180 • Added 2 new options to the Property Statement report for: “Show Booking Memo 1, and/or Memo 2 notes”. This can be used to relay to owners why you discounted a particular booking, for example. Added 2 new columns to the Alerts Manager form, to show: “Ad Source” and “Cleaner”. Increased the timeout for sending SMTP emails up to 20 seconds, before it fails.
3/23/2018 v.1.0.3179 • The Ad and Referral Sources form has a new option to: “Warn if Unscheduled Payments exist when Saving Bookings”. This will alert you when bookings from specific Ad Sources have any unscheduled payment amounts. A new option to “List all Photos and Sizes for all Active Properties”, has been added to the “Photo Options and Help” link, in the Properties form > Photos page (on the left side). This can be used to find any photos that are less than the preferred size of 1920 pixels. The Property Fees and Discounts form has a new column for “Ad Sites”. This allows specifying which Ad Sites (interfaces) a Default fee is used with. For example, you can specify that a specific default fee should only be used with RedAwning or HomeAway. See Help on Property Fees and Discounts for more info. • The Protect Website Folders feature now allows publishing a single link to the owners page (or cleaners page), where owners or cleaners can enter a username and password to access their own files or reports. (There’s no need to provide owners and cleaners with separate links now). See help on: “Password Protecting Website folders” for info. • The Bookings form now displays summary info about the currently selected booking above the timeline grid. You can also click on the summary info to access the Tenant options menu. • Added option to “Show Tenant Address” in Housekeeping, Check-in and Check-out reports. • The “Import” button in the Bookings form has a new option to: Post the Next imported reservation.
2/10/2018 v.1.0.3173 • You can now define “Event Restrictions” within the Property Rates form, by selecting one of the new “Rate Options” (on the right-hand side). Event Restrictions allow specifying whether Check-ins and/or Check-outs are allowed during specific date ranges. The restrictions are also enforced during online bookings within web calendars, and on HomeAway/VRBO. See Help on: “Property Rates” for more info. There is a new option to flag individual Expenses and Commissions to property owners, as “Taxable” expenses. See Help on: “Taxable Expenses” for details. • Added Taxable Revenue Totals to Bookings Detail reports. When generating reports to PDF, you can now keep up to 5 previous PDF reports open without having to close them first. This allows comparing different reports without having to print or save them. • Added extra checks during backups, and also a lockout mechanism during database upgrades. Corrected an issue when using links to the searchable group page that have check-in and check-out date parameters included.
1/19/2018 v.1.0.3169 • When copying specific Rates from another Property, you now have to the option to copy just the Dates for rates that have Matching Names and Years. For example, if you adjust the dates for seasonal rates on one property, you can then easily copy these new dates to other properties without overriding the rate amounts. Resolved an issue when selecting photos, where the selected photo displayed with incorrect dimensions. • In the Expenses form, there is a new checkbox for “Exclude from Vendor 1099”. This allows excluding certain expenses (such as supplies that you reimburse the Cleaner for) when running the Property Statement report and selecting: Run Report > Export to Excel > Vendor 1099. When selecting Photos within the application, a new popup allows you to select from the Last 10 Remembered folders which you previously selected from, rather than only the last folder. A few minor fixes.
1/10/2018 v.1.0.3167 • Increased the number of Property Photos from 20 to 32 in the Properties form. Now you can have up to 64 photos displayed for an individual property if you are using the Site and Location Photos option. Also added an option to “Clear All Photos” when clicking on a photo. • Rate Quotes in Plain Text email inquiry replies will now line up the amounts within emails having variable width fonts. • Added a colon (“:”) after rate quote line item names to make rate quotes more readable, since HomeAway (and other sites) compress multiple spaces into 1 space. • Added option to “Print 3-fold Mailing Addresses (or any other documents)” to the Options button in both the Contacts and Tenants forms. You can print for a single Contact/Tenant or for a filtered list using any “Contact Doc 1” type Template, (a standard 3-fold Template is included). Corrected a recent issue when selecting Attachments for Templates. When selecting Photos, 2 new options were added which allow “Moving (or Copying) All Photos selected to a MyFiles folder”. This is useful for reorganizing multiple photos quickly. • Improved the speed of uploading property pages. • Resolved an issue where FTP Backups/Restores were sometimes getting an Out of memory error.
11/28/2017 v.1.0.3157 • When hovering the mouse over Photos in the Properties form (and also the Sites and Locations form), a popup window now appears with a large thumbnail image of the photo. This makes it easier to identify photos when selecting or rearranging them. • The “Update Web Reminder” button at the top, now has a Double-click option, and also a menu allowing you to use the Web Auto Updater process, which runs as a separate process so you can work on other things while it’s updating. • Solved an issue in the latest Microsoft Office updates to Outlook, which prevented the Floating Calendar from Replying to emails. • When importing bookings from other sources, a check for double bookings is now performed immediately, rather than waiting until Save is pressed. If your web host requires a private key for SFTP, this is now possible. See help on FTP Settings. • Added a new “Web Links” tab to the Properties form > Notes tab, which can be used for storing links to the property’s listings on other sites. Or use it for any other links. Added a new option when creating Blockout bookings, to blockout just 1 day, either before or after the current booking. This can be used when giving a guest a very early check-in or late check-out, making the night unavailable.
11/9/2017 v.1.0.3148 • The new RedAwning interface is now available. Please see the Help topic on: “RedAwning Interface” for details. There is a new option in the Ad and Referral Sources form to “Hide Rate Information in emails sent to Tenants”. This option should be used with Ad Sites that upcharge the guest rate (ex. AirBnb, RedAwning, etc). In addition, there is a new %If%…%Else%…%EndIf% Placeholder that can be used in Email Templates in order to easily exclude Rate Quotes and other info from Emails. There is another new Placeholder called: %AdSource.HideRate%. See Help topic on: %If%…%Else%…%EndIf% Placeholders for examples of using both of these Placeholders. Some minor improvements were made to web pages. • The new Guest Reviews form now includes an Ad Source selection, and some other improvements. Also, Reviews posted on the Web now show the Review Month, Year and Ad Source. (Repost your group/property web pages after updating). • When doing Backups of the database (either local or remote), you now have the option to: “Exclude the MyFiles folder (containing Photos and Documents)”. The “Property” button in the Floating Calendar now includes links to the Property’s website and other listing pages.
10/29/2017 v.1.0.3143 • A new interface with RedAwning.com was added to the Properties form > Interface settings, which will soon be available after Beta testing is completed. This will allow publishing listings and importing bookings from other channels such as Expedia, Booking.com, Airbnb, RedAwning, TripAdvisor, etc. If interested, you can read the Help topic on: “RedAwning Interface”. Past dates in Web Calendars now show a lighter color and no line-thru on open dates. When posting all Group and Property Web pages via the top “Web” button, a new checkbox option allows you to “Purge obsolete files on the website”, such as old, inactive property pages and photos. • A new “Guest Reviews” form was added (in the Forms menu at the top). This provides a central repository for storing Guest Reviews from various sources, and then optionally displaying Reviews within your Property Web pages. (See Example Here). See the Help topic on: “Guest Reviews” for more info. There is a new “View Property Websites” option in the Properties form “Options” button at the top. This allows viewing your listings on external sites, such as VRBO, AirBnb, RedAwning, etc. This feature is also available from the Floating Calendar’s “Property” button. • The menu bar in Property Web Pages now shows a different color for the Active page being viewed.
10/1/2017 v.1.0.3140 • Web Calendars and Searchable Group web pages now show dates that are in the past, as unavailable. Other minor improvements made to all web pages. (After updating, repost your group/property web pages). When Outlook signatures are included in emails, 1 of the 2 blank lines that Outlook inserts above the signature is now removed. The 2 Workflow documents which can be selected in the Expenses form are now remembered and defaulted to, when new Expenses are created. • Group web pages now show a thin border around the last viewed Property, when returning back to the Group web page. This helps guests see which Property they last viewed. • The Floating Calendar was updated to accommodate Airbnb’s new email formats. • Fixed a minor display issue with optional fees within Instant Quotes. • If the Bookings form is left open overnight, a notice is displayed to reset the Timeline header.
8/20/2017 v.1.0.3132 • A new column called “Dow:Mn” has been added to the Property Rates form. This allows specifying “Minimum Nights for specific Days of the Week”. See Help on Property Rates for more info. The forms for Property Rates, Fees, Commissions and Rooms all have a new “up/down” navigation button (next to the Property selection drop-down). This allows scrolling through the list of properties and scanning information easily without having to click the drop-down and select the next property. The Document and Email Templates form now allows easily converting Html templates to Plain Text format (by unchecking the “Html Format” option in both the Email Text and Document tabs). There are 4 new “Inquiry Reply” Sample Templates that are in Plain Text format, (which can optionally be Imported using the “Import Latest Sample Templates” button on the “Doc Info” tab of the Templates form. Since, Plain text format is now required when replying to HomeAway/VRBO inquiries, you can either Copy and convert your own templates to Plain Text format, or Import the new sample “Inquiry Reply” – Plain Text formatted Templates. The Ad Source and Referrals form has a new option to: “Use Plain Text formatted Templates when replying to Inquiries”. When this option is checked, the Floating Calendar will automatically switch to a Plain Text reply Template which matches the “Default to this Template…” option in the Templates form. If you’re not already using this option, you should try it. It’s near the bottom of the “Doc Info” tab in the Templates form. The Floating Calendar will now display a warning when replying to inquires from Ad Sources that require Plain Text format if the selected Template is in Html format. The default web page colors have changed slightly to a Blue shade of text and an off-White background. (Your current colors are unchanged). See Example here. • The “View Sample” button was added back in the Html Editor when editing Templates.
8/12/2017 v.1.0.3129 • In web calendars, when guests select the Check-in Date, the Check-Out Date will now be automatically set based on the minimum nights specified for the check-in date. The User Defined Query (in the Tools menu) now always uses the current database, even if you have changed the database location since your queries were last saved. • A few minor improvements to web pages. • The “Previous / Next Page” buttons at the bottom of the Searchable Property Group web page, will now scroll to the top of the page automatically after changing pages.
8/6/2017 v.1.0.3126 • All of the Inquire and Email links on web pages, now open a web form with 2 methods to send emails (using the browser’s default email method, or copy/paste into a new email). Please repost your group/property pages after updating. • The Housekeeping Cleaning Schedule report type option for “List of Check-ins” now shows Turnover info for the check-in dates. And the “List of Check-outs” now shows Turnover info for checkout dates. This can be useful for example when doing room inspections before arrival using the List of Check-ins report type. • A new Placeholder called %Cleanings% was added, which will insert a list of all of the booking’s scheduled cleanings. • The Day of the Week is now displayed in the Bookings form next to the check-in and check-out dates. • When posting Property Group web pages, an .htaccess file is now also uploaded which will redirect any old, deleted property pages to the group page, rather than display a 404 not found error. When using the “Web Page Inquire Link” option (in System Preferences > Web Page Settings) to link to your own custom form for email inquiries, a new “details” parameter is automatically added to the link, which contains all the details of the quote. This allows for easy integration with plugins such as the popular WordPress “Contact Form 7” plugin.
7/18/2017 v.1.0.3120 • Group web pages now remember the current scrolled position on the page when returning back from viewing a property page. Plus other minor web page improvements. Please repost your Group / Property web pages after updating. • Corrected a minor issue with sharing Rates from other properties. • Added an option to the small Globe button on the HomeAway interface settings (in the Properties form), to “View currently uploaded Availability and Rates”, in order to allow verifying the interface info if needed. • Added ability to do By-Month and By-Week rates in Instant Quotes and the HomeAway interface (by setting the Default Rate Type to either of these in the Properties form > Misc tab). Added a new option to the Property Groups form to “Override Property Links”, which allows the property group page to point to non-VRP property web pages if needed. • You can now enable “Instant Bookings” for your HomeAway listings (using the Enable option in the HomeAwayPM interface settings). Note: You will need to contact HomeAway to enable IB for your account first. Also, you still need to invoice guests for payment. Give consideration before enabling IB, since you must limit cancellations to a minimum. • Added a warning when saving a booking, if the check-out Cleaning is scheduled before the check-out date, in case you have not selected to automatically schedule check-out cleanings (in the Properties form > Misc tab).
6/20/2017 v.1.0.3109 • A new interface to www.FindRentals.com was added. FindRentals is a new partner who offers straight-up advertising at a low cost. They also display a “Book Now” button on your listings which link directly to your own website Property pages. They are offering a 2-month Free trial and only $30 / year / property subscription for VRP users. See Help topic on “FindRentals Interface” for more info. A new “Use CC Token” option was added to System Preferences. See Help topic on “Credit Card Tokens” for more info. • When posting Property web pages in the Properties form > Web Post tab, any external interfaces are also updated now. • The Bookings Chart and Detail Reports have a new option to select “Ad Sources”, plus an option to “Hide Ad Source” on the report. • Added a new “Reminder” button to update Web Calendars in the top toolbar when calendar updates are pending (and the Auto Web Updater is not running). The Search Widget on web pages now includes the first 2 checkboxes for Amenity search keywords (defined in System Preferences > Web Page Settings). Also the “Find Any or All” drop-down option was removed from the widget. The “Map” page on property Web pages now defaults to using the property’s Lat/Long, (provided no embedded html is specified), and will display a map image with a pointer pointing to the exact location. Property Titles in group web pages are now clickable links. Fixed a recent issue when manually adding a scheduled payment for the full amount due.
5/15/2017 v.1.0.3103 • Added an option to “Adjust Rates” to a specific percentage in the HomeAway interface settings. Added an “Alternate Title” field in the Properties form > Web tab. If specified, the Alternate Title will replace the Title in the HomeAway, VRBO and TripAdvisor listings. Changed the existing Alternate Long Description, so that it is always enabled, regardless if you have Html formatting in the normal Property Long Description. This allows having a different Long Description on HomeAway, VRBO and TripAdvisor. • When using the floating calendar to read Payment Received emails from VR Payment, a button was added to the “Dates not recognized” popup, with the option to “Show Tenant’s Bookings”. This makes it easy to quickly locate the booking when receiving payment received notification emails. When saving bookings integrated with HomeAway, a new button option is displayed allowing you to “Update this Property Now” to HomeAway. • Fixed a minor issue when unchecking the “Html Format” checkbox next to the Property Long Description, where sometimes it did not convert to plain text. • You can now change the Property on HomeAway bookings if needed, (rather than cancelling and adding a new booking). A new Placeholder Option called [Replace] was added, which can be used to replace text or characters if needed.
5/7/2017 v.1.0.3096 • There’s a new option in System Preferences to: “Use Property Name” when uploading property details to Availability Online, (in System Preferences > Interfaces > Availability Online). The Bookings form has a few small changes, including a new “Unlock Rate” button next to Rates, when the Rates are Locked. And a new pre-defined filter (in the “Show” drop-down at the top), for “Check-ins and Check-outs Tomorrow”. When updating the software to the current version which requires a database update, you will see a new checkbox option to “Exclude the MyFiles folder from the automatic Backup”. This can help the update run faster if you have a lot of property photos which do not need be included in the backup. • You can now update Full Listing details to HomeAway or TripAdvisor for an individual property only, by using the “Post Property Website” button (in the Properties form > Web Post tab), and selecting one of the options which include “And Update Full Listing Interfaces”. This allows publishing updates for an individual property quickly if needed. • Corrected the proration of Other Revenue on the Property Statement report, if Taxes Received are marked as revenue. • Two new call to action buttons were added to Property web pages, for: “View Photos”, and “Watch Videos”. When prompted whether a new Booking is from a HomeAway Inquiry, you now need to enter ‘Yes’ to confirm.
4/18/2017 v.1.0.3091 • Added a new %RptDates% Placeholder that can be used with “Auto Email Report” type Templates. This can be used to show the selected reporting dates within the email text or subject line. Added 3 new dynamic Date range options to all Reports, for selecting: “Tomorrow”, “Tomorrow + Next Day”, and “Tomorrow + Next 2 Days”. The Floating Calendar was updated to accommodate changes in TripAdvisor inquiries. • There is a new “Adjust Rates” option in the TripAdvisor Interface settings in the Properties form > Interface tab. This allows adjusting rates on TripAdvisor to recoup their fees or encourage more bookings. • When unchecking the “Use Html” checkbox next to the Property Long Description, Rental Agreement Text, or Owner Agreement text in the Properties form, any existing Html will be removed automatically. (No copy/paste required). • Minor changes to the Properties form > Web Post tab, and other areas. • Tiered Flat Rates can now be used by the Instant Quotes in web calendars, and also in the HomeAway OLB interface. To use Tiered Flat Rates, the “Default Rate Type” option must be set to “Tiered Flat Rate” (in the Properties form > Misc tab). Tiered Flat Rates calculate a flat rate based on the combination of monthly, weekly and daily rates. • When saving new Bookings for properties which are integrated with HomeAway, you are now prompted if the booking is from a HomeAway or VRBO inquiry, and whether to set the Ad Source automatically. Adjustments were made when printing envelopes using the printer loading “Center” option in User Preference option.
3/27/2017 v.1.0.3085 • A new “TripAdvisor – Full Listing” interface has been added which uses the same info as the HomeAwayPM interface. See Help topic on “TripAdvisor Interface” for instructions. (There is no additional cost for using this interface if you’re already integrated with HomeAway OLB). Html Bold tags (<b> and </b>) are now allowed in property Long Descriptions and Short Summary text even if you are interfacing with HomeAway. When VRP uploads to HomeAway or TripAdvisor, any Html bold tags will be automatically removed. This allows maintaining just one set of texts if you require simple text bolding on your website. • Consolidated the “Download and Import new reservations” button options in the Bookings form, so that it processes all online booking interfaces in a single option. A new “Check Alerts” button was added to the top Toolbar (next to the “Web” button). This makes it easier to quickly locate bookings with Payments Due when receiving an email notice that a payment request was paid. Also, the “Check Alerts” toolbar button will display the Alerts Manager instantly, without an alerts summary prompt.
3/18/2017 v.1.0.3081 • There is a new “Auto-Lock” checkbox in the Bookings form, next to the Rate on the Rental Info tab. This allows you to automatically Lock-in the Rate on any new bookings. iCal calendar exports have been changed so that dates are exported for each individual booking, rather than for contiguous booked dates. When defining Bedrooms for a property, you can now add “Other Sleeping Area” room types if needed, in addition to the bedrooms. The API used for HomeAway has been moved to a new server for better performance. • The Bookings form has a new column in the bookings grid for “Ad Source”. This allows you to sort and view at a glance which bookings are from HomeAway or other sources. • Solved a sub-total issue in the Occupancy Report when the “New page for each Property” option was not selected.
2/28/2017 v.1.0.3077 • A new %RatesByDay% Placeholder was added which shows the default rates for each day booked. This allows guest to see how the average rate was calculated. (Note: Do not use if overriding the calculated rate). Property Photo paths and descriptions are now searchable again via the “Find” button in the Properties form. The Booking Report’s 3D bar charts now display again in the report preview window. There is a new Alert option in the Properties form > Misc tab, for setting the “Days in advance of Check-in to Send Welcome Info / Confirmation”. There are 2 new options in System Preferences > External Data for changing the Private View Folders if needed. • You can now Remove a single Amenity from multiple properties, by Right-clicking on a selected Amenity in the Properties form > Amenities tab, and selecting “Remove Amenity from All Properties currently listed”. • In the Floating Calendar’s “Property” button, there is a new option to “Show Property Rates”, which makes it easy to quickly display all rates for the selected property.
2/13/2017 v.1.0.3073 • HomeAway OLB Integration testing has completed successfully. Please see the updated Help topic: “New HomeAwayPM Interface – Online Bookings (OLB)” to make sure you have finished the steps necessary, and familiarize yourself with how OLB Integration works. This update includes many changes for the OLB Integration. It also includes other enhancements, including an updated Report Preview engine (which allows additional and improved Exporting options). If you have any questions about OLB Integration with HomeAway, feel free to call VRP Support. • Added some more finishing touches to the OLB Integration. • Searchable group web page now searches exact number of bedrooms instead of number of bedrooms or higher. Changed web calendars to use By-Month rate type (instead of prorated monthly rate type), when appropriate. • Corrected a minor issue in the Property Rooms form when Explicit Edit mode is enabled. • Property Amenities can now be copied from another property (either selected amenities or all amenities), in the Properties form > Amenities tab. Solved an issue with double-spacing between paragraphs when sending emails through Outlook (which was caused by an Outlook update). • Calendar data uploaded to HomeAway/VRBO now acknowledges the setting for how to show Tentative and Signed Agreement booking statuses on web calendars, (specified in the Properties form > Web tab). If set to show as “Tentative”, then dates on HomeAway/VRBO are shown as Open, since there is no Tentative option on HomeAway. • Solved a recent issue when sending emails from plain text format Templates.
12/3/2016 v.1.0.3060 • Good News! The HomeAway Online Bookings (OLB) Integration is complete and currently being tested with HomeAway. This VRP update includes all of the functionality, including instructions in the new Help topic: “New HomeAwayPM Interface – Online Bookings (OLB)”. Testing is being done with selected users. Once testing is complete, the interface will be available, (and a notice will be posted here). Please note, this feature will require a $150/year fee to VRP Support, since it requires a web component that must be maintained. However, it will save your $150/Listing per year on HomeAway subscription costs. Feel free to look at the help topic, and start preparing. There isn’t much to do, provided that you already performed the steps required for the HomeAwayPm Full Listing Interface. • The number of Property Photos has been increased from 16 to 20 in the Properties form > Photos tab. Therefore, with the 16 Site Photos and 16 Location Photos. So, you can now have a maximum of 52 photos displayed on your website for each property.
11/14/2016 v.1.0.3058 • Added a new “Site” column to the Bookings form View-by-Property grid. Added a fade-in effect to property web pages when clicking pages in the menu bar. Added a “character count” display to the Zoom Edit windows, so you can see if you’re under the limits required by HomeAway for Long Descriptions and other texts. Improved some of the messages displayed for the HomeAway validation checks, to help pinpoint missing rates, and other requirements.
10/31/2016 v.1.0.3054 • Many changes and improvements were made in this update. First and foremost, is a new “HomeAwayPM – Full Listings Interface”. (Note: The old interface still exists). The new Interface allows VRP to update all property details, photos, amenities, rooms (new), descriptions, calendars, rates, etc. with HomeAway/VRBO. This is also a pre-requisite for the next phase, which is “Online Bookings Integration”, which is currently being worked on. So, the sooner everyone implements the new Full Listing interface, the better. As the Help instructions explain, HomeAway needs to work with each customer in order to switch from the old interface to the new. So, to get started, please see the help topic: “HomeAwayPM Interface”, for instructions on what to do in the VRP software to get started. If you have any questions, please contact VRP Support. This update also includes: a new Rooms module, a long list of fixed Amenities which are shared with HomeAway, a new Property Type setting, a new Living Area size setting, a new Alternate Long Description, and several other enhancements. • Added Rental Agreement and Cancellation Policy fields to the Properties form > Interface tab. These will be used for the Online Bookings integration, when available. Corrected a recent issue with the small “Globe” button in the Bookings form.
8/26/2016 v.1.0.3042 • There is a new “Web” toolbar button option to automatically “Update Web Cleaning Schedule Report(s)” on your website. This allows updating cleaning schedule reports on your website so you can provide your Cleaners with links to their individual Housekeeping Reports. Note: these can be password protected also. See Help topics “Uploading Web Cleaning Schedule Reports” and “Protecting Private View FTP Site Folders” for more info. There is a new Auto-FTP option in the Property Statements, Cleaning Schedules and Booking Calendar reports, which allows uploading multiple reports “without Prompts”, so you’re not prompted after each report upload. There is a new “Notes” button in the upper right-hand corner of each Report Parameters form, which can be useful for storing internal notes about reports and when to run them, etc. When importing bookings from Availability Online, the billing address is now imported into the tenant’s billing address. • Made changes to the exported iCal Calendars to make sure they validate using 3rd party iCal validating tools. (These changes were not necessary in the past, but this may eliminate any possible issues with sites requiring validation). • Added “Lat, Long” Latitude, Longitude field to the Properties form > Property Info tab, in lieu of the future HomeAway full listing interface. Made changes to the Expression Builder used for defining Filters and Custom Alerts so you can more easily select dynamic dates (dates based on the current date, etc.). • Updated the Floating Calendar to accommodate changes in TripAdvisor inquiries.
8/14/2016 v.1.0.3037 • The “Check-in Days of Week” rule in the Properties form > Interface > Instant Quote tab, now allows an optional “Period” to apply the Days of Week rule to. You can also specify multiple rules for different periods, so you can require different check-in days at different times of year, if needed. See Help topic on “Instant Quotes” for more info. The Bookings Chart Detail Report now shows a “C” notation if a Fee is “Commissionable” when the “Show Fees” option is selected in the report. Cleaning Notice emails that use the %CleanOn% Placeholder will now include the text: “*** Special Check-Out ***” next to the cleaning time, if the booking has a Special Check-out Time specified. • A new feature was added, which allows password protecting any documents and reports uploaded to the Private View FTP site. This feature also creates Index pages of Documents and Folders which are also password protected. See help topic on: “Protecting Private View FTP Site Folders” for details. When specifying the FTP site for uploading Reports (in the Report Parameters), you can now use a new placeholder called: %PrivateViewFtpSite%, rather than having to specify the FTP settings.
7/25/2016 v.1.0.3033 • Added an option in System Preferences to specify which HomeAway Interface version to use. (Do not change the version unless VRP Support contacts you and requests it). Added a 4th automatic Booking Reminder. Instant Quotes will now “warn” guests when they select “Inquire” (rather than “Reserve”) if any minimum nights or max persons rules are broken. • Updated the Floating Calendar to accommodate recent changes in HomeAway/VRBO inquiries. • Added a new option in System Preferences > External Data, to password protect the Private View folder on your website from within VRP, without having to so through your hosting account. Added an option to temporarily stop notices of adjacent bookings with special check-in or check-out times, when saving a booking. • Cleaning alerts displayed in the Alerts Manager now show the assigned Cleaner next to the Tenant. The “Go to Alert” button now includes an option to view the Cleaner’s contact info, to make it easier to contact them if needed.
6/22/2016 v.1.0.3025 • A new feature has been added which allows defining “Custom Alerts”, which can be triggered with the normal Check for Alerts, or when Saving a Booking. See Help topic on “Custom Alerts” for more info. Corrected a processing fee calculation in the Bookings form when payments are mixed between CC and Checks. • Added a new “Active” field to Custom Alerts, User-defined Queries and Filters. This allows disabling custom alerts and filters, without having to delete them, in case you wish to use them again in the future. • Solved error with Outlook 2016 when replying to email inquiries. Note: Make sure Outlook’s Paste Options are set to Keep source formatting, when pasting from other program. (Outlook Options > Mail > Editor Options > Advanced). • Corrected a recent issue when exporting report data to Excel. • There is a new option in: System Preferences > Other > Future Availability Months, which allows increasing the number of months (from 15 up to 24) to show availability and rates in web pages and external interfaces. Consider carefully before changing. See notes in the System Preference setting. Improved the Process Fee / Cash Discount calculation in the Bookings form to accommodate variations of different types of payments received. There is also a new “Lock Process Fee” checkbox, which allows preventing the fee from being recalculated, or allows you to manually enter the process fee. This can be useful if payments received to not match the type of payment expected. “Https” can now be specified in the Property and Property Group FTP settings for the Http Display Folder setting. Corrected a minor issue in the Follow-up Report when selecting the Cleanings Due report option. Enhanced the recently new “Custom Alerts” feature to allow more advanced alert parameters.
5/24/2016 v.1.0.3019 • Added a new [NoLastWord] Placeholder Option which can be used to display first and middle names of Tenants if needed. Added a new “Change Font Size” option when Right-clicking on multi-line text boxes in any of the forms. This can make it easer to edit long text fields with complex Expression Placeholders. A new column was added to the Document Templates form grid which shows the Date Last Updated. This column can also be sorted which can help when finding templates you recently changed. • Added a new [IfEmpty] Placeholder option, and a new IfEmpty() function which can be used to display alternate text if the placeholder’s value is empty, zero (0), or unknown. • Added a link to “App Notes” on the bottom right of the Html Editor form. App Notes are useful for storing text or expressions in one place, which can then be used in multiple Document Templates and Web pages. • The Property Statement, Occupancy and Cleaning Schedule reports now include the Company Phone Number in the report header. A new checkbox was added to the Bookings form > Billing Info tab, below the “$” dollar sign button, which provides an option to automatically switch to the Work Flow tab after charging payments. Updated the Floating Calendar to accommodate changes in AirBnb inquiries and reservation requests. • Minor change to Additional Fee and Commission calculations when setting a fee variable and the fee does not meet the min/max days trigger. • The small “Book” button above the Grid in the Bookings form, has a new Filter shortcut to show “Current & Future Bookings (and Move Timeline to this Booking)”. This can be helpful after doing a Find. • Where you can Export to Excel, you can now optionally export to a CSV file, which may be preferable when exporting info to Constant Contact, MailChimp, etc. • When selecting Property Photos, the photos will now fit within a 16:9 frame or a 4:3 frame depending on the original photo aspect ratio. Previously it only used 16:9 frames. You can now optionally specify that the Max Persons and/or Sleeps do Not show on web pages if needed, by setting either of these to ’99’ in the Properties form. This can be helpful if you show “commercial” type properties on your website.
4/21/2016 v.1.0.3005 • There is a new “Payments Report” in the Reports menu with multiple sub-total and selection options. This can be useful for reconciling payments, and reporting payments due or received. The “Available?” popup form now lets you select both the Check-in and Check-out dates in a single calendar (same as the Bookings form). Also, there are two new standard templates for replying with a List of Properties. These cannot be modified, but you can use the “Copy Template” button in the Templates form to make a copy which can then be customized. When posting Web Calendars, the “Calendar link” in the Properties form Notes tab will now be updated automatically if the checkbox to “Set Links when posting web pages” on the Notes tab is checked. Previously, the Calendar link only updated when posting the Property page. • If you use Rental Guardian for Travel and Damage insurance, then there is a new field map for the Web Form Assistant. Please see Help on “Insurance Processing” for setting up the new Weblink and Field Map. This update requires a software update on each PC, which can easily be done in the tools menu > Check for new updates. • A new user privilege called “Read-Only Properties” is now available which can be assigned to users in order to prevent them from editing any Property info, including Rates, Fees and Commissions. Backups now include the database subfolder name in the backup name, to help identify backups from multiple companies. • Improvements were made to: 1) the template processor for Word documents (including generating PDF’s from Word document templates), 2) the Html Editor (including assigning background colors to table rows and cells). There is a new %TotalAddFees% placeholder which shows the total of any Additional Fees (fees based on total sale). • A new Placeholder Option [GetText] as been added which can be used to extract text from within any other text. When using the SMTP email method, and local disk photos exist within the Document part of templates, a warning is no longer displayed. The warning only appears for email text now.
3/29/2016 v.1.0.2998 • Searchable Property Group web pages have a new “Sort by” option, which allows sorting by Name, Sleeps or Average Rate. Also, the appearance of the selection fields has been improved. • The small “Calculator” button next to the “Adjustment” field in the Bookings form can now calculate the adjustment amount required in order to reach a target Final Sale amount, or other target amount. This can be used for example, when you’re trying to back into an AirBnb total amount. • Word Document Templates now have the “Convert to PDF” option enabled, the same as Html documents do. This allows sending Word templates as PDF files. Instant Quote web calendars will now enforce the minimum nights and max persons rules if only the “Inquire” button is enabled (and the “Book it Now” option is disabled). The Floating Calendar was updated to accommodate changes in AirBnb reservation requests. • Adjusted the “Convert to PDF” option for Word Document Templates to accommodate Word 2010 and prior versions. • Corrected an issue in the Bookings Chart Detail reports when using the Limit by Payment dates option. Web Calendars now have a little “fancier” Property title styling. And when calendars are viewed outside of a frame, the Property title displays on top. • A new “Find Tenant” button has been added to the Bookings form next to the Tenant drop-down selection, which allows finding and selecting Tenants by name. It also allows Adding and Viewing tenants. • When sending reports to an FTP site, the reports will not be automatically displayed by default. • Searchable Group web pages have a few styling improvements within the search box. When using the “Search for Available Properties” feature in the Floating Calendar, the Selected Properties list will now initialize with the active row on the property selected in the Floating Calendar if that property is available. This helps if you wish to add that property to the top of the list. • The CC# button in the bookings form will now allow copying the CC from the Tenant into the Booking. Also, if the Tenant has a newer CC than the booking, you will be notified when processing payments. • Fixed a recent issue with the “Available?” button in the bookings form. Updated the %LinkToQuoteInProp% Placeholder to work with any Browsers. • A new option was added to the Bookings form “Options” button, to “Show Total of any Booking Extensions”. This can be useful if you use Extension Bookings to quickly show the total of related bookings. Updated the Searchable Group page. (Repost your Group/Property pages after this update)
3/10/2016 v.1.0.2983 • When the Floating Calendar’s “Paste All” button searches for an existing Tenant, it now searches all email addresses in the Tenant’s Email1 and Email2 fields, even if these fields contain multiple email addresses separated by commas. • The Contacts and Resources form has a new field for specifying the “Commissions Posting Category / Account” for this Contact. This can be used rather than specifying the same account for each and every Property in the Property Commissions form. See help topic on: “Contact Misc Info” for more details. The Instant Quote web calendar will now show a prorated weekly rate if the Nights selected is less than 7 and no Daily rate is defined. (Previously, it showed a 0 rate if no Daily rate was defined). The Searchable Group web page can now show up to 50 listings at a time. The previous max was 25. • Property, Site and Location Photos tabs have a new button to “Copy Sorted Photos” to a temporary folder (in numerical sequence). This can be used to easily upload multiple photos to VRBO and other listing sites, in the pre-arranged order shown without having to re-arrange photos on listing sites after uploading them. The Drag & Drop Photos feature has been improved also. The Bookings form Rental Info page has a new “calculator” button next to the Adjustment field. This can be used to quickly calculate the adjustment if you are trying to adjust to a specific Total Rent amount. The “Inquire” button on Instant Quote web calendars now requires the guest to Acknowledge any notice you have specified in the Instant Quote Info text in the Properties form. Previously, only the “Book it Now” button required the Acknowledge checkbox. Fixed an issue when using %AppNote.% Placeholders in a Property Long Description, where line breaks were not preserved. The overlay Photos slide show in Property web pages (when clicking on a large photo in the Photos page) now accommodates photos larger than the browser window. • The Post Property Website button in the Properties form > Web Post tab, has a new option to “Delete Property from Website”, which will also remove the property page and photos from the website. • Searchable Property Group web pages now search Sleeps and Bedrooms based on properties with “at least” the selected number of Sleeps and/or Bedrooms. Max Persons is now also displayed if it is different than Sleeps persons. Corrected a recent issue when displaying the Amenities List within Html email Templates. • The iCal Import feature can now read AirBnb iCal files for blocking out dates or checking calendars.
2/22/2016 v.1.0.2977 • The Property Statement report has 2 new options to “Show Taxable Revenue”. See help on the Property Statement report for an explanation of this option. The Floating Calendar has been updated to accommodate changes in HomeAway inquiries and message emails. It also now converts any special characters in Tenant names to American ASCII equivalents so that it can lookup matches to other Tenant names input from other sources. • The number of Bedrooms selection on the Property Group web page now only shows the bedroom options available within the group’s properties. There is a new Fee “Default” type called “No-Charge-Coupon Fee”, which can be used to let owners book their own properties with no charges (or just a specific charge). See help on “Property Fees” for more info. • There are 3 new Cleaning Types in the Bookings form Cleanings tab for: “Tidy-Up Service”, “Linen Service”, and “Towels Service”. In addition, there is a new “%CleaningType% Placeholder which can be used in Cleaning Notices. The Cleaning Type also shows on the Housekeeping report. Resolved a minor issue which was causing all web pages to be reposted with each new version of the software. (Should not happen after this version). The Properties form Misc page has been broken out into 2 pages. In addition, a new “Sleeps” field has been added to the Properties form Misc page to denote how many people a property normally sleeps (in beds). This can be different than Max Persons. “Sleeps” is also a new search item on the Searchable Group web page, and is also shown next to each Property’s thumbnail image. • A new Placeholder: %LinkToGroupPage% was added, which can be used in Templates to link to the Property Group web page with the Search Dates automatically filled in. This easily provides a link to other properties available for the dates specified in the Floating Calendar or Bookings form. Repost your Searchable Group page after this update. • When sending emails, a blank line is now inserted at the top of the email if one does not already exist. This allows you to easily type any additional message before sending it. There is no need to remove the blank line. Previously, many people were adding a blank line to their Templates for this purpose. • A new Placeholder Option [NoLineBreakIfEmpty2] has been added, which removes 2 line breaks if the Placeholder value is empty.
1/21/2016 v.1.0.2965 • The Floating Calendar now recognizes dates in Trip Advisor’s “message from guest” emails. The current User Name was added to the application’s Title bar at the top. • Other minor improvements. • A new “Minimum Gap” option was added to the “Open Days Automatic Rate Adjustments” feature. This is a unique and powerful revenue generating feature which helps to prevent small gaps in your bookings. See Help on Open Days Automatic Rate Adjustments for details. A new “Alternate iCal Export” option was added to the Interfaces. This is a unique and powerful cost saving feature, which can be used with sites like AirBnB which charge on a per-booking basis. See Help on “iCal Calendar Export” for details on Alternate iCal Calendars. When selecting and resizing Photos, the default Photo size is now 1920 pixels wide. This matches the new minimum photo size requirement on listing sites, such as VRBO. The built in “Select and Resize” option will compress images in order to reduce file size while maintaining image quality. It is recommended to use this option even if your original photos are already 1920 pixels wide. • The Floating Calendar can now read AirBnB inquires and booking confirmations, making it easier to create bookings booked through AirBnB. Also, an adjustment was made to accommodate changes in Trip Advisor inquiries. A new button was added to the Bookings form next to the Rate selection, to Lock-in the Rate. A new button was also added to the Properties form Photos page to “Clean up Old Photos”, which can be used to keep your data backups as small as possible by moving any unused photos out of the MyFiles database folder and into a separate backup folder. It is recommended to use this button periodically. • More changes to the Floating Calendar for recognizing AirBnB inquiries and booking confirmations. • Maximum Photo file size allowed has been increased when uploading property pages. • Two new Placeholder Options were added: [PromptAlert] and [PromptText] which can be used to conditionally alert you, or to prompt for a text value to insert when generating an email or document. See Help on Placeholder Options for details. • The Bookings form > Commissions page now shows the calculated “Revenue minus Commissions” total for easy reference. Payment Terms can now use all Placeholders in order to build complex payment schedules if needed. • Photos can now be selected and resized from non-mapped network drives. • Update to Searchable Group Web pages to accommodate Chrome and Firefox. (Repost your group web pages). • The Property Statement report has a new parameter to “Include only Cleaned cleanings”. Also, when exporting the report to Excel and using the Vendor 1099 form option, it will ask if you wish to “Include Expenses based on Paid date, rather than booking or transaction date”.

Updates History (prior to 2016):

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Updates are cumulative. Therefore, please review any previous updates that may apply to you depending on your last update.

11/30/2015 v.1.0.2949 • Corrected a minor issue when changing the Processing fee rate in the Bookings form. • When exporting data to Excel, any “PERSONAL.xlsb” macros are now available for use in the generated spreadsheet if they exist. • The new inquiry format from TripAdvisor is now recognized by the Floating Calendar. The Floating Calendar can now read Expedia booking notices. Rate calculations which have intermittently defined weekend rates have been corrected. Several other minor improvements. • A correction was made when exporting weekend rates to AvailabilityOnline and Webervations. • A new feature has been added to allow checking (and optionally importing) external iCal calendars from third-party sites. The “Import” part of this feature is optional if you only want to check and compare VRP availability with external calendars. See the help topic “Checking and Importing External iCal Calendars” for more info. • Two new Placeholders were added which can be used within templates to provide a direct link to the Instant Quote Web Calendar – with the Check-in and Check-out dates filled in automatically. This is especially useful if you have online bookings turned on and you are replying to inquiries for available dates. The two Placeholders are: %LinkToQuote% and %LinkToQuoteInProp%, whichare described in the Help on Placeholders. (Example use: %LinkToQuote%[Weblink Click Here to Book Online] ). An issue with Daylight Saving Time was corrected in the Searchable Group web pages. The Occupancy Report has a new option to Page break on each Property. • Instant Quote web calendars now display the Checkin and Checkout times. • The Floating Calendar can now be used by users that have Read-only Privilege. • A new option was added to the Bookings form Options button to “Show this Booking in the Floating Calendar”. This can be useful for quickly viewing rates and available days before extending a booking. A few cosmetic improvements were made to web pages and the Date popup selector on Searchable group web pages. Please repost your Group and Property web pages after this update. • Within the Html Editor, the Indent and Outdent buttons can now be used with the Bulleted List buttons to create nested lists. • Fixed a recent issue with Rate Averaging calculations. • Instant Quotes in web calendars now acknowledge the use of variables within Additional Fee Calculations.
9/30/2015 v.1.0.2930 • If you are Posting Accounting Transactions to QuickBooks or Quicken, you can now post miscellaneous property expenses entered in the Expenses form also. Also, the Expense Accounts form has a new field for specifying the Posting Category / Account. See Help on “Posting Accounting Transactions” for more info. The Pay Fees and Commissions form has been renamed to “Pay Expenses and Commissions”. When uploading or downloading information to and from the web, a new type of “progress bar” is displayed during the transfer. • If you use Secure FTP (SFTP) with your website, then this update includes an improved SFTP library which you will need to install to replace the old library. See the Help topic “FTP Settings” for how to install the new SFTP library. Some minor improvements were made to the Html Editor for things such as indenting and changing text colors. • Added a new Placeholder: %AddTenantsEmail1H%, which will insert a list of any additional tenants Email1 addresses, which can be used in the “Send To” tab of Templates if needed. • Web Calendars now display check-in days as “half-shaded” to help avoid confusion when guests select their check-out day for Instant Quotes. Web Cleaning Calendars now show a 2-month cleaning schedule rather than a 4-month schedule, since cleanings schedules beyond 1 or 2 months often vary greatly by that time. • Implemented the half-shaded check-in days on the Searchable Group web page also. (Repost your Group page). When sending emails, any empty email addresses in the: Send To, CC, and BCC which are pulled in by Placeholders will now be ignored as long as there is at least one Send To email address. • Added a new Placeholder: %AddTenantsEmail2H%, which will insert a list of any additional tenants Email2 addresses. • The Property Statement report has a new option to “Display Summary after running report”, which provides an option for viewing the summary of all net amounts in the report. Minor improvements in the Rates form, progress bars during uploads, payment processing, Bookings form, and others.
8/29/2015 v.1.0.2915 • The Housekeeping report now has an Auto-FTP option to post reports on your website. The Floating Calendar has been updated to accommodate changes in HomeAway and FlipKey inquiries. • Corrected a possible issue with Rates interfaces when one or more properties use the Show rates “Exactly as Displayed” setting. Also updated the HomAway/VRBO rates export to accommodate changes on HA’s system. Both Property and Group web pages now have an “Email this Page” link at the bottom of each page. Automatic Near Term Rate Adjustments can now be limited to specific periods during the year. See Help on Near Term Rate Adjustments for info. Plus various other minor improvements. After this update, repost your web pages and update both rates and calendar interfaces. • Corrected an issue when posting property web pages using the SFTP (secure FTP) option. Added a couple of convenience items: The Floating Calendar has a new button in the upper right corner (book icon), which includes shortcuts for commonly used things like Finding bookings, Checking alerts, and Updating web calendars and rates. Also, when using the “Bookings with Alerts Due” filter in the Bookings form, the form automatically switches to the page containing the alert when moving between bookings. • Alerts are now included for un-authorized scheduled Security Pre-Authorizations even if the booking is Fully Paid. • The Property Statement Report now displays a summary of net amounts by owner and property after the report is run. This can be used to quickly review and spot irregularities, or to generate owner payments. When saving bookings in the Bookings form, and warnings (such as maximum persons exceeded, etc.) are displayed, a new option to “Stop this Notice Always” is now available. This will prevent the same alert from displaying for that booking in the future (unless any of the criteria has changed). *** Note: Windows 10 has been fully tested with VRP. No issues have been found. • When replying to FlipKey inquires, the delay encountered due to FlipKey’s tracking image within their emails has been resolved. • Other minor improvements. • Corrected an issue with Summary Properties when deleting bookings.
5/28/2015 v.1.0.2906 • A new Payment Type called “Security Pre-Authorization” has been added in the payments area of the Bookings form Billing Info page. These payment types allow scheduling credit card pre-authorizations for the purpose of placing a “hold” of a specific amount for security purposes to help ensure any unexpected or extra charges will be covered later. These types of payments are handled differently than normal payments, and can also be automatically scheduled when defining Payment Terms. See the help topic on “Security Pre-Authorizations” for more info. When using Automatic Rate Adjustments, you can now specify the Rate type (daily, weekly, monthly or weekend) to apply the automatic adjustments to. See help on “Near Term Rate Adjustments” and “Open Days Rate Adjustments” for more info. A correction was made when calculating the amount due when part of a Booking’s payments were made by check or cash, and part by credit card. The Fee & Discount Types form has been changed to allow specifying the Quicken or QuickBooks Posting Category/Account for each Fee/Discount on a system wide level. You can still specify the Category/Account in each Property’s Fees if needed. This makes managing posting accounts easier, especially if you are using Classes/Tags to designate properties. • Corrected a recent issue with the PDA/Sync file option. Plus a few other minor updates. • Changes to generating Payment Schedules to ignore zero amount payments. • Resolved an issue with Chrome browsers in web pages. Also lightened the color of the small “Powered by” blurb in web pages and emails to make it less noticeable • The Pay Fees & Commissions form has a new option to “Hide Cleanings not yet Cleaned”. A few improvements were made to Property Group web pages. Repost your group/property pages after updating. • Updated the web Calendars and Rates to solve a bug in the latest version of the Firefox browser.
4/1/2015 v.1.0.2897 • Several updates were made to the web pages including: larger thumbnail photos, styling changes, property page menu reordering, new buttons such as “View Photos”, slide-show improvements, and the default colors are more subtle (you can reselect the Default Colors in your Group settings to see the new colors). So update your web pages after this update. Property pages can now be linked-to externally with the initial menu tab specified, by adding for example: “?p=photos” to the end of the URL. See Help topic “Integrating VRP with your website” for more details. The Properties form > Options button has a new option to “Clean up the ‘Rental Pics’ photos folder”. This will move any unused files out of the Rental Pics folder and into a backup folder. You can use this to reduce your Backup times and make it easier to manage your photos if you have lots of old photos in the MyFiles folder that you’re not currently referencing in your Properties, Sites or Locations. Declined payments are now recorded in the Work Flow log within the Bookings form for your reference.
3/25/2015 v.1.0.2894 • The Floating Calendar now parses any messages from the guest within the Inquiries, and alerts you with a notification sound and Red text below the inquiry details, which you can click on to view the message. Also, the Paste All button and various checkboxes have been relocated for easier use. All web pages have been updated to the latest shared libraries. Instant Quotes in web calendars now expands downward slowly when dates are selected to help avoid possible confusion. • Calendar and Rates popup overlays on Group web pages are now disabled when viewing on a mobile device, and instead will display as a separate page. This prevents quirks and differences between various phones and how they handle overlays. (Repost your group web page). • Currency Codes (such as: USD) are now displayed in Rate Quotes and Web pages. • Lowered the volume of the guest “message” notification sound in the floating calendar. • The Rates drop-down in the Bookings form now displays calculated shared rates (under All rates for booking period) if the Property is sharing rates as a percentage. • Added a Date selection option to the Property Rates Report. Also, resolved an issue with old IE version 8 browsers on searchable web pages. • Instant Quotes in web calendars now automatically determine the Rate Type (ie. Daily, Weekly, Monthly or Flat Rate) based on slightly different rules in order to calculate the correct rate. These rules are explained in the Help topic “Instant Quotes” under the Rate Calculation section.
2/25/2015 v.1.0.2886 • Settings for both Near-Term Rate Adjustments and Open-Days Rate Adjustments can now be Shared if you are also Sharing Rates from other properties. As with Rates, this allows defining your Automatic Rate Adjustments in one place and then sharing them with multiple properties. • When posting Group Cleaning Schedules to the web, additional cleaning schedules are now also posted for each individual Primary Cleaner. This allows you to give each of your Primary Cleaners a separate link (URL) to their individual cleaning schedules. See Help on Property Groups for more info. Fixed a recent bug in the Floating Calendar when no Property is selected. • Fixed an issue when doing Auto FTP of reports and a Property has no Primary Owner specified. • Fixed a recent issue with the date popup selector on Searchable Group web pages. The “Skype” calling features have been upgraded to also allow Calling (and Texting) using other dialing programs installed on your PC, such as Google Voice (with the Google Voice Plugin). Note: If you use Android phones, there’s a great app at: JustRemotePhone.com for making calls on your Cell Phone – from your PC. We use this with VRP, and it’s sweet! Not only can you make calls and send texts from the Tenants, Contacts, Bookings and Properties forms, but you can also make calls from Outlook, Word, and Excel. • If you have many Blockout, Summary or Lockout bookings, you can now hide them in the “View by Booking” list in the Bookings form. This allows scrolling through fewer, actual bookings when Viewing by Booking. See the new “Show Blockouts” checkbox above the Timeline grid. • Fixed a minor issue on the Searchable Group web page. (Repost your group page).
2/14/2015 v.1.0.2876 • In the “Ad & Referral Sources” form, there is a new option for specifying which Email Address to reply to in the Floating Calendar. The options are: 1) The Guest email (if provided), 2) the Sent-From email, or 3) Both. The “Both” option allows you to send the reply directly to the guest, and also back through the Listing site’s messaging system in order to track your response rate. This allows the guest to receive the email reply intact without having images and HTML formatting stripped out, (which sites such as FlipKey currently do) when replying back through their anonymous email messaging system. See Help on “Ad & Referral Sources” for more info. • Two new features were added for automatically adjusting Rates and/or Minimum Nights required in order to help fill open dates. These features are: 1) “Near Term Automatic Rate Adjustments”, and 2) “Open Days Automatic Rate Adjustments”. The first one already existed as “Special Rates”, but it has been renamed and enhanced. The second one helps you fill all those small openings (“holes”) in your booked dates, which may fall below your minimum nights requirement, or may be undesirable to guests looking for longer stays. These are well worth checking out if you want to book those hard-to-fill dates! See the Help topic “Automatic Rate Adjustments” for details. In the Properties form > Interface > Instant Quotes tab, you can now limit “Check-In Days of the Week” to multiple Days if needed, instead of just one day. • Web pages have been enhanced as follows. The Searchable Group web page has a slightly new look with softer lines and less clutter. Also, it now defaults to having no dates selected initially. Web Calendars now show Unavailable dates in a color that is similar to your selected Menu Bar color in order to give more color consistency to the web pages. See Example here. Repost your Group/Property web pages. • Fixed a formatting issue with the Craigslist Ads group pages. • The Property Rates Report has a new option to “Include Rates Lists (as displayed on the Web)”. This lets you see side-by-side, each property’s Rates as they are defined, and how they are merged and calculated to appear on the web. • Automatic Rate Adjustments will not show special rates for dates that are already booked..
2/6/2015 v.1.0.2870 • In addition to sharing Property Amenities, you can now Right-click on a specific Amenity in the Properties form, and select “Copy This Amenity to All Properties Listed” (for the currently selected filter). • Corrected a temporary issue where images in Outlook signatures were removed when replying to inquiries. • There are 2 new Fee & Discount Types called “Early Check-In” and “Late Check-Out”. When either of these are used in a Booking, an automatic verification is performed, which will alert you if the Special Check-In or Check-Out Time options are not specified in the Booking. The “Fee & Discount Types” form has been updated with a couple of new features: 1) You can now “Merge” one Fee/Discount Type into another across all Bookings and Properties where it is used. And, 2) You can now quickly see where a specific Fee/Discount is being used. These options help you consolidate your fees and discount types if needed. See Help topic on “Fee and Discount Types” for more info. The Properties form > Misc tab has a new option for “Days in advance to Send Cleaning Notice”. This is useful to help ensure you send cleaning notices on time if you are using the Cleaning Notice features. The Floating Calendar now displays the Rates for each day as you move the mouse over dates in the calendar. • The “Web” Button at the top of the main screen has a new option to “Post All Group & Property Web pages”. This provides a shortcut from having to open the Property Groups form in order to update Group and Property web pages. • The Instant Quotes will now disallow guests to book a Monthly rate unless “all” of the requested dates offer a monthly rate (and not just the check-in date). This was already implemented for Weekly rates. • Messages displaying the results of web updates and interfaces are now indented for easier reading. • In the Bookings form, when changing the Rate Type (ie. Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Wkend), a prompt will appear asking if you want to also change the rate to the new calculated rate for that rate type. This saves having to click the Rate Recalc button. In the Property web pages, the 2nd photo (small slideshow), on the right side of the “Property Info” web page, is now also a hot-link to the Photos page. • Searchable Group web pages now only show the number of properties when a Search is performed, not when listing All Properties. (Repost your group/property pages for the change).
1/21/2015 v.1.0.2856 • Report Parameters can now be Shared with other users on your network. When clicking the Save button near the bottom of the Report Parameters forms you will see the new Sharing options. The Floating Calendar has a new “half-width” size option. Click the Expand button (small Down-arrow next to “Reply”) until you see the half-width size. If you use Outlook with FlipKey inquiries, you may have noticed a long delay when replying to FlipKey inquiries recently. This is an issue that FlipKey is resolving soon. In the meantime, the Floating Calendar has been tweaked to cut this delay down to half. Hopefully, they will have it fixed soon. • The Bookings Reports, Commissions Report and Property Statement now exclude Canceled booking nights in the “Total Nights” summary. This avoids confusion when total nights exceeds the number of possible nights in a reporting period due to canceled bookings. • Old data Backups will now be automatically deleted when performing backups – or any other functions that do automatic backups. You will be prompted to confirm first. • A third new Rate Calculation Method was added called “Use Average Rate including Weekend Rates”. This option is the same as the “Use Average Rate of Dates Booked”, except that it does not show a separate “Weekend Adjustment” amount since any weekend daily rates are included in the overall Average daily rate. This method also removes the Weekend Adjustment line in Rate Quotes. See Help on “Rate Calculation Method” for details. Additional improvements were made to the Floating Calendar’s new half-width size option mentioned above. (Try it out!). • Found a workaround for the delay caused by FlipKey’s inquiries. The delay is caused by a “tracking image” they recently embedded in inquiries, which hopefully they will resolve soon, but in the meantime, this update uses a workaround. • The Property Rates form has a new option in the “Copy or Delete Rates by Year” button, which allows copying just a single rate forward to the next year. • Minor changes and fixes.
12/18/2014 v.1.0.2839 • Coupon codes can now be offered to guests when inquiring or booking online through the Instant Quote web calendars. This allows you to offer calculated coupon discounts for one or more Properties. See the Help topic on “Property Fees & Discounts” for details on how to set up Coupon type fees & discounts. When saving a Booking, a new check is performed which will alert you if any other bookings for the same property have their next cleaning scheduled “after” the check-in date of the booking your are saving. • Coupon codes are now Case-Insensitive. The Private View Bookings List now includes the Cleaning Prep Note, since this note can be useful when doing an on-site property check. • Updated the Floating Calendar to accommodate new changes in FlipKey’s inquiries. • Fixed the Select-All function (via Right-click or Ctrl+A) when in a grid’s text column. Fixed 2 missing column headers when printing Invoices. The Bookings Chart Detail reports now show the column header “Revenue” instead of “Rental Revenue” when the option to “Include Revenue type Fees in Rental Revenue” is selected. Searchable Group web pages now show “Available” buttons on individual properties “only” if the guest clicks “Search”. This avoids possible confusion if the guest does not realize that the default dates are already selected. • In the Property Fees & Discounts form, you can now Duplicate an existing fee or discount when clicking “New”. • Resolved an issue with Outlook 2013 when embedding photos within email messages. Added 2 new Placeholder Options: [LinkTo] – which allows linking a photo or text to a website URL. And, [UsePropWebPhoto] which can be used to embed photos from your website when using the “Direct to SMTP Server” email method (specified in User Preferences). See Help on Placeholder Options. • Accommodated new changes in FlipKey inquiries.
11/2/2014 v.1.0.2828 • Added 2 new buttons to each of the forms: Property Rates, Property Fees and Property Commissions. The 1st button is next to the “Sharing from property”, which will pop up another form so you can see (or update), side-by-side, the rates, fees or commissions of the property you are sharing from. The 2nd button is next to the “Property” selection drop-down, which allows you to see a list of properties that are sharing “from this” property. Also on each of these forms, the “Copy from” button, has been enhanced to allow you to select specific Rates, Fees or Commissions that you want to copy from another property, rather than copying all of them. This is useful if you only wish to copy one or two rates, fees or commissions from another property. Sharing rates, fees and commissions is a “huge” time saver, so make sure you’re taking advantage of these features. • The Property Group web pages have been updated so that each property displays in a separate box, plus some other minor improvements to the web pages. See Example here. There are 3 new Booking information Placeholders for: %SchedPaymentAmounts%, %SchedPaymentDates% and %SchedPaymentNotes%, which allow you to display scheduled payment details within table columns and align them as needed. • Added ability to auto-generate custom Payment Schedule Notes. See help topic on “Payment Terms” for details. Updated web page titles to always overlay on top of any logo image when displayed on phones and small devices. (Repost your Group and Property pages after updating).
10/21/2014 v.1.0.2825 • Updated Property and Group web pages to remove the left margin shaded column, which wasn’t needed and also provides more viewing space and a cleaner look. Also, the top Title area of the web page will now auto-expand vertically if the Property Title is too long to display on small devices. • Solved an issue when displaying alerts if you have too many alerts due. • Increased the timeout period on various interfaces to avoid timeouts when external systems are slower than normal. • A new option in System Preferences > External Data, allows you to “Export Private Avails Data” to your website, which can be used for custom website integration if more detailed availability information is needed. • The Bookings Detail Reports now provide the Date type selection option of “Booked Nights”, similar to the Property Statement report. This allows you to tie the two reports together for auditing purposes if you’re already using the Booked Nights option with Property Statements. In addition, a new option to “Attach Fees to Last Night of bookings” was added to both reports. This allows fees and other non-prorated amounts to be included in the report which includes the “last night” of the booking, rather than the “check-in day”. See the Help topic “Reporting based on Booked Nights” for details. • When Canceling a booking and asked if you want to Remove Reminders for the booking, an additional checkbox option “Remove Return Deposit Reminder also” can be checked to also remove the reminder to return the security deposit if one exists. Additional SEO improvements were made to the Group and Property web pages. Update your group/property pages after updating. • Updated the Process Fee calculation in the Bookings form to accommodate mixed payment methods.
9/22/2014 v.1.0.2816 • You can now auto-default to a specific Template when replying to Inquiries in the Floating Calendar if any of your “Rules” are broken (ex: min nights, max persons, etc). This option is in the Document and Email Templates form on the Doc Info tab. There is also a new %BrokenRules% Placeholder available which will list the specific rules that were broken. These allow you to quickly respond to inquiries when rules are broken using a specific Template you have created. Try it out. The Floating Calendar has been updated to recognize the new format for HomeAway and VRBO inquiries. • Some minor improvements were made to web pages relating to photo displays and slideshows. • A few more updates to the Floating Calendar to recognize HomeAway and VRBO inquiries when “replying to previous replies” or copying and pasting from an email source other than Outlook. • Solved an unexpected error that sometimes occurred when switching between the Floating Calendar and the main application screens while a prompt window was waiting for a user response. • Additional update to the Floating Calendar for recognizing custom inquiry forms. • Fixed a recent issue when posting property group web cleaning calendars. • When replying to HomeAway, VRBO or FlipKey inquiries, any images in the original email are now removed before the reply text is inserted. This not only saves a lot of space in your Sent mailbox, but also prevents the email from having several attachment files of unnecessary icons and images when the guest receives the reply through FlipKey or HomeAway’s anonymous email system.
8/16/2014 v.1.0.2809 • Property web pages have been updated so that the Photos page works better with phones and touch screen devices. Clicking on thumbnail photos (rather than hover over) will now change the large photo, and clicking on the large photo opens the slideshow. • Property web pages have another new “Slideshow” feature on the Photos page. The slideshow starts automatically when viewing the Photos page, and has a “Stop/Start” button along with “Next/Previous” buttons. You can also click on the large photo for another type of slideshow which displays in a popup window. See Example here (click on the Photos page). The Background color settings for web pages have a new option to set the color to “Transparent”. This provides another option for blending web pages into your existing website. • The Photos web page now stops the slideshow when a guest clicks on an image thumbnail or the Previous/Next buttons. • Two new options were added in User Preferences for Outlook 2007 or higher users: 1) You can now specify to “Include Outlook Signature in Emails”, and 2) You can specify a “Send-From Email” account if you have multiple email accounts in Outlook and wish to send from a non-default account. In the Pay Fees and Commissions form, there is a new option to “Show Tenant Name in Commissions” when printing vouchers. This can help commission recipients further identify what the payment is for. The small “Book” icon button next to the “Find” button in the Bookings form has some useful “Common Filter Shortcuts” which can be handy. Give it a try. In the Instant Quote settings within the Properties form, you can now specify whether to warn or enforce the “Maxiumum Number of People” rule, in addition to the “Minimum Nights” rule. Right-clicking on photos within any of the VRP web pages is now disabled in order to help prevent people from easily “stealing” your photos. Repost your group/property pages after updating. • Instant Quotes now require the guest to check a checkbox verifying “I acknowledge this notice” before booking, if any “Instant Quote Info Text” in the Properties form is specified. This helps ensure they have read any important notices you have entered.
7/30/2014 v.1.0.2802 • You can now offer guests optional items within the Instant Quotes and online bookings by using the new “Default Fee Type” options in the Property Fees form. These options provide both Opt-in and Opt-out type fees, which allow guests to select or de-select optional fees within the Instant Quotes web form. Any optional items selected will be passed through to Availability Online’s reservation form, and ultimately to VRP’s Bookings form when importing new bookings. For example, you can offer guests optional Travel Insurance, Wine baskets, late checkout fees, etc. See Example here. Also see the help topics on Property Fees and Instant Quotes for more info. • The Property Rates form has some new and useful options when Right-clicking on an amount in one of the rate columns and selecting “Rates Quick Change Options”. These options let you quickly change rates in a column by a percentage or an amount. For example, you can quickly bump up all your Daily rates after a specific date by 110%, which is much faster than changing each rate individually. • Corrected an issue when doing “Change database location” within the File menu. • You can now include html tags within the Instant Quote Info text, Terms and Notes. • 3 new options have been added to the Instant Quote settings in the Properties form > Interface tab. They are: 1) Required Check-in Day of Week, 2) First Bookable Day (how soon a guest can book a check-in), and 3) How to Enforce Other Rules (such as Minimum Night stays). Note, certain rules are always enforced (such as Max Persons). Enforced rules prevent guests from booking online if any enforced rules are broken. This provides more control over online bookings. You can still allow guests to book online by providing them with a temporary “Override Key”. Please see the Help topic on “Instant Quotes” for more info. Also, corrected the tax calculation within Instant Quotes when optional fees are deselected. And changed the “Book it Now” button to help prevent Browser pop-up blockers from interfering with access to the online reservation form.
7/11/2014 v.1.0.2796 • Lockout Properties now include “Tentative” booking statuses when updating related properties. When printing vouchers in the Pay Fees & Commissions form, there is a new option to Auto Email Report, which creates separate vouchers and emails for each payee selected. • There are 2 new checkbox options in the Properties Groups form > Group Info tab, called: “List Properties in Random Order”, and “Show Rate Ranges”. The Random Order option can be used along with the Property Group Rank setting in the Properties form. All Properties with the same Group Rank will be displayed in random order. If you leave the Group Rank empty for all properties, then all properties will be listed in random order. This lets you to still rank certain properties higher than others in the list while randomizing the order. The Show Rate Ranges option can be turned on in order to show rate ranges on the group web page. Rate Ranges are now displayed for each type of rate defined (ie. nightly, weekly and monthly). (Try it!). There is a new checkbox in the Properties form > Misc tab next to Payment Terms, which if checked will automatically generate the Payment Schedule when Importing new bookings from Availability Online or Webervations. This saves having to click the “Generate Payment Schedule” button. Also, the “Generate Payment Schedule” button now has a Double-click option in order to generate the payment schedule without any prompts. Both of these changes allow fewer clicks when processing new bookings. • A new “Base on” option was added to Commissions for “% of Credit Card Payments”. • Improvements made to web pages for better display on phones and small devices.
6/15/2014 v.1.0.2787 • Replying to inquiries is even easier. The Floating Calendar’s “Paste All” button can now optionally auto-select one of your Inquiry Reply Templates based on the requested availability. This feature can be enabled in the “Doc Info” tab of the Document Templates form where there is a new option to: “Auto-select this template if the dates are either:” Available, Partially Available, or Not Available. The Floating Calendar can now read FlipKey replies to previous replies, which has a completely different email format. Scheduled Cleaning alerts are now included in the advance alerts when setting the User Preference option to Alert XX Days Prior to certain events. This can be helpful if you prefer to send individual Cleaning Notices (as opposed to Housekeeping reports) to cleaners a few days ahead of scheduled cleanings. • Corrected an issue with the automatic Special Rate Adjustments. • Property Group web pages now show the low-high “Rate Ranges” for each property (the same as VRBO and FlipKey listing pages). The Rate Range is also displayed on the Notes tab of the Properties form, and can be included in Templates using the Placeholder %Prop.RateRange%. Note: Since many people currently use the Property “Group Page Summary” text (in the Properties form > Web tab) to display a rate range, you can remove that text now, and use it for displaying other highlights about the property. Repost your Group and Property web pages to see these changes. • The Housekeeping report has 3 new options to Show: Cleaning Rate, Number of Bedrooms/Beds/Baths, and Property Note Info7. • Corrected a minor issue with the web Instant Quotes when single nights are booked.
5/30/2014 v.1.0.2782 • Some important updates here… The Instant Quotes feature within web calendars can now pass the rate, fees, taxes and all calculations to Availability Online’s reservation form. What this means is that online bookings with Availaiblity Online’s interface is no longer limited to daily rates and fees and taxes defined in Availability Online. Guests can now book weekly and monthly rates as well via the Instant Quotes and Availability Online interface. Note: if you have text in your Availability Online Policy text about weekly and monthly rate calculations, you can remove that verbiage if you are using Instant Quotes. (Note: This ability only exists with Instant Quotes). Also, within the Instant Quote settings in the VRP Properties form, you can specify additional property-specific Terms and Notes which will appear in the online reservation form. Another big change is that you can now display up to 48 photos on each property’s web page (Note: This feature requires a 30 property license). The additional photos are accomplished by the new ability to specify up to 16 photos for Property “Locations” and 16 photos for Property “Sites”. Property Sites is a new categorization in this update also, and can be used to group properties by site, complex or building. They are also selectable in Searchable Property Group web pages. Locations, which already exists, can now be used for geographic locations if you prefer. This feature not only allows up to 48 photos, but it prevents having to define the same photos over and over for multiple properties within the same site or location. Property photos can now be dedicated to photos of the unit or home itself, and you can specify the site and location photos separately. Also, the Photos page within property web pages (using the Menu web page format) has a new look with a larger photo display and up to 48 thumbnails. (Repost your property pages to see the changes). For more info, see the Help topics: “Property Sites, Locations and Categories”, and “Instant Quotes in Web Calendars”. There is a new Placeholder Option [ShowDateM] which can be used in expressions to easily test the month and day of any date.
5/15/2014 v.1.0.2781 • If you’re using Availability Online (AO) for online bookings, you can now capture and track both the Ad Source and Reason for each booking. You do this by utilizing AO’s “Custom Questions” feature in their Reservation Form. The questions must be exactly as specified in the VRP help topic “Availaiblity Online Interface”, under “Setting up Custom Questions to track Ad Sources and Reasons”. You can later analyze your Ad Sources revenue using the “Ad Source and Referrals Report”. • An important change was made to Rates, so that if any seasonal rates have a 0 amount, that rate (daily, weekly, monthly or weekend) is not available. This allows you to set special holiday weekends, etc. to only a daily rate for example, so that people cannot book for a week the day before the holiday, at a lower weekly rate. Often times, people only offer a high daily rate on holiday weekends and special dates. The Instant Quotes web page also adheres to this change and will not allow people to book a week if any of the dates selected do not have a weekly rate defined. Please double check your Rates in new Bookings, Quotes, reposted Web Pages and Interfaces. There is a new option to base commissions on a % of the calculated Processing Fee. • Solved a recent issue with Canceling payments which have not been batched yet in Vacation Rent Payment. (Important: If you have canceled (not refunded) any payments after April 21, 2014, please log into Vacation Rent Payment and double-check that they were canceled). Added an option when running the Auto Web Updater Process to allow running the process once then ending. This allows updating rates and calendars on demand without waiting for it to finish.
4/13/2014 v.1.0.2776 • The Work Flow page of the Bookings form has a new “Work Flow Log” which displays a chronological list of emails sent, including the date, User’s initials, and the selected Template’s Short Name and ID. You can also add any other work flow notes as needed. Another benefit of the Work Flow Log, is that it allows tracking the same items sent more than once, or tracking the re-use of a single work flow item for multiple purposes. The Ad & Referral Sources form has a new option to: “Reply to the Sent-From email in Outlook when Replying to these Inquiries”. This allows forcing the Floating Calendar to reply back through FlipKey or VRBO’s messaging system in order for them to monitor your response percentages. This option can be turned on or off for specific Ad Sources. Microsoft has finally fixed a bug in IE 11 and Windows which caused us to switch to an alternate FTP method a few months ago. That method did not allow displaying the progress of uploads. VRP has now been changed back to the original method, since the corrected IE 11 update has been released over a month ago. Please contact us if you have any FTP issues and you’ve verified that your IE 11 is up to date. • The Bookings Charts & Detail Report has a new option to limit the report to Payments Received or Payments Due within a specific date range (in addition to the other date range selections). This can be useful for reporting money you have received (payments received in the past) and holding in trust for bookings checking in or out in the future. Several changes were made to the web pages (so be sure to repost your Group and Property pages). Among them are the Property Info page of the Property web pages will now automatically include a button to either: “Book it Now” or “View Calendar/Quote or Reserve”, depending on whether you have Instant Quotes and Online Bookings enabled. We noticed that many people were adding similar buttons manually. So, if you added your own buttons, you can remove them now. The old Flipkey and HomeAway Connect interfaces have now been officially turned off since these old interfaces have been replaced by the iCal and HomeAwayPM Interfaces. (See Help on the new interfaces if you have not already started using them). • The “Back” link has been added back to Property web pages (on left side of menu bar) when clicking on a Property within a Group page. Also, any Search criteria entered in the Searchable Property Group page will be remembered when going back to the group page.
3/27/2014 v.1.0.2772 • Solved an issue within property web pages when using embedded Google maps, which was due to a change in the Google mapping service. Also, web pages will display faster, since embedded maps now only load when the “Map” menu item is clicked. • The Bookings Chart Reports can now also be Grouped by “Cleaner” and “Property”. The Group By options allow automatically creating separate reports which can optionally be “Auto Emailed” to corresponding parties. Corrected an issue when using the seldom used web post option: “Post Property web page & it’s Group Page” in the Properties form. • Multi-user installations of VRP on a local network can now automatically update the program files on each PC when one PC is updated. Please see the Help topic: “Installing on a Network” for the new instructions. • Updated the calendars in order to accommodate recent changes on Godaddy hosted accounts. • There is a new Placeholder Option called [Buttonlink] which can be used to add buttons to your web page Long Descriptions or to Email Templates which use Html format. It can also be used to add a button that links to a menu item on your property web page. Example: %Expression%[“#bookonline”][Buttonlink Book it Now] – adding this to the property Long Description will add a “Book it Now” button if you have Online Bookings enabled.
2/24/2014 v.1.0.2763 • Lots of good stuff… All Reports now have 3 new Property selection options (All Active Properties, All Inactive, or Only Properties with Matching Data). The Expenses Report can now be Grouped by Vendor / Cleaner. All FTP settings now have a button to “Test FTP Settings”. There is an additional custom “Reminder 3” added to both Bookings and the Property default Reminders. A new “Agent” selection has been added to the Bookings form, which optionally allows tracking bookings by Agent. You can specify the Default Agent for new Bookings that you create in User Preferences. The Bookings Chart reports have new options for: showing the Agent, Grouping by Agent, and Selecting Bookings for specific Agents. Inactive Properties can now be used to Share rates, fees or commissions from. This allows setting up “dummy” properties that you can use just for sharing, as an alternative to using Active Properties. The Booking ID was added to the Private View Bookings List. • There’s a new option in the Properties form Options button to “Copy Web page options for this Property to the Properties listed”. This copies 10 of the commonly used web posting options / checkboxes to make it easier to set up web posting options for other properties. • When creating Booking Extensions, a new option exists to “Use Tax Rates from This Booking”, in case you have zeroed out the tax rates (as you might do with long term bookings). • Next to the “Find” button in the Bookings form there is a new button to quickly “Show Recently Updated Bookings”. Although it uses Filters already available in the Filters drop-down at the top, this button makes it easier to call up bookings you were recently working on. • Corrected an issue with sending emails using simple mapi mail clients (ie. Outlook Express). • The Fees page of the Bookings form now includes the “Standard Number of Persons” copied from the Properties form. This is used in certain Fee calculations and Cleaning Expenses, and allows changing the Standard Number of Persons in the Properties form without effecting existing bookings. • When creating Booking Extensions, you can now specify whether or not to Add Default Reminders. When performing a Database Update on a PC that is not hosting the database, there will be an extra prompt to verify if you wish to proceed.
1/30/2014 v.1.0.2755 • There is a new feature (in the Forms menu) called “Reconcile Payments Received”. This provides a tool to help reconcile payments received against your bank or merchant account statements. It also provides a report of payments (based on the selected filter). See the help topic “Reconcile Payments Received” for more info. In the Bookings form Payments grid, there is a new column called “Payment Reference”. Automatically generated payment references (such as when paying via Vacation Rent Payment), are now stored in this column (instead of the Payment Note). Also, next to the Payments grid, there are now two “$” dollar sign buttons. One for paying via Vacation Rent Payment, and one for paying via the “Web Form Assistant”. In the Bookings form timeline grids, you can now Double-click on the tape chart items (on the right) to view the Tenant details for that booking, or you can Right-click for more options. (Previously you could only Double-click on the Tenant column). Found a solution for the last of the recent bugs in Windows 8 and IE 11 which prevented VRP from being able to create new folders on your FTP site. (VRP can now create new folders if needed). In the 2 Reminders within the Bookings form, if the word “Send” is included in the reminder text, and you mark the reminder as Complete, the Bookings form will automatically switch to the Work Flow tab so that you can send an email. (Often times people use the reminders for sending work flow items, and this avoids having to manually click on the Work Flow tab). There is no longer a System Preference setting to “Use the new HomeAwayPM Interface”, since the old HomeAwayPM Interface has been disabled by HomeAway. In the Pay Fees and Commissions form, you can now select a range of items by using Shift+Click on the checkboxes when selecting items to pay. • Changed how shadow special effects are displayed on web pages in order to solve a bug in IE 11 browsers. • The “Direct to SMTP” email option now works with TLS/SSL email servers, (ie. gmail and yahoo). Click the “SSL” button in the User Preferences form next to the SMTP Server. However, using Outlook (rather than SMTP) is still preferred as explained in Help under Email Settings.
1/5/2014 v.1.0.2752 • The HomeAwayPM interface is now available for the 15 property License, rather than the 30 property License. This allows updating HomeAway and VRBO calendars and rates from VRP. See the Help topic on “HomeAwayPM Interface” for more info. • Corrected a minor issue with Daylight savings time and Instant Quotes in web calendars. Moved the Property Group selection in the Properties form to the Web Post tab. • There is a new option in User Preferences (Options page) to “Remind me to run the Web Calendars and Rates Updates each Day”. The reminder notice will allow you to Run the Updates, or Start the Auto Web Updater.
12/24/2013 v.1.0.2747 • Solved the FTP web upload issue caused by Windows components included Microsoft’s latest Internet Explorer 11 update. Please contact us if you’re having FTP web upload issues after this update. • Updated the Skype phone calling and text messaging features to accommodate recent changes made by Microsoft to Skype. • Updated various Help topics related to Templates, Payments, MyFiles folder and others. Added additional links to Help topics from the Bookings form Billing Info page and the Templates form. • When Right-clicking on Tenants in the Bookings form Timeline a new option is available to “Show All Tenant’s Bookings”. This is just a shortcut instead of selecting the Filter at the top of the form. When selecting “Clear Filter” in the Bookings form “Filter” button, you are now prompted which filter to return to (All Bookings or Current & Future). • Database Backups now create a single Zip file. Besides saving disk space, this can be useful if you’re backing up to a DropBox folder or using another similar service. • Corrected a minor issue with Prep Notes displayed in Online Cleaning Calendars. • Updated the Floating Calendar to accommodate the new HomeAway and VRBO inquiries that do not include guest email addresses. It appears HomeAway is rolling this out gradually. This update also accommodates some formatting changes. • Clicking on the Recalculate Rate button next to the Rate Type in the Bookings form, now displays a summary of the Rate Calculation. This can be useful if you have the Rate Calculation Method set to “Average rates for the dates booked”. There is a new button when generating Quotes in the Floating Calendar for multiple properties, which allows creating a “New Email”. This can be used when you are not replying to an email. The Pay Fees & Commissions form now remembers the last Property Filter selected. When defining Special Rate Adjustments, there is a new option to “Disable Rate Adjustments”, so you do not have to delete the adjustment terms in case you wish to turn it back on later. See help on Special Rate Adjustments for more info on this feature. • Rates web pages can now display in a narrower format when viewed on phones in portrait mode without having to scroll horizontally. • Speed improvements have been made when processing Placeholders in Templates and other areas. Various improvements have been made to Rates maintenance and display.
11/20/2013 v.1.0.2729 • Updated the Floating Calendar to accommodate the new FlipKey inquiry format. The Payment Accounts form has a new option to “Omit Tenant’s email in payment transactions”, which can be used to prevent payment receipts from being automatically sent to the Tenant by Vacation Rent Payment. • Resolved an issue in the Html Editor due to the latest update of Windows 8.1. • When printing vouchers from the Property Fees and Commissions form, the vouchers now include the From and To mailing addresses at the top which will show in window-type envelopes when tri-folded. • Rates maintenance just got a whole lot easier. If you Share rates from other Properties, you can now also specify a “% of” value. For example, if you have Rates defined for Property “A”, and you have another Property “B” that is an upgraded property or a property with an additional bedroom, you could specify that Property “B” shares rates from Property “A” and at 110% of Property A’s rates. This way, you only need to adjust rates for Property “A” and any other Properties sharing those rates will automatically adjust. A new “Company Address” was added to System Preferences, along with a corresponding %CompanyAddress% Placeholder. • In the Rates form, you can now Duplicate rates when clicking “New”. You can also Right-click on a Rate amount and copy it to the rest of the rates below. • There is a new and powerful revenue-driving feature called “Special Rate Adjustments”, which can be used to automatically reduce your rates (and optionally minimum nights), in multiple tiers, for available dates in the near future. This feature is available for the 30 property license or higher. See Help on “Special Rate Adjustments” for details. The Properties form Miscellaneous tab has a new option to set “Default Tenant Type” for each property. • The recently added %CompanyAddr% Placeholder has been changed to %CompanyAddress%. Please update any Templates using it.
10/30/2013 v.1.0.2719 • When specifying FTP settings, you can now specify a Port number if your web host requires non-standard port numbers. See help on FTP Settings. When synchronizing bookings with Outlook Calendar, you can now specify (in User Preferences) whether to add a calendar entry for the Checkout day. Also, all Outlook Calendar entries will remind you 1 day in advance. • There are 4 new settings in System Preferences > Web Page Settings, for: 1) Instant Quote Expanded, 2) Search Count Per Page, 3) Search Dates Type, and 4) Web Page Reserve Link. These allow initially expanding the Instant Quote within Calendars, setting the default Number of properties per page, and the default Dates Search Type to “All Dates Selected” or “Any Dates Selected”. The new Web Page Reserve Link preference allows specifying a URL that will create a “Reserve” button in the Instant Quote, which can be used to link to your own Reservation form if you have one. When a guest selects their Dates to search, the search is now automatically performed without having to click on Search. Also, several improvements were made to all web pages in order to help direct guests to the Instant Quote and Reserve links. See Example here. Repost your group/property pages after this update. • A new Commissions Base On option was added for “% of Total Sale”. This ignores whether Fees are set as Commissionable or not. When replying to inquiries with the Floating Calendar, a new option is available to “Show Total as a Flat Rate”. • Within Instant Quotes, the “Reserve it Now” button is only shown if the “Web page Reserve Link” in System Preferences has been set. Also, when a guest clicks the “Inquire” button, the text asking if they wish to Reserve, has been slightly changed to make it clear that they are only inquiring to reserve. • Corrected an issue displaying the Timeline within the Bookings form when creating a new booking from the Floating Calendar.
9/26/2013 v.1.0.2713 • VRP can now communicate with Secure FTP hosts (SFTP) if your web host service requires Secure FTP mode using SSH. See Help topic: “FTP Settings” for more info. There are various other minor improvements. • Lockout bookings that are automatically created will now also update any related Summary Availability properties’ calendars. The Instant Quote’s “Inquire or Reserve” link will now pass details of the Instant Quote to your custom Inquiry form, if the System Preferences > Web page Settings > Web Page Inquire Link, is set to point to your own custom inquiry form’s URL. This allows you to use the Instant Quote’s selected dates, calculated rate, total rent and total sale amounts in your custom form. Fee and Commission calculations can now be conditionally based on the month and day of year of the Check-in Date. See Help topic: “Additional Fee and Commission Calculations” for more info. • Various updates were made to the Group and Property web pages. (Repost your groups). When importing reservations from AvailabilityOnline or Webervations, or when creating bookings from the Floating Calendar, the Bookings form Timeline is now automatically moved to the month of the new booking in order to see other bookings around that time if needed. (You can also do this manually using the “Goto” button above the Timeline). If you have specified a URL in the System Preferences > Web Page Inquire Link in order to link to your custom inquiry form, the link will now open in a new browser window. This allows more flexibility with various inquiry form tools. In the Bookings form, the top toolbar Filter selections now have a Red background when the filters are not set to their defaults “Current & Future Bookings”, and “Active Properties”. This helps remind you that your filters are not set to the defaults. • On the Searchable Group web page, the Previous and Next Page buttons are now on both the top and bottom of the property list and centered so they are more noticeable.
8/11/2013 v.1.0.2707 • Searchable Group web pages now include the option to add a “Search Widget” to your website. See Example Here (in the right-hand sidebar). For more info, see the Help topic “Integrating VRP with your website”. • While updating Property Rates, a new “Rate Guide” pops up when setting or clicking on Weekly, Monthly and Weekend rates. • The FlipKey Calendars interface is now disabled in favor of using the newer iCal Calendars interface for updating FlipKey calendars, which is preferred and faster, and it can be used by other sites such as Airbnb. • When copying Rates forward to future years in the Property Rates form, there is a new option to copy rates to either the Same Day of the Week, or the Same Day of the Month in the following year. • The Floating Calendar was updated to accommodate changes in FlipKey Inquires. • There is a new feature called “Application & System Notes” in the Forms menu. This provides the ability to store both secure text and non-secure text, which can then be referenced in Templates and anywhere else that Placeholders are used. See the Help topic on “Application & System Notes” for details. This Help topic also includes an example of using these notes to send Payment Requests to Tenants with the Vacation Rent Payment form already filled out (very useful). Inquiries received from VRP web pages are now automatically recognized by the Floating Calendar as to which property the inquiry is for. In other words, you no longer need to add the ‘(PropID: xxxx)’ text to the Inquiries tab of the Properties form. The “Month” selection in various popup calendars and the “Goto” button in the Bookings form has been slightly changed for moving forwards and backwards multiple months at a time. • Instant Quotes in web calendars now ask the guest to select “Checkout Date” rather than “Last Night of Stay”. • Various improvements to web pages and Instant Quotes (worth reposting your group/web pages). • Instant Quotes can now be enabled without having to also Show Rates lists. This can be helpful if you do not wish to show rates lists to competitors.
7/4/2013 v.1.0.2691 • This update includes the new HomeAwayPM interface which HomeAway is now implementing for Property Managers who have a HomeAwayPM account. Please see the Help topic on “HomeAwayPM Interface” for details. For VRP users who are already using the HomeAwayPM interface, please Contact us before changing over. We are working with HAPM to ensure this is a smooth transition for existing HAPM users. • The Property Rates form has a new option in the “Web Update” button to “Show Rates in Web View format”. This allows a quick preview of how the rates will appear on the web. In the Floating Calendar, when replying to inquiries, the prompt window for the Rate and Fees now displays the Totals at the bottom automatically. Also, quotes which include Discounts, now show both the Total Before Discounts and Total After Discounts in the quote. Searchable Group Web pages now display the number of Bedrooms and Baths under each thumbnail photo. Also, when searching for available properties and clicking the “View Calendar and Quote” link of a particular property in the list, the selected dates are automatically filled in on the Instant Quote form. See Example Here. The Bookings Chart Report has a new Report Type called “Detail with Revenue”. This is a slightly different layout which shows any selected Notes in the right-hand side of the report. • All Property and Group web page formats show the Number of Bedrooms and Baths now. The new HomeAwayPM interface now accommodates VRBO listings. The Property Groups form has a new Notes tab and a field showing the posted Group web page URL Solved (hopefully) an intermittent issue with the Html Editor. Also, you can now set Table widths to 100% or Auto in the Html Editor using the Table toolbar button. In the Bookings form, you can now double-click on the Property in the Timeline grid in order to open the Properties form. You can also double-click on the Check-In date in order to slide the Timeline to that Booking’s Month. • There is a new Placeholder: %BedroomsBaths% which shows the number of Bedrooms and Baths for a Property. • The Housekeeping Report has a new option to “Show Adults/Children/Pets”. • The Floating Calendar now displays a warning when Replying to existing Tenants who’s “Alert upon Booking” flag is set. • Removed the “Total Rent (Before Discounts)” line from Rate Quotes to keep quotes simple to understand.
6/20/2013 v.1.0.2682 • When selecting photos for Properties, you can now select multiple photos at a time by using Ctrl-Click or Shift-Click. The selected photos can either replace existing photos or update the empty photo slots only. This also allows batch photo resizing when the Resize option is selected. • The photos Resize option now stores resized photos into a sub-folder named “_resized_images”. This helps keep your original photos folder from being cluttered with duplicates. • A few minor changes were made to the Floating Calendar for reading inquiries with multiple replies. • The Housekeeping Cleaning Schedule report now shows the “Clean on” dates in a separate column for easier reading. See Example Here. • Instant Quotes in the Calendars have been updated to make it easier to set dates for a quote. See Example Here (under Calendar). In the Html Editor, when adding or editing a Link, you are now prompted to display the Linked web page in a new Browser window or not. • A few more changes were made to the Housekeeping Cleaning Schedule to accommodate check-in cleanings, and to also show a red “S” in the Alert column if the Next Booking has a Special Check-in Time. • Searchable group web pages were updated to display better in portrait mode on phones. A new item was added to the Bookings form Options to allow Creating a new booking for the same Tenant, Property, Dates, Status and Rate. This allows duplicating bookings quickly when creating Blockouts or other bookings for multiple properties.
6/7/2013 v.1.0.2669 • The Quick Quote feature is now called “Instant Quotes”. Several improvements were made to the Instant Quote form, and also to all of the Group web pages. One of the changes is that Property Names are now displayed in a bar with a gradient color matching the page header. Also, the Searchable Group page property listings now automatically adjust for small displays and devices. The Floating Calendar has been improved when reading email inquiries, and it will also capture both “Home phone:” and “Cell phone:” if both are included in the inquiry form. • Some of the borders on web pages have been changed for a cleaner look. SeeExamples Here. • When selecting and resizing Doc Photos (thumbnails) for Properties, the option to “Fit to 4:3 frame” is disabled. This forces all Doc Photos to have the exact width specified, regardless if the photo is Portrait mode. This also avoids blurry thumbnail photos which are Portrait mode on web pages. A new Placeholder option [Height=xxx] was added which can be used with Photo placeholders. • Embedded web Calendars now automatically change their background color to match the parent frame’s color. This helps calendars blend in with the rest of the page. See Example Here. When viewing web Calendars in a browser window by themselves, the Property Name now becomes a link to the Property web page. See Example Here. Solved an issue in the Floating Calendar when reading VRP Inquiries. • In the Bookings form Billing Info tab, if any payment is past due, the payment will automatically be selected (small arrow appears to the left of the payment). This avoids having to first select the payment before processing it. • Corrected a minor issue with the Web Form Assistant.. When sending emails from the Bookings form Workflow page, there is a new option to “Send Email without setting Sent Date”. This option does not wait for the email to be sent or canceled, and allows accessing other forms before sending the email.
5/22/2013 v.1.0.2662 • There is a new web “Quick Quote” feature which allows guests to easily generate a quote while viewing Availability Calendars. This feature can be turned on or off for individual properties, and does not require any external databases, plugins or XML data. The Quick Quote form also automatically adjusts for mobile devices and small screens. See Example Here (click on “Calendar & Quote” in the menu bar). See the Help topic: “Quick Quotes in Web Calendars” for more info. This feature is available for the 15 property license or higher. Solved an intermittent issue when creating Payments in the Bookings form. • The Quick Quote form is now initially shrunk and will expand when dates are selected. It also now passes the selected dates to Availability Online’s reservation form if the interface is being used. The menu bar in the Property web page now says “Calendar & Quote” if Quick Quotes is turned on. • The Quick Quote form now allows guests to specify the number of Adults, Children and Pets. It also handles all Fees & Discount “Base On” types. It also checks Minimum Nights, Standard/Max Persons, and whether Pets are allowed. Links to Calendars on web Group pages now say “View Calendar & Quote” if Quick Quotes is turned on for a property. • When replying to FlipKey inquiries, the notice that the email address has been changed no longer requires clicking “OK”. • Solved an IE8 Browser issue in the Availability Calendar. • Quick Quotes now handles all Fee calculations, including the apply tax and process fee settings, plus any Additional Custom Fee Calculations. Therefore Quick Quotes can now match exactly what the Floating Calendar generates when replying to inquiries regardless of which Fee options and calculations you use. • Additional Fee and Commission Calculations have a new Placeholder (%1or0%) available which can be used as a “conditional multiplier” in calculations. See Help on Additional Fee and Commission Calculations for more info. Property web pages were improved so that Calendar overlays utilize more available screen space. Also, the slight visual flash of Google maps sometimes seen in the IE Browser on Property web pages with Google maps, has been solved. In the Query Designer, when clicking on a line to edit, the line is not highlighted anymore, instead this only occurs now on Double-clicks. • Made some visual improvements to Searchable Property Group web pages pertaining to the date selector calendar popup and the Search criteria box. See Example Here. • Improved the display of Rates in web pages and added the Property’s menu bar color. • The Quick Quote’s “Inquire or Reserve” link email form now includes the Tenant’s Address if the guest wishes to Reserve. The Tenant Address is read by the Floating Calendar and included when creating a new Booking from the Floating Calendar.
5/2/2013 v.1.0.2643 • Tenants can now have a separate Billing Address if needed, which can be accessed by clicking the right-arrow button next to the Bill To Name in the Tenants form. In addition, there are several new Placeholders for the Billing Address. These Placeholders will insert the Billing Address only if Billing “Addr1” is not blank. Otherwise the main Tenant Address is used. The Options button in both the Tenants and Contacts forms has a new option to “Duplicate” the current Tenant or Contact. This can be useful for example when creating multiple Tenants or Contacts with the same address and settings. When processing Payments in the Bookings form, you can now select to receive the payment from either the main Tenant or from one of the booking’s Additional Tenants. This makes it easier to receive payments from multiple people. See Help on Additional Tenants. There’s a new System Preference (under External Data > Export Rates Data), which can be set to “Yes” to automatically export Rates and Property XML Data when selecting the Web button option “Update All Changed Rates Lists and Interfaces”. This is similar to the Export Avails Data option, but pertains to the Rates and Property details only. Now for the web stuff… All Web pages are now responsive to small devices such as phones and pads. Many changes were made throughout all of the web pages to accommodate this. Web pages will be easier to read on mobile devices, and do a better job of wrapping content for smaller display sizes. This comes into play even more with web pages that are integrated within your main website. Menu Bars within web pages can now have an unlimited number of menu items since the menu bar now automatically wraps and expands as needed. See Help on Adding Additional Menu Items. Repost your Group/Property web pages to apply these changes.
4/24/2013 v.1.0.2640 • Resolved a minor issue with the Html Editor. Customers have reported that the new Web Form Assistant interface with Rental Guardian Travel Insurance is working well. Please see the updated Help topic on “Insurance Processing” for more info. • When reading inquiries with the Floating Calendar, guest names are now automatically Proper-cased (1st letter of each word capitalized). When viewing a Tenant from the Bookings form, the CC# fields in the Tenants form will automatically be enabled if they were already enabled in the Bookings form. Corrected an issue with Weekend rates displayed within web Availability Calendars when hovering the mouse over dates. When replying to inquiries in the Floating Calendar, you can now optionally specify a Fee Type’s Short Name of a non-default Fee in the Property Fees that you want to be included in the quote. This allows adding a non-default fee (with all of its defined settings) to an inquiry reply quote when needed. See the Help topic on “Replying to Email Inquiries” for more info. There is a new option in the “Web” toolbar button to “Update All Changed Rates Lists and Interfaces”. • The Notes tab in the Bookings, Tenants, Contacts and Expenses forms now show Blue in the Tab if any notes exist, and Red only if the main Note field has notes. This helps to see at a glance what kind of notes exist.
4/6/2013 v.1.0.2633 • Minimum Night Stays can now be specified for each Rental Rate in the Property Rates form. The Minimum Nights specified in the Properties form Misc tab is still used as a default for undefined rate periods and rates with no Min Nights specified. Min Nights is also exported to the various interfaces, web pages and XML. There is a new Commissions Base-On option to allow specifying a Fixed Amount per Day. The Bookings Chart Detail Reports have several new options (on the Additional Parameters tab) for Hiding various columns on the report. • Enhancements were made to the Data Importing functions. The Print/Export option (in the Options button at the top of forms) now remembers the previous list of fields selected for printing or exporting. When clicking on a date in the Floating Calendar there’s a new option to “Show this Tenant”. • When replying to inquiries in the Floating Calendar you can now optionally append a forward slash and a Name to the special Fee or Discount amount (example: 10/Pet Fee). When creating Extensions in the Bookings form (Options button), you can now specify to add a Cleaning to the Extension Booking or not. • The Floating Calendar has been updated to work with Outlook 2013 when Replying to emails. • The Bookings form Rental Info page has a new checkbox next to “Total Rent” which allows Excluding Rent from the Sales Tax calculation. This allows Fees to be Sales taxed while excluding Rent from Sales Tax. Also on the Rental Info page there is a new “?” next to the “Rental Fees” amount. Hovering the mouse over this will display the Total Rent + Fees sub-total. Fees and Commissions that are Shared with other Properties can now be added to Bookings after the default fees and commissions are populated. Previously they were shared automatically only. If you have multiple Fees defined with the same Fee Type in Property Fees, you can now choose between them when adding Fees to a Booking. This can be used for example, if you have 2 different Cleaning Fees with different amounts and settings that you wish to use for different types of Bookings. • Minor changes were made to the Private View Bookings List, including a new link to the company website.
3/22/2013 v.1.0.2625 • There is a new Interface option which allows Exporting iCal Calendars to your FTP Site. iCal Calendars can be used as an alternative method for updating FlipKey, Google, Outlook and other Calendars. FlipKey allows specifying an iCal URL which it then periodically checks. Please see the Help topic on iCal Calendars Export for more info. Note: the iCal Export is only available for a 30 Property license or higher. Also, the FlipKey calendar interface has been updated. You may want to give it a try before switching to the iCal method. • Searchable Group web pages now include links of all properties in the group at the bottom of the page in order to help Search Engine (SEO) results. Craigslist ad pages were updated to match changes on Craigslist. The list of Photos in property web pages now wraps the photos for small device displays. Property pages now show a “← Back” link in the upper left rather than “Other Properties” if they were called was the property’s Group page. • The Rates list in web pages now have a “Refresh Rates” button. • When selecting photos in the Properties form, there is a new option to Move a photo to another sub-folder. • Adjustments were made to web pages when using iframes across different domains. • The HomeAway Calendars interface has been updated to accommodate changes by HomeAway and also an issue with Tentatively booked dates. • The Web toolbar’s option “Update All Calendars & Interfaces” has been moved to the 1st option in the list. The Properties form Web tab has been updated to provide more info about what each description field is used for. The list of Property Links at the bottom of Searchable Group web pages is now sorted by property name. You can now easily process Travel & Damage Waiver Insurance orders through Rental Guardian Insuranceusing the Web Form Assistant. See the Help topic on Insurance Processing for details. • Updated the Document Templates to accomodate a behavior change in the latest Word 2013.
2/12/2013 v.1.0.2610 • The “Map”, “Weather” and “Video” web page fields now allow either Links or Embed code (or both). Each of these fields can also contain multiple links or embed codes (for example, multiple videos for a property). See Example Here under the Video menu. In addition, you can leave these fields blank and simply check the Checkbox next to them, which will automatically create a link to a Map, Weather or Video based on the Property Address. See the Help topic on Property Web Info for details. • The Calendar and Rates popup windows in web pages have been changed to help prevent the Browser from caching the calendar or rates in memory. Resolved an issue with HomeAway calendars checking looking at the previous day due to leaving VRP running overnight. • The “Looking for a specific property?” selection in Searchable Group web pages, now has a box around it. See Example Here. • Searchable Group web pages have a new option that allows adding a specific Category ID to the end of the URL. For example, adding “?catid=1003” to the end of the URL will limit that Group page to properties with Category ID 1003. This can be useful if you wish to have multiple links, menus or iframes on your website pointing to different categories of properties. • In addition, you can alternatively use “?amen=Pool” for example, in order to limit a specific Group page to only properties with Amenities that have the text “Pool” (or any other text you specify). This allows even more flexibility by allowing individual properties to appear in multiple Group pages if needed. See Help topic on: Integrating VRP with your website for more info. • The existing FlipKey calendar interface has been updated to provide better connectivity. • Also, corrected an issue with the HomeAway and FlipKey calendar interfaces. • Corrected an issue with the %AddTenantsH% placeholder.
1/25/2013 v.1.0.2603 • The Expenses form can now also be used as a simple Work Order tracking system. Expenses now include the ability to generate and email user-defined Work Orders, Notices, Follow up reminders, etc. to the Vendor, Property Owner, Cleaner or Manager for individual expenses. To give it a try, you can use the “Import Latest Sample Templates” button in the Document Templates form and import the new sample template called “Work Order” for use in the Expense form. A few adjustments were made to the HomeAwayPM interface, as we are currently working with them as they migrate the PM interface into the HomeAway system. The Floating Calendar now recognizes VRPN (Vacation Rental Property Network) inquiries, and also inquiries from HomeAway “profile” users. Some small improvements were made to property and group web pages. Particularly, you’ll notice the borders are thinner and with less rounded corners for a slightly cleaner look. • Resolved an issue when reading HomeAway inquiries on Gmail using copy/paste, where the guest Name was not being recognized. • The “Search” button in Searchable Group web pages is now larger and in color. See Example here. You can now do Language Translations within Templates using a new %Xlate% placeholder. This placeholder allows targeting translations to specific sections or the entire document or email. See the Help topic on Miscellaneous Placeholders for examples and more info.
12/29/2012 v.1.0.2598 • After installing this update, you no longer need to run the application “As Administrator” when registering a new license key or changing the database location. This also allows Windows to access network drives easier. A note to those who are using the FlipKey interface: We are making progress on a new interface and hope to have this implemented soon. • Corrected an issue with the database Restore function. Prevented possible circular references with both Lockout and Summary Properties.
11/26/2012 v.1.0.2596 • Updated the Flipkey calendar interface to accommodate changes in Flipkey’s system. • The Search bar on Searchable Group web pages will now auto resize down when displayed on phones. Also, any properties with calendar displays turned off, are now searchable. The rounded borders in web pages are now Brown not Orange for a slightly better look. • The small folder button next to the Tenant selection in the Bookings form has a new option to “Find Tenant by Name Text”. This is a fast way to find and select a Tenant whose name contains any specified text. (Try it). • There is a new feature called “Availability Summary Properties” which allows representing summarized availability of multiple properties as a single property. Summary Properties and calendars can be posted to your website and interfaced with HomeAway, FlipKey, etc. This can potentially save money by advertising one property which represents multiple similar properties and having the calendar automatically reflect dates where “Any” availability exist among the summarized group of properties. See the Help topic on “Summary Properties”. (Note: this feature is only available with the 40 property license or higher). When selecting property photos, the “Copy to MyFiles folder” option is now available immediately after selecting the photo. Minor improvements were made to web pages. Repost your Group/Property web pages.
10/30/2012 v.1.0.2590 • There is a new “Delete Booking Password” option under System Preferences > Other, which allows specifying a password that will be required when deleting individual bookings. There’s a new Help topic on Sending Bulk Email. Other minor improvements. • Made some improvements to the Flipkey calendar interface. • Updated the Floating Calendar for changes to HomeAway UK inquiries. • Some minor improvements to Property Group web pages, including shadows, and text at the top of the Search bar saying “Please make your selections and click Search”. The Property Statement report now shows Total Nights to be the number of nights booked within the reporting period only when the “Booked Nights” Date type report option is selected. Alerts will now ignore any user-defined Reminders on Bookings with a “Quoted” status. When the status is not Quoted, the reminders are active. • Corrected a possible error from occurring when updating the PDA/Sync file when saving a Booking. • Web page popup windows for Calendars, Rates and Photos now automatically scroll into view when displayed within a long web page. (Repost your web pages to see changes). When creating Blockout Bookings (via the Bookings form Options), you can now specify how many Blockouts to create and the days between. This can be helpful for quickly setting up Timeshares and Fractionals.
8/22/2012 v.1.0.2584 • Web pages have a new photo display popup, which has an automated slideshow option. This popup is also used when clicking on the “Check Availability” and “View Rates” links within group pages. See Example here. Corrected a minor issue with the Availability Online rates upload. Posting Property Groups and Property pages now checks if each exact same property page already exists on the web server, and will skip properties that are the same. This speeds up the reposting of entire Property Groups. Updated Floating Calendar for changes to HomeAway inquiries. • Corrected an issue in the CraigsList Ads creator. Integration with the iphone/ipad app: Vacation Props (Pro version) is completed, which allows replying to inquiries from your iphone. You can download the app from the iTunes store Here. • When Exporting Tenant info to Excel via the Options button in the Tenants form or Bookings form, you can now select which fields to export. The same goes for Contacts. Corrected the Floating Calendar when reading dates in VRBO inquiries using web-based email. • Updated the Floating Calendar for changes to HomeAway inquiries. Backups are now prevented from being saved inside the data or program folders. • Quotes within documents now show custom Sales & Lodge Tax Names if they have been defined in System Preferences. • Updated the FlipKey & HomeAway interfaces to accommodate changes on their system.
6/24/2012 v.1.0.2571 • There’s a new “Default FTP Site” setting under System Preferences > External Data, which allows specifying FTP settings once which can be shared by the other FTP Site Preferences. Also, the FTP Site preferences have a new form to make it easier to specify the FTP settings. Also under System Preferences > External Data, the “Minimize Export Data” preference now has 3 options. The “Minimize” option will work with any VRP license, and allows exporting a subset of the XML data, which can be used with the new ‘Vacation Props‘ iPhone/iPad app to reply to inquiries, which we are currently testing with the developer (to be announced soon). This app allows replying to inquiries from your iPhone or iPad. You can watch an earlyDemo Here. The Properties form has a new checkbox on the Web Post tab to “Use Property Group’s Colors”. The Housekeeping Report has a new option to “Show Other Info Notes” from the Bookings form. • Added a “Refresh” link to the Online Bookings List, and expanded the timeline window to show 31 days at a time. • VRP Web pages can now automatically adjust the size of the “iframe” they are displayed in on your website. This avoids double scroll-bars in the browser and appears more seamless with your website. Please see the Help topic on “Integrating VRP web pages with your website” for info on how to auto-size specific frames. See examples of the auto-size frames in action Here. • Updated the HomeAway Calendars interface to accommodate their latest changes. • Property Locations, Categories and Workgroups have a new “Active” checkbox. This allows inactive items to not be included as available selections in Searchable Group web pages. • Updated the Floating Calendar to accommodate changes in FlipKey inquiries. Also, it seems FlipKey is beginning to change their system to route all your email replies back through FlipKey’s mail system, the Floating Calendar will now change the Reply-to email address to go directly to the guest. We believe this new practice by FlipKey is completely unacceptable. If you agree and do not want FlipKey to have access to all your personal email correspondence with your guests, please let them know. This may only get worse if there’s not enough feedback. • Corrected a minor issue with the Bookings Calendar report.
5/31/2012 v.1.0.2558 • The Bookings Chart report has 2 new Date selection types which allow selecting bookings based on “Payments Received” or “Payments Due” dates. When using these date types along with the “Show Payments” checkbox, a list of only payments due or received for the given time period is shown. • The Properties form Options button has a new option to allow changing the Assigned Cleaner on All future bookings for a given property. This can be used if you switch the Primary Cleaner for a property and wish to quickly update all future scheduled cleanings to the new cleaner. • Property Web pages now display each individual section of the property web page at a time, rather than a long scrolling web page. This solves some issues with iPads and iPhones, and also allows guests to print a single section of the web page if needed. See exampleHere. • Searchable Property Group Web pages have a few improvements also, such as a refresh transition effect and a status message. Also, a minor issue with Amenities searching was resolved. See Group page example Here. • A second confirmation is now required if the database cannot be accessed on the local network, along with instructions to help you verify the network. • You can now click on both the Top-Left corner of forms and the Bottom-right corner, in order to return a form to its Original Size. This can be helpful if you’ve resized your screen and the active form is partially off screen. • The Availability Online interface has a new option to link the “Book Now” button to the AvailabilityOnline 2-week Calendar before going to the reservation form. By default, the Book Now button will now go directly to the Reservation form. You can switch this back using the new option. Searchable Group Web pages now display the “Back” and “Next” buttons at the bottom of the properties list also. When using the Query Designer in the Properties form Filter button, you can now also select data fields from the Owner, Cleaner, Manager, Category, Location and Group tables. This can be used for exporting a list of Properties and Owner information to Excel, for example. • When replying to inquiries with a list of properties, any Discount or Adjustment specified is now included in each property in the list. Resolved a display issue on Property web pages pertaining to the photos slide show in the Property Info section. Repost your Property and Group web pages to make sure you have the latest improvements. • All Property web page formats now include the “Other Properties”, “Home” and “Refresh” links at the top. • Website URLs allow additional special characters. When selecting Properties for Available Properties Lists, the displayed column header for Br/Bd/Baths was corrected. • Corrected an issue with the Web Bookings List forward and back timeline buttons. Corrected a minor issue with the Category column display in the Bookings form.
4/20/2012 v.1.0.2547 • The gradient color in Web page headers now matches the Menu background color specified, rather than being a fixed blue color. A logo image can also be specified as before. See examples Here and Here. There is a new account for “Commissions Offset” in the Properties form Accounts tab, and a new checkbox to specify that “Commissions are Income”. This allows posting Commissions as Income and offsetting to an Asset account when posting to QuickBooks or Quicken. The optional Discount/Adjustment specified when replying to inquiries in the Floating Calendar is no longer remembered between replies in order to avoid unintentionally quoting a discount on a subsequent inquiry. The Searchable Group Web Page has a new drop-down box to “Select and View any Property by Name”. Example Here. Fees can now also be based on specific Tenant info, such as if a Tenant is in a particular state, since some states have Travel Insurance “opt-in” laws. • The Upload Bookings Lists for individual Owners now posts to a new sub-folder named “owner”. If you are using this feature you will see the new link, which you should send to anyone you’ve already provided the link to. Web pages now have a “Refresh” link in the right-hand side of the menu bar. This can be helpful if you are embedding pages within your website. Some of the FTP upload functions will now optionally create new folders if they do not already exist on the website, after prompting you first. • There is a new web page option on the Property Groups form, to “Open a new browser window when displaying individual properties” on your Group web pages. The Bookings Calendar report has a new Show option to display “Property name, in/out times and other info”. There’s a new System Preference under External Data, called “Minimize Export Data” which uploads a smaller XML file of Property data for Searchable Group web pages.
4/5/2012 v.1.0.2536 • Searchable Group Web pages have some new features: 1) Listings are now built and displayed dynamically from the XML data, and displayed in groups of 10 properties per page with forward and back buttons. 2) Guests can now also search by a new item called “Category”. Therefore, you can group your properties by Category, and place all properties into a single Group on your website if preferred. 3) A new option to “Hide page header when the web page is displayed in an iframe”, has been added to the Property Groups form. This allows embedding just the search bar and property listings within your web site, without a page header. See Example here. Two new property groupings were added to the Properties form: “Category” (mentioned above), and “Workgroup”. Workgroups can be used internally for grouping and filtering properties for any purpose, such as “Owned” vs. “Managed” properties, etc. The Property Group selection has been moved to the Properties form Web tab. The Housekeeping report now shows special check-in & check-out times in bold Red. • The Uploaded Web Bookings Lists now show Tentative, Owner or Blockout for bookings with these statuses. • In the Html Editor, the “Tables” button at the top has a new option to “Span current cell across multiple columns”. • The Web Form Assistant has new “Auto Actions” for: AutoSubmit, AutoClick and AutoFillAgain. See the Help topic on Web Form Assistant for more info. A new function was added to the Database Admin Tools to “Mark old Bookings as already Posted to your accounting system”. This can optionally be used when you decide to start posting accounting transactions to Quicken or QuickBooks. • A few other cosmetic improvements were made to Property & Group web pages. • The Housekeeping Report has a new option to Show the Reason from the Booking. This can be useful if your housekeepers need to know whether guests are participating in a conference or other event. During web page posting, special characters in photo file names, (other than hyphens and periods), are now converted to Underscore characters in order to avoid file naming issues with different web servers. More improvements were made to the Property Groups Searchable web page format.
3/19/2012 v.1.0.2524 • The Payment Processing account information for VacationRentPayment has been moved to a new form in the Forms menu called “Payment Accounts”. You can now set up multiple accounts if needed, in case your State laws require that funds go into separate accounts. In the Properties form – Interface tab, you can also set the Default Payment Account for each Property. See the Help topic on Payment Processing for details. In the Floating Calendar, the Template selection drop-down now shows the Template types for: Available Properties List and Generic Emails in parenthesis after the template names. An issue was corrected with the HomeAway import of External Bookings. The AvailabilityOnline Property Details upload now sets the Maximum number of Children to match AvailabilityOnline’s logic. You can upload AvailabilityOnline Property Details using the Web button. • Web page Menu links now work in browsers which have javascript disabled. You can easily repost web pages by selecting Post All web pages in the Properties form. • Some minor improvements were made to web pages, including a smooth scroll if you’re embedding pages in your website. You can see examples at the new Examples Website. • Fixed an issue when editing inactive Tenants. Improved the Smart phone Bookings List so that the page automatically expands to the phone’s screen size, and also to control the auto font sizing on iPhones. Resolved a temporary issue which displayed a message “Codemine is not running”. The Floating Calendar can now also recognize Address, City, State, Zip and Country fields in an email inquiry. It also populates these fields when creating new Tenants. This can be used with your own custom email inquiry forms. See the Help topic on Custom Email Inquiries. • Double-clicking on Tenants in the Bookings form grid, has been improved. (You can right-click also for more options).
2/27/2012 v.1.0.2510 • The XML Availability Export now includes the Post Availability flag from the Properties form Web tab. This allows hiding calendars for specific properties if needed. Repost the XML Export and Group pages after this update. • All photos uploaded to the web now use Underscore characters (“_”) in place of Spaces. This prevents possible issues with spaces in web file names. • Web pages now have Shadows on some of the block elements such as the header, photos, rates and calendars. This provides a depth of field effect against light color backgrounds. Maps, Weather and Videos are now framed with shadows also. The color of Shadows is based on your selected Background Color. See Example here. • The Property Statement for Owner report has a new option to base the Check amount on “Expenses & Commissions Only”. This can be used if your Tenants pay the Owners directly, allowing the report to calculate only the amount owed to you by the owner. In addition to the number of Beds/Baths, you can now specify the number of Bedrooms separately in the Properties form. • Group Web Pages with the Searchable List format now have the ability to search Amenities and Number of Bedrooms. To enable searching by Amenities, you can set the “Search Keywords” in System Preferences under Web Page Settings. Then repost your Group pages and the XML Export. This will create checkboxes for each Keyword or phrase you define. The Keywords are searched within Property Amenities. See Help on Posting Property Group pages for more info. Other improvements include changes to the Date selection pop-up calendar. See Example here. • Availability Calendars and Web Cleaning schedules now use the same colors specified for the Property page. See Example here. • The speed of the “Find” functions has been greatly improved for network installations with multiple workstations and routers with limited memory.
2/19/2012 v.1.0.2495 • You can now specify both the Web page outer area Background Color and the Photos area Text Color for Properties and Property Groups. Also, links in the web pages now use the specified Text colors. This allows setting a dark color in the photos area along with a light color text for a nice effect, especially in Group pages. Several other enhancements were made to Web pages, including a small padding at the top and bottom. • Improvements were made to the Property Rates form in regards to sorting, adding new Rates, and specifying dates. Past Due payments in Templates now show (Due Now) instead of (Due Today). • When generating Payment Schedules, any payment dates that calculate to “after” the final payment date, are changed to Due Now. This allows terms to include dates based on a certain number of days after the Booking Date. If that date falls after the final date based on the check-in date, it becomes Due Now. Improvements were made to the Html Editor, and specifically, the “Table” toolbar button’s list of functions for modifying tables. In the Properties form there are additional fields: On the Misc tab, there’s a new field for Maximum Children. On the Notes tab, there’s a new field for Thumbnail web link, and a new checkbox to automatically Set the Website, Thumbnail and Calendar links when posting Property Web pages. On the AvailabilityOnline Interface tab, you can specify to upload the Website link, Thumbnail link and Short Summary description to AO during the Rates upload. (You should set both of these options if using AO). AvailabiltiyOnline is about to release a new version which includes several new features which this update provides for in the AO Interface. AO will be sending out a notice this week. When performing the “Update All” right-click option in Properties and other form fields, you only need to enter the password once now while in that form, in case you’re doing multiple updates. An issue with the Web Logo image “Stretch” option specified in System Preferences has been corrected. In order to make sure you have the latest web page improvements, you can repost your web pages. This can be done for all Properties and Groups with one click by selecting the “Post All” option when posting web pages. If you use the Searchable Group Web pages, a “Loading Calendars” message is now shown while the calendars are loading, in case your groups have a lot of properties.
2/9/2012 v.1.0.2492 • *Important:* This update includes a change to the XML Data Export. The format of the property RateList in the XML file has changed. See the Help topic on XML Data Export. • You can now specify up to 16 web photos for each Property, instead of 12. There is a new “Guestbook” link in the Properties form Notes tab for specifying a link to your guestbook. This can be inserted in templates or the property web page using the associated Placeholder. The photos displayed in web pages now have a “Next” and “Previous ability when clicking on the small photo thumbnails to see a larger image. See Example here. When posting Property web pages, you no longer need to specify whether to Skip Photos or not. The posting process automatically checks if the photos already exist on the web server with the same file name and size, and uploads them if needed. • There is a new “Rates Display” option in the Properties form Misc tab. This allows you to specify if you want the Rates lists in web pages and Templates to be displayed “Exactly” as they are defined in the Property Rates form, without merging overlapping date ranges into unique date ranges. This can be used if you want to show different sets of rates for identical date ranges. • Additional improvements were made to web pages for compatibility with different browsers. The grid lines were removed from the Rates tables in web pages for a cleaner look. • If you are embedding web pages within iframes on your website, then a new menu item will appear called “Expand View”, allowing the web page to be opened in a new browser window at it’s full size. In the Properties form Web Post tab you can now post All Properties and Groups using the Post Website button, without going to the Property Groups form. This also posts active properties that are not assigned to groups. • The Bookings Chart reports have a new option to Subtract “Sub-Rev” type Commissions from Rental Revenue. This can be used for commissions you do not want to show on the booking reports. The report also has a new option to show “Total Rent” and not the Rate. When inserting Date and Time Stamps in Note fields (via Ctrl+D or Right-click), the user’s Initials are also inserted now. • Corrected an issue with the Rates interface to HomeAwayPM. • The Html Editor has a new option to change the Cell Padding and Cell Spacing of Tables.
2/2/2012 v.1.0.2478 • Several new features were added for web pages. In the Properties form Web tab, there are 3 new fields for embedding: Maps, Weather, and Videos. For example, Google Maps, Weather Channel and YouTube are some of the sites that easily provide the Html for embedding these items in web pages. You can simply paste the Html into these new fields, and the web page menu items and sections will automatically be created the next time you post the web pages. Previously, you could only do this in the Long Description text. Web pages have a new “Home” menu link now. This defaults to your Company website, and can be overridden in System Preferences under Web Page Settings to point to any other website if needed. You can now specify the Background Color for web page Menus (and Topic titles). You can set the color in the Web Post tab of the Properties and Property Groups forms. Note: The new default color for menus is now Blue. You can easily change your menus to this color if you prefer. There is a new System Preference under Web Page Settings to specify that the Web Page Logo image should be “Stretched” to fill the width of the web page. This allows the logo image to be used as a “banner” image. • Property and Group web pages now use “rounded” corners to display photos and other elements on web pages. This works with the latest version of most browsers. If your browser is an older version you may want to update to the latest. You can see examples of these web page changes Here and Here. • Updated the FlipKey calendar updates to accommodate recent changes on their site.
1/26/2012 v.1.0.2469 • When processing credit cards through VR Payment, if the street address, city and postal code are unknown for the Tenant, you can now process the credit card after a confirmation is displayed. • During the AvailabilityOnline Rates upload, the property “Sync” option has been corrected to remove properties on AvailabilityOnline which are not set to have Rates uploaded. • The unwanted owner-specific text and links in inquiries from VacationRentals, HomeAway, FlipKey, and VRBO are now removed when replying to these inquiries in Outlook. • If your web pages have embedded videos, the html is checked and corrected if needed in order to prevent the video from scrolling on top of the web page header. If you include videos in your web pages, then repost your web pages. • In the Bookings form, there is a new field called “Weekend Adjustment”, which stores the difference in the weekend rate for the number of weekend nights booked. This adjustment amount has also been added to all standard rate quotes. If your templates have your own custom rate quotes (where you’re not using the %RateQuote% Placeholder), then you should modify these to include the new %WEAdjAmount% Placeholder. • Rate Quotes generated from Bookings now have a column shading effect applied. • The Floating calendar now shows any Special Check-in or Check-out times when hovering the mouse over bookings so that you do not have to switch to the bookings form to see if there is a late check-out or early check-in. • Web pages now use an Arial font for the Header text of the Property name, which matches the rest of the web page.
1/18/2012 v.1.0.2459 – The Web Availability Calendars can now display Rates when mousing over or clicking on available dates. This requires that the “Post Rates” checkbox is selected in the Web tab of the Properties form. When creating Blockout Bookings in the Bookings form (via the Options button), you can now specify the number of days after the current booking’s checkout to start the blockout. This makes it easier when blocking out multiple date ranges for Time-shares. The Phone/PDA Bookings List now includes links to each property’s website (specified in the Properties form Notes page). There is a new option in the Properties form Interfaces tab to “Show the Book Online option in Web Pages”. This can be turned off if you do now wish to allow guests to book online. In the Alerts Manager, the “Go to” button has a new option to set all Bookings past 60 Days old to a ‘Closed’ Status for bookings showing Payments Due or Return Deposits Due. This can be used if you have a large number of old alerts still showing, which you have not updated. When selecting Photos for web pages or documents, there is a new option called “Select & Resize Image”, which uses a new built-in image resizing feature. This can be used for resizing large photos down to an appropriate size for web pages or templates. Within the “Web” toolbar button, there is a new option to ‘Start the Web Calendars Auto Updater Process’. This kicks off a separate process which automatically updates All Changed Web Calendars & Availability Interfaces as needed at specified time intervals. This helps to ensure your web calendars and availability are up to date. Note: This feature requires a 20 property license or more. The 2nd image on the right-hand side in Property Web pages, now has a transition blending effect which works in all web browsers. Previously this only worked in IE. Repost your property pages to get the new effect. The legend in Web Calendars has been changed to remove the color names. This allows changing the colors of booked, tentative and available dates using the styles override in order to match your website colors.
12/26/2011 v.1.0.2446 – The %RateQuote% Placeholder can now be aligned Left, Center or Right within Word or Html document templates, and the generated rate quote will maintain the same alignment on the page. If you prefer center alignment, edit your template and center the %RateQuote% text. There is a new Placeholder %RateQuoteV% which generates a Vertical format rate quote within Word or Html documents and email templates generated from the Bookings form. The Booking Chart Detail report has a new date selection option based on “Occupied” dates for selecting bookings booked during the period selected. In the Alerts Manager, when clicking the “Go to” button for an individual alert, it now automatically puts you on the related tab of the related form. In the Bookings form Billing Info page, there is a new “Reverse Deposit” checkbox. This can be checked if your payments include any returned security deposit, and/or the Fees include any withheld deposit charges. The Amount Due will be calculated accordingly. See the Help topic on “Security Deposits” for more info. The Property Group Web Page format with “Embedded Calendars” now synchronizes the calendar scrolling between all properties on the page. This allows guests to scroll any calendar to the months they are interested in, and then scroll down the page and view availability for each property. The web page borders have been changed slightly in order to allow using a Web Page Logo image (specified in System Preferences), with rounded corners. If Property web pages are displayed within an “iframe” on your website, the menu bar links will now scroll the iframe to the top of the browser window automatically so that more information in the frame is visible. Repost your web pages to incorporate these changes. Improved the photo and file selection options throughout the application.
12/9/2011 v.1.0.2436 – In the Floating Calendar there are 2 new checkboxes next to the Reply button. These allow saving the Last Inquiry information automatically for each inquiring guest, and optionally setting a Follow-up Date. There is a new sample Template called “Tenant Inquiry Follow Up”, which can be imported and used for sending Inquiry Follow-ups within the Tenants form. See the Help topic on “Saving Inquiries” for more info. Commissions have a new checkbox called “Sub Rev”. which will Subtract the commission amount from the Revenue shown on the Property Statement report. For example this can be used if you build a cleaning fee into your Rate, and you do not wish to show this to the owner as a commission on the Property Statement report. Various improvements were made to accommodate databases with a large number of Tenants. The FlipKey interface has a new field called “Frontdesk ID”, which is required. See the Help topic on “FlipKey Calendars” for more info. In the Properties form on each of the Interface pages, a new “Globe” button has been added which can be used to test each interface separately. A new System Preference called “Enable Auto-Save Inquiry” was added under the Floating Calendar category, which enables or disables the Auto-Save Inquiry checkboxes on the Floating Calendar. When replying to HomeAway, VRBO or FlipKey inquiries within Outlook, the owner-specific “junk” in the inquiry (which the guest does not need to see), is now stripped out when the reply email is generated. Corrected an issue with the HomeAway and FlipKey calendar interfaces. There is a new Commission Base-On option for calculating a percent of Rent+Fees minus any Commissions which are flagged as “Sub Rev”. This can be useful when you have commissions that are subtracted from revenue, and others that are not. In the Floating Calendar, you can now create a New email with a quote without replying to an existing email. For example, when providing a quote over the phone, you can enter just the guest’s email in the Floating Calendar, click the Reply button to generate the quote, and then select “New Email”. Also the Floating Calendar’s “Fill Clipboard with…” button has been improved for quickly providing quotes on the phone or in person.
11/20/2011 v.1.0.2422 – There is a new System Preference under External Data called: “Upload Bookings List for Owners”. Setting this to Yes, will automatically upload separate Current & Future Bookings Lists for each Owner into separate folders on your web site. These lists have less booking details than the All Bookings List, and provide each Owner with a current list of their own properties, bookings and timelines. Important: If you are already using the Upload Bookings List feature, you will need to create a new Sub-Folder called “allprops” on your website, under the specified Private FTP folder. See the Help topic “Uploading a Bookings List” for more info. Improvements were made to the FlipKey and HomeAway calendar interfaces. A different method was implemented for scrolling to the various sections within Property web pages when menu items are clicked. This new method solves 2 issues: 1) If the Property page is within an “iframe”, the browser window will still jump to the topic, but also keep the top of the iframe displayed. And, 2) The menu links within the iframe will continue to work on ipads and smart phones. Also, the company website link at the top of of web pages will now go to the company website (specified in system preferences) only if the web page is not displayed within an iframe. This prevents the iframe from displaying another copy of your main website if a viewer clicks the company link inside a frame. There is a new “Quick Set” button on the Properties form Accounts page, which allows quickly setting the accounts to the suggested defaults for one or more properties. Improvements were made to the web Availability Calendars so that the height of the calendars is consistent between different browsers. This is important if you are displaying calendars within iframes. It is recommended to repost your group and property web pages to incorporate the web page changes in this update.
11/4/2011 v.1.0.2414 – The Housekeeping report has a new option to run the List of Check-ins and Check-outs option as 2 separate reports. A new feature has been added to automatically update HomeAway Connect™ calendars (used by VRBO™, HomeAway™, VacationRentals™, etc.). This does not require a HomeAwayPM™ account. And is available for the 20 property license or higher. There is also a new feature to update FlipKey™ calendars, and is available for the 40 property license or higher. See the Help topic: “Online Calendar Interfaces” for more info. All of the Web Calendar interfaces have been greatly improved in speed when using the option to Update All Calendars & Web Interfaces. This is due to new logic that only processes properties with recent changes. Administrators are no longer required to Login at startup, unless the “Prompt Logon” options in both the System Preferences and User Account are set. However, when accessing certain secure functions, you will be prompted for your password if it has not already been entered. See the Help topic on: “Prompt Login ID option” for more info. Property web pages and Group pages have been improved so that the menu links will not cause the entire frame to scroll if you are embedding web pages within “iframes” on your website. After this update, you should repost your web pages to take advantage of this update. There are 2 new Placeholders: %BeginComment% and %EndComment% which can be used to store personal notes inside Templates. There are 7 new [ShowDate] Placeholder Options which allow displaying dates in different formats.
10/17/2011 v.1.0.2403 – The Floating Calendar has been updated to accommodate the new VRBO inquiry format. You can now define Commissions which are based on individual Fees, if necessary. See the Help topic on: Additional Fee & Commission Calculations for more info. The Booking Status color for Partial Paid has been changed to help identify it separately. In the Alerts manager you can remove All old CC info for both Bookings & Tenants by clicking the “GoTo” button on one of the Alerts. When updating All Calendars and Interfaces, if an error occurs with a third party interface, the error is displayed and the process will now continue on to the next interface, rather than stopping completely. This is helpful if one of the third party sites is temporarily down. The Rates list within web pages and Html Templates has been improved. See Example Here. You can repost your Rates or Property web pages in order to see the new change. The Floating Calendar can now read German inquiries from HomeAway FeWo-direkt-Buchungsanfrage. There is a new System Preference: “Web Page Settings – Prefix Web Photos” which allows Photos to be automatically prefixed when posting web pages. This ensures that photos with the same name (ex. livingroom.jpg) for different properties will not be overwritten on your website. There is a new Placeholder Option: [HasHtml] which can be used to insert note text that already has Html formatting. When opening the Floating Calendar, it now checks if it is hidden off screen due to a second monitor being disconnected. Property Web pages have been slightly modified so that they can be “iframed” in with a minimum width of 750 pixels for websites displaying content in the left or right margins.
9/29/2011 v.1.0.2396 – The Additional Fee & Commission calculations now allow referencing other Fees or Commissions within calculations. For example, you can create a Travel Insurance fee that is 20% of the Total Sale minus a Pool Heat fee. This enables creating some very complex Fees, Discounts & Commissions, if needed. See the Help topic on “Additional Fee & Commission Calculations” for info and examples. There is another new Fee Base-On option which allows charging a Flat fixed amount if the Standard number of Persons is exceeded, as when charging for the use of a Sofabed. The format for Dates displayed within Rate Quotes and Templates has changed to now show the full Day of the week name, rather than the first 3 characters. The Month name has also been shortened to 3 characters, which is a common, global standard for displaying dates. Also, Zero amount Fixed Fees are now included in Rate Quotes and Templates. This allows showing guests Fees which you are including for free. Corrected a possible ‘%’ sign in the Property Statement and Commissions reports, and the optional adjustment/discount in the Floating Calendar. The surrounding background color of web pages is now a more neutral color when posting web pages. Also, the Click to Inquire email form on web pages has been improved. There is a new option in the Database Admin Tools to allow Importing of Bookings, which can be used to initially load bookings from another system. The “Print” option under the Options button at the top of forms has a new option to Export the record(s) you are viewing to Excel. Good News: Availability Online now has the ability to define and include an unlimited number of Fees & Taxes by individual Property, with sub-totals on their online reservation form. You can try an Example Reservation form Here. We are working together on other improvements also. When using the “Find” buttons to search for text, you can now use ” AND ” between search items in order to find text that contains both search items. (You can already use ” OR ” between search items).
9/21/2011 v.1.0.2388 – In the Bookings form, the Timeline bars in the “View by Property” grid are now updated immediately (as in the View by Booking), rather than waiting until the booking is Saved. On the Bookings form Billing Info page, the “New Payment” button has an additional option to add any unscheduled payment amount to the currently selected payment. This can be useful when adding an additional day or other small charges to a booking without regenerating the payment schedule. There is a new System Preference for the number of Days after checkout to Remove CC info. And the Alerts manager includes any old bookings and tenants which have exceeded this number of days specified. The default is set to 45 days. The Smart Phone/PDA bookings list now shows weekend days in gray. A new feature was added to easily createCraigsList Ads for Properties and/or Property Groups. See the Help topic “Creating CraigsList Ads” for more info. This feature is only available for the 20 property license or higher. When specifying the Export Data FTP Site in system preferences there is a new option to skip uploading and create the file locally instead. All Property web page formats now show Photos in an animated window when clicking on individual photos. CraigsList Ads now use the selected web page colors, and allow spaces in photo file names. Users with Administrator Privilege are now required to logon with a password if one has not already been set. Also, the last logon Username is now remembered, rather than defaulting to the Windows user profile name. In the Tenants form, there is a new option next to the CC info to override the Number of Days to Keep CC Info for individual Tenants if necessary. Minor changes were made to the Bookings Calendar report and the Html Editor. You can now add links to the Menu bar of property and group web pages which link to another web page without adding a new section within the page. See the Help topic on “Property Web Posting” for more info. When Templates encounter an unspecified photo for a photo type Placeholder, nothing is displayed now, rather than showing an empty image box.
8/26/2011 v.1.0.2372 – The Property Statement report has a new option to Show Cleanings for Owner Stays only, which can be used if you only charge Owners for cleanings during their stay. Improvements were made to the Smart Phone / PDA bookings list, and also to the related Help topic “Uploading a Bookings List”. Six additional User-defined fields were added to the Properties form Notes page. There is also a new “Internal Note” field for Fees. The Bookings form now maximizes to slightly less than the full screen, in order to allow other forms to be placed at the top or bottom for easily navigating back and forth between active forms. When defining Default Payment Terms for properties within the Properties form, you can now also define multiple “Alternate Payment Terms” which are shared by all properties. This allows selecting from user-defined Alternate Payment Terms, without having to manually schedule special payment schedules. In the Bookings form, the “Go to” button above the Timeline grid, has a new option which will slide the timeline to the Month of the currently selected booking. Three important changes were made to both Fees and Commissions. The first, is that you can now specify “Additional Calculations” in the Internal Note field if needed. These calculations allow further calculations to be made, on top of the existing “Base On” options. See the Help topic on “Additional Fee & Commission Calculations” for more info. Second, the Fee Amount and Com Amount fields are now disabled. In order to specify a Fixed Amount Fee or Commission, you can now select the new “Fixed Amount” Base On option. Third, the “Add to New Bookings” column is now called “Default Fee” or “Default Com”. The Floating Calendar has been updated to accommodate the latest Inquiry format change from HomeAway.
8/9/2011 v.1.0.2363 – When running the Property Statement report using the “Booked Nights” option, any pro-rated taxes are now prorated within the Non-Revenue and Gross Receipts columns also. If you select: Base Net amount to owner on Gross Receipts and use the Booked Nights option, this may affect the Net calculation. Feel free to call Support if you have any questions. When processing payments through VacationRentPayment, the property short name and check-in date is now included with the payment Reservation number on the receipt. Corrected a sorting issue in the Bookings Chart detail report option. Corrected a minor issue with the “Find Next” feature when searching for text in note fields. The Properties XML Data Export includes additional fields, including Long Description, Info1, Info2, website URL and calendar website URL. A new feature was added which allows uploading a list of Current & Future Bookings to a single web page in a secured folder on your own website. This provides the ability to view a scrollable availability timeline and brief details of bookings for All Properties from a web-enabled Smart Phone or browser. See the Help topic on “Uploading a Bookings List” for more info. You can see anExample Here. The speed of generating availability information for various interfaces and websites has been improved. The Options button in the Bookings form has a new option to “Create a New Booking for this Tenant, Property and/or Dates”, which can be helpful when creating multiple bookings for an event or a large group. There’s a new option in the Properties form Options button to Copy the Web page colors of the current property to All properties. The Property Groups form also has this option, plus a new option to create a Duplicate of the current Group.
7/8/2011 v.1.0.2351 – A new interface has been added to provide another option for credit card processing using a direct link to VacationRentPayment.com. You can access this interface through the “$” Dollar sign button on the Bookings form Billing Info page. This option provides full credit card processing, including pre-authorizations, refunds, cancels and charges, and requires an account with VacationRentPayment.com, and a 3 User license and higher. VacationRentPayment.com offers the best service and lowest cost available that we could find. Please see the Help topic on “Payment Processing” for more info. When saving a Booking, any property limit exceeded type notices that are displayed have a new option to “Stop the Notice” so you can hide these notices each time you click Save while on a booking. A new option to Base Commissions on “Commissionable Fees only” has been added. When sending future bookings to the property Owner from the Floating Calendar, you can now select whether to include the Tenant contact info. Resolved an issue when generating email replies with blank lines, caused by the latest Internet Explorer 9. A new option to “Notify if Exceeds Standard Persons” was added to the Properties form Misc options page. The Report Parameters forms now remember their previous position on the screen the next time they are opened. Resolved an issue with Internet Explorer 9’s aggressive caching, so that now the Xml data is loaded from the server when Property Group Web pages with the searchable list option are Refreshed. If you use these group pages, you should repost them. The Housekeeping Report has new options to include the Tenant Note fields on the report. The Alerts Summary popup is now sorted by earliest to latest for all alert types. The credit card type is now shown next to the last 4 digits of the card number. Corrected an issue with Skype calling due to one of their recent updates. When processing Refunds through VacationRentPayment in the Bookings form, you can now specify the amount to refund if it is different than the original payment.
6/11/2011 v.1.0.2332 – Property Web pages have a new Photos section layout using thumbnails with an image and text that changes as you mouse over the thumbnails. Clicking on thumbnails also shows a larger image. Also, the Photos section was moved to above the Amenities section. See Example here. Improved the speed of the Bookings form when a large number of properties and bookings are displayed in the timeline. Also, removed the small tick marks for check-in and check-out days in the View by Property timeline, since they were rarely used. As a heads-up, we are working on a new Bookings Payment option using a direct gateway. This will add another option for payment processing. Stay tuned. A new Placeholder called %RentCln.Fieldname% was added for accessing other types of Cleaning information within templates. The %BookingPaymentSchedule% Placeholder now sorts payments by Due date, plus Received Date. The Housekeeping report now shows checkin and checkout dates for additional interim cleanings. Minor changes were made to the formatting of web pages and the default colors when selecting web page colors in the Properties form. See Example here.
5/27/2011 v.1.0.2321 – The Commissions and Payments Received report has a new selection which allows limiting the report to Payment Notes containing specific text. This can be useful if you need to generate reports for specific types of payments received, such as Travel Insurance reporting. When Saving a Booking, a notice is now displayed if there are adjacent bookings with a Special Check in or Check out Time, so that you can verify the times do not conflict. You can now upload Rental Rates to HomeAwayPM by checking the new option on the Properties form Interface page. Also, any specified Weekend Daily Rates are now included when uploading Rates to either Webervations, AvailabilityOnline or HomeAwayPM. Corrected a few issues with the Webervations import when discounts are defined in Webervations or the Tenant already exists, and when uploading weekly rates. A new “Cleanings” tab was added to the Bookings form which allows scheduling and tracking “Additional Interim Cleanings” within each booking. (Note: this feature requires a 40 property license or higher). All cleaning schedules, cleaning web pages, notices, etc. will include any additional cleanings. There are 3 new Rate Types available in the Bookings form and when replying to inquiries in the Floating Calendar. One is called “Monthly+” which applies the monthly rate for each full month and then prorates any extra days based on the number of days in the last month. This is different than the other prorated Monthly rate, which is based on 30 day months. The other new rate types are “Tiered Flat Rates”. These apply monthly, weekly and daily rates in tiers. See Help on Rental Rates for more info. The Tabs in the Bookings form for Cleanings, Fees and Commissions now display in Blue when there are any cleanings, fees or commissions so you can easily see when a booking has these items. When clicking the small Folder button next to the Tenant selection in the Bookings form, there is a new option to Copy the Tenant Name or Booking Info to the Windows Clipboard. A new Placeholder Option was added called [GetListItem]. Please see the Help on Placeholder Options for info.
4/28/2011 v.1.0.2304 – When specifying photos in the Properties form, images over 300K in size are not allowed since posting web pages does not allow large images. When posting web pages without Availability Calendars specified, a warning is no longer displayed, instead a message is added to the final results listing. FYI: We are now recommending Availability Online over Webervations. AO has made several requested changes for us already, and soon, they will have optional fees and taxes included in the totals. We will let you know. You can now use Alt+N and Alt+P hotkeys in forms to navigate to the Next and Previous records (as noted in the “Navigate” menu at the top). This can be handy when updating multiple records. The Occupancy Report has been updated so that when the “Block Out Dates” booking status is selected, any blocked dates are subtracted from the Available Days and related calculations in the report. Also, values on the report are rounded to 2 decimal places. A new pre-defined filter for “Bookings with Alerts Only” was added to the Bookings form. Alerts for “Cleanings Due” were added to the Bookings form Status column. The Bookings Chart detail report can now optionally be ran based on the “Date Booked or Canceled”. A new System Preference for the “Floating Calendar Property Selection” can be used to customize the property selection to show the Property Name, Short Name, Beds/Baths, etc. A new User Preference for “Bookings form Date Columns Format” was added to optionally set the date columns format to Text or Numeric format. New Placeholders were added for inserting Property Group and Property Location information into templates. New pre-defined Filters were added to the Tenants, Contacts and Properties form for showing records updated Today or in the last 3 or 7 days. The Property Color, as well as the Property and Group Web Color settings can now be Filtered on, (by clicking the small black box over the color buttons). They can also be updated across All Properties or Groups. This can be used in order to set the colors on all property web pages to the same colors.
4/16/2011 v.1.0.2299 – Within the Property and Booking Commissions, the “Owner Payment” checkbox has been replaced with a “Type” drop-down selection. This includes a new commission type called “Revenue Share”, which can be used to record things like third-party referral fees which may be shared from the manager’s revenue and not deducted from the Owner’s revenue. The Bookings Chart Detail report has a new option to show these Revenue Shares. An issue was corrected with Html Templates which have bulleted lists that overflow to the next page. The Bookings form Timeline width has been expanded by 30%. Also, a Property Group column was added to the “View by Property” timeline. Several improvements were made to the Bookings Chart Detail report. Two new options were added to the Database Admin Tools to allow Inactivating and Purging old Tenants which have no bookings. Corrected a recent issue with date fields when pressing the Right-arrow or End keys. Improvements were made when posting group pages, such as you can now post All Groups at once. Two columns were added to the View by Booking timeline for: Tenant Info and Total Amount. Columns can be hidden in the Bookings form timeline if needed by resizing the column widths. The small links to Vacation RentPro at the bottom of web pages and Html Emails are now shown in a dim gray color. The Html Editor has a new option in the “Paste” button to “Paste Unformatted Text”, which is useful when copying text from Word or other WYSIWYG editors. FTP Backups now require a password to further secure the backup. Corrected an issue with the Templates form when opened from within another form. When clicking the “$” sign button in the Bookings form, the Web Form Assistant is now brought to the front if it was already open. If needed, you can now flag historical bookings as already posted to QuickBooks or Quicken, by right-clicking the “Posted” date in the Bookings form. A new [NoValue] Placeholder Option was added, which can be used when defining Payment Terms if needed in order to turn off the default [Value] option used in Payment Terms. When updating Webervations and Availability Online calendars, the Property settings for how to show Tentative and Signed Agreement bookings are now acknowledged.
3/24/2011 v.1.0.2288 – There is a new “Property Statement Effective Date” in the Expenses form. This can optionally be set to any future date, allowing specific expenses to be carried forward from months where no revenue was generated, into a future month if needed. This is a simpler alternative to adjusting the Owner Funds on Account balance in order to carry expenses forward. The “Find” feature in all forms has a new “Find Previous” button, which allows recalling any of the last 10 previous searches. When creating a List of Available Properties from the Floating Calendar, there is a new “Reply” button if you are using Outlook, which will auto-generate the reply. Also the text at the top of the Available List reply showing the selected date range has been slightly modified to be more specific. Various improvements were made by Availability Online in order to work better with VRP for online bookings. One of the advantages with Availability Online is that you do not need to create properties on their site first. VRP can create and update the properties. Property web pages now include a link called “Other Properties” which point to the Group web page. The link is located in the web page menu bar on the left hand side. Re-post your property pages with the Menu Bar Format option in order to see the new link. See Example Here. Web Cleaning Calendars now include -Do Not Clean- bookings in the bookings detail list, so that you can always see the next check in. You can now optionally use Html format in the following text fields: Property Long Description, Property Rental Agreement Text, Property Owner Agreement Text, and Property Group Long Description. You will see a new “Html format” checkbox next to each of these fields. Please note, if you use these text fields in your templates and set them to Html format, then your templates must also be Html format. When creating a List of Available Properties from the Floating Calendar, you can now use All of the Inquiry Reply type Placeholders in the header and footer area of your available properties list templates. Any Rates with cents specified are now displayed with 2 decimal places in any generated rates list.
3/5/2011 v.1.0.2279 – In the Properties form Misc page, there are 2 new fields for Minimum Nights and ‘Unless Within’ days. When saving Bookings or Replying to Inquires for fewer nights, a notice will be displayed. The Placeholders for %AvailDates% and %AvailDatesList% have a new [days/days] Option that can be used to specify a wider date range for showing available dates. This can be used in Inquiry Replies and when generating a List of Available Properties. If you reply with available dates then you may want to start using this new [days/days] Option. See Help on Placeholder Options for details. Also, when generating a List of Available Properties, you can now specify a discount, as with other Replies, which will be included in each Property’s Rate Quote shown in the list. You can also override the Rate for the first property shown. The Find feature in the Bookings form now also includes any Additional Tenants in each booking during the search. New Bookings information Placeholders have been added for Additional Tenants, which allow retrieving specific information from any of the Booking’s Additional Tenants. See the Bookings Placeholder %AddTenant_X% for info. Some very useful features were added to the small “Camera” button in the top Toolbar. For example, you can now export the entire timeline grid in the bookings form, or any other form’s grid, to a PDF file for printing or emailing. Give it a try and see what it can do. See Example Here. Various selections in the Reports allow selecting “No items” in order to specify “All items”, such as when selecting Properties. When selecting “All Items” in these selections, a message is now displayed as such. The Bookings Chart Report has a new option to show Processing Fees with totals. An adjustment was made for compatibility with the new IE9 browser. A correction was made to rate calculations using the Average Rate Method option for rates which include Weekend Daily rates and also span multiple seasonal rates. The Floating Calendar now shows the Property Short Name in the drop-down list for easier identification of properties with long names.
2/18/2011 v.1.0.2265 – Vacation RentPro introduces a new Online Booking partner withAvailabilityOnline.com ! You can now choose between Availability Online and Webervations for accepting Online Bookings that integrate with VRP, (or you can use both). Click here for more info. Also see the Help topic: Online Bookings for instructions. In the Expenses form, a displayed message was corrected when duplicating an Expense. Html document templates now have the ability to generate PDF Forms with Fill-in Fields. See an Example Here. For details, see the Help topic on “Html Format Templates”. In the Bookings form, the View by Property will now always display higher status bookings on top of lower status bookings. The Searchable Group web page now includes Owner Stay, Blockout and External bookings. It is recommended to re-post your property and group web pages in order to reflect recent format improvements made to all web pages. Corrected positioning of some of the popup menus. The first month displayed in the Floating Calendar now stays in sync with the selected Check-in Date. When closing the Web Form Assistant (after payment processing), you are now prompted if you want to create a new payment received. The screen background image and My Photo in preferences can now use the %MyFilesFolder% placeholder for the image folder. Two additional photos were added to the Properties form Photos page, so you can now specify a total of 13 photos per property. You can also now specify photos by clicking on the image thumbnail. In addition, if the selected image file size is large, a notice is displayed.
1/30/2011 v.1.0.2248 – The Property Rates form has been improved to allow specifying daily, weekly, monthly and weekend rates on the same line. In addition, there is a new “Rate Option” allowing you to specify percentages based on the Daily rate. This simplifies the task of maintaining and organizing rates. The Rates report has also been improved with additional options and formatting changes. A new Fee “Base on” option was added allowing you to apply fees or discounts which are a “Percent of Rent – for every X number of days”. This allows you to offer “tiered” percentage discounts using one Fee and is similar to the other tiered type fees. The Floating Calendar has been updated for changes in VRBO.com’s inquiry format. The “Available?” button in the Bookings form now allows quickly finding Available properties using the Dates specified in the Floating Calendar. The “W” (Webervations) button in the Bookings form can now be used to both Download and Post imported reservations. Improvements were made toSearchable Group web pages. The red color in availability calendars was slightly toned down. A new Right-click feature has been added to various fields on the Properties form, which allows “Updating All Records listed with the current value”. This is useful for quickly making changes to multiple properties, and requires a password. See the Help topic on Updating All Records for more info. You can now create and add Additional Tenants from the Additional Tenants pull-out in the Bookings form. Posting Property and Group pages has been speeded up by not posting the same image more than once, such as Background and Logo images. Also, you can now post Property and Group pages with only Changed Calendars or Rates, rather than always posting calendars and rates when posting property pages. The Alerts report now shows past due alerts in Red. An update was made for displaying generated PDF files on Macs using Parallels. Changes were made to the standard Rate Quotes in order to highlight any Discounts being offered. There is also a new Placeholder %TotalDiscFees% which can be used to access the total of any negative amount fees (discounts). There are 3 new fields in the Properties form Misc page called “No Pets”, “Notify if Children” and “Max Number of Persons”. These are used to display a message if relevant when saving a booking or replying to inquiries. All generated web pages are now Xhtml1.0 Transitional compliant.
1/10/2011 v.1.0.2233 – The Searchable Group web page has a new option allowing guests to search for properties with “Any” or “All” Dates Available. It also remembers the selections when navigating away and returning to the page. The Property Statement Report has a new feature when exporting to Excel, which prompts with a new option allowing you to export Owner or Vendor Tax form 1099 data to Excel. This can then easily be used with tax form software such as EZ-W2and W2 Mate for printing or e-filing 1099, 1096 and other forms. These programs allow printing approved forms on plain paper and also provide e-filing. In addition, the Contacts form has a new encrypted “Tax ID#” field on the Notes page, which is included in the 1099 Excel export along with names, addresses and summary data. The Tenants form has a new encrypted “Note” field next to the CC# fields, which can be used to store additional credit card numbers or other info if needed. The Floating Calendar was updated to accommodate inquiry format changes from VacationRentals.com. You can now precede Amenity names with a forward slash “/” in order to hide them from public view. This allows internally searching available properties based on internal classifications if needed. Rates posted to the web or displayed in templates are now sorted by Date rather than Rate type. Copying and Deleting Rates by Year within the Rates form, is now based on End Date rather than Begin Date. In addition, you can now Copy Rates forward and Delete Rates by Year for All Properties, or for just one property. The Bookings Chart report now includes a summary of Commissions by Recipient in the report totals when the option to Show Commissions is selected. Changes made to emails are now saved when Saving emails to the Docs folder. A new option was added to the Property Statement report to “Show Totals only”. This can be used along with other report options to provide a 1 page year-end summary for owners. Next to each pair of email addresses and phone numbers (in the Tenants and Contacts forms) is a new small Arrow which you can click on to quickly “Exchange” or swap the two items.
12/22/2010 v.1.0.2221 – If you use Extension Bookings (such as for long-term bookings), there is a new feature when generating documents or emails for a booking that has Extensions. You are now prompted if you want to include the booking’s Extensions when resolving Placeholders for any booking amounts, payments list, fees list, rate quote, etc. For example, this allows generating a single Agreement that reflects multiple Extension bookings of a long-term lease. The Alerts list now includes a column showing number of Days until the Alert date and highlights past due alerts in Red. Also, Alerts greater than 3 days in the future are now summarized together in the Alerts summary (not the detail list). Resolved an issue when pressing the Delete key in drop-down selections, and also placement of popup menus. The XML Data Export now includes the Property Info3 note. You can now record, track and report sales that are not associated with bookings, by creating a booking with the new Booking Status of “Other Sale” or “Tentative Other Sale”. Bookings with these statuses do not effect availability calendars, double booking checks, etc, and still allow you to track payments, commissions, fees, reminders, as with other bookings. See Help on Booking Status Types for more info. The format of the Searchable Group Web page has been improved. There is a new Option in both the Tenants and Contacts forms to “Copy current Address & Info to the Notes”. This is useful when there’s a new address and contact info, and you want to save the old info before updating the new, without having to copy and paste each field. The “Inquire” links on posted web pages now include the Property ID in the inquiry. Also, if your Web Inquire Link (in System Preferences) is set to an Http URL address instead of an email, then a parameter containing the Name and ID is appended to the URL which can be used in your own web email form to determine the Property being inquired on. Some cosmetic changes were made to posted web pages (See Example). When selecting external files for Photos or Word Docs, there is a new option to “Copy File to the MyFiles Folder”. Some people have changed the Current Century setting without changing the Rollover Year. This update resets those preferences. The XML Data export now includes the property photo names and descriptions. Important: The semi-colon delimiter used in the exported Rates and Amenities Lists has changed to ” | “.
11/18/2010 v.1.0.2202 – When creating Extension Bookings from the Bookings form Options button, there is a new option to create multiple Extensions, and generate their scheduled payments. This is helpful for month-to-month type bookings. There are 3 new user-defined fields (Info1, Info2 and Info3), in the Notes page of both the Tenants and Contacts forms. There are also Placeholders to reference these fields within Templates. You can also customize these field names in System Preferences. A new System Preference for “Web Page Inquire Link” was added. This allows specifying a URL to your own inquiry web form, (or a different email address) to use in the Inquire and Contact links of posted web pages. The HomeAwayPM interface has been improved to run more efficiently. The Bookings, Tenants, and Contacts forms now allow printing 3-column mailing Labels from the Options button. The Bookings form also allows Exporting Tenant info to Excel for the currently listed Bookings. A new Format option for posting Property Group Web pages was added which provides a “Searchable List” of properties by Available Dates. This uses the XML Data Export feature to supply the search data to your website. Therefore, this feature is only available for the Unlimited properties license. See Example here. The XML Data Export now uploads to a specific folder name. See Help topic on Exporting XML Data for info on this change if you are already using the XML Data Export. The Searchable List feature has been tested with Firefox, IE and Safari browsers. When updating Linked Bookings for related properties, both Owner Stay, External, and Blockout bookings are also updated now. The Expression Builder (used for creating Filters), now remembers the last expression when redefining an expression for a particular field. The Rates XML Data Export is now called Property Data Export and includes rates, amenities, descriptions, number of beds/baths, and other property info which can be used as needed with your own web site.
10/20/2010 v.1.0.2187 – A new feature in the Web Interface button allows exporting Availability data and/or Rates (in XML format) to your own website for use with your own custom online database if needed. This feature is available for the Unlimited Properties license only. Also, there should be a noticeable speed improvement when using the Web Interface button’s “Update All Changed Calendars and Availability Interfaces” option. A formatting issue was corrected in the Bookings Chart Detail report totals. The Housekeeping report has a new option to sort by Property (in addition to Scheduled Cleaning Date). This report also has a new option to Group by Assigned Cleaner or Property Manager. It also has an Auto Email option so you can email reports using templates. There are 3 new Miscellaneous type Placeholders: %RptGroupBy.Name%, %RptGroupBy.Email1% and %RptGroupBy.Email2%. See the Help topic on “Auto Email Templates” for using these with the Auto Email report options. When doing Change Database Location from the File menu, you can now Copy to and Replace an existing database if one already exists in the new location. There are now Placeholders for: %NextBookingTenant.Fieldname% and %PreviousBookingTenant.Fieldname% which allow you to reference any of the Tenant information in templates for the next or previous booking. These can be useful in templates for sending cleaning notices for example. Corrected an issue with the Housekeeping report when no cleanings are found for selected properties.
9/27/2010 v.1.0.2176 – The Housekeeping report has some formatting improvements. The Bookings Chart detail report now includes scheduled payments which are unpaid along with totals when the Show Payments option is selected. There is a new option on the Properties form Web tab which allows posting separate web pages containing Rates Lists. These Rates pages can then be incorporated into your existing websites using “iframes” or links. Note, if you’re currently using the %RatesList% Placeholder in your Property Long Descriptions, you may want to remove these since a Rates page will automatically be included in the property web pages posted by VRP when the Rates List option is selected. In addition a new “Rates Info” field was added to the Web tab of the Properties form which can be used for specifying other info that will be displayed along with the posted Rates Lists (such as taxes, deposit required, etc). Property web pages using the Menu bar format now have a photo slideshow feature in the Property Info area of the web page. SeeExample Here. They also show the full calendar, rates and online booking form sections more seamlessly. Repost your group and property pages in order to apply these updates to your website. The Commissions report now shows totals for each commission Recipient. The generated Rates list now shows “Nightly” rather than “Daily” rates.
9/14/2010 v.1.0.2166 – The %RatesList% Placeholder has been updated to include the Rate Name. See Example Here. It is now unnecessary to save a booking first when generating templates using the %BookingPaymentSchedule% Placeholder. Rate Quotes generated in Word documents using the %RateQuote% Placeholder are now centered horizontally and shorter in width. New Filters were added to the Tenants form for showing: Tenants with Bookings, Tenants with Quotes only, and other filters. These can be useful when sending bulk email. When creating bookings from the Floating Calendar, there is a new option to Create Tenant Only (without a booking). This provides an alternative to creating Quoted Bookings by only capturing the prospect guest info and isolating them as Inactive Tenants until they actually book a unit. You can now directly select Weekend Daily rates when creating bookings and replying to inquiries. This can be used for instance when you are booking a weekend only or you wish to quote your higher weekend rate without having a weekend adjustment calculated. When using the Database Admin Tools Import options, existing Tenants, Contacts and Property Names are now skipped. Normally, importing is for initial data loads, but can now be used after the fact if needed. Some improvements were made to the Bulk Email sending and calendar popup date selection features. The Bookings Chart Detail report has a new option to show Security Deposits and deposits returned along with totals. Also, the report now includes totals for payments received and commissions, plus it has a new option to “Sub-total by Month”. The format for Property Group web pages with Calendars was changed to use less vertical space. Web Availability Calendar colors and day headings were changed also. See Example Here.
8/20/2010 v.1.0.2157 – The Bookings form Check-in and Check-out dates selection has been improved to work faster when a large number of bookings are displayed in the timeline grid. Improvements to various reports were made relating to page margins and printers. When changing a booking to “Do Not Clean” a prompt is now displayed asking if you want to also remove the cleaning expense. In the Alerts Manager, when clicking the “Go To” button for Cleaning Alerts, a new option is provided to mark the Cleaning as Done without having to open the booking. The Occupancy Report has a new “Show Other” option which adds the ability to show Commissions and Net Revenue by month. This may be useful for reporting lost revenue to BP. The Commissions Report has a new option to Show Selected Commissions Only and their totals. The report was also modified to show the correct totals paid by Cash/Check for bookings with mixed payment types. The Find button in the Bookings form now also searches the Tenant street address. The Bookings Chart Reports have a new option to automatically “Group by” Owner or Manager, allowing separate reports to be generated for each owner or manager. The report also as a new option to “Auto Email” the reports to the owner or manager, similar to the Property Statement reports. This allows user-defined templates to be used for emailing reports. In addition, the graphical bookings charts can now show up to 5 years of monthly bar charts, rather than 3 years. Corrected an issue with the “Move Check-in date” option in the Bookings form dates selection, and in the Floating Calendar when selecting check-in and check-out dates.
7/6/2010 v.1.0.2149 – A new email option called “Outlook 2007 or higher” was added to User Preferences. If you are using Outlook 2007 or 2010 it is recommended to switch to this email preference since it uses an improved method for communicating with Outlook. Both the Outlook and Extended Mapi email options now require Outlook to already be open. This avoids possible security warnings and memory issues, and also generates emails more quickly. The Bookings Chart – No Financials report option now wraps long Tenant names to the next line. This report also has a new report type option called “Less Detail – No Financials”. The Notes column on the Bookings Chart detail reports is now more compact by having fewer line breaks. Also corrected a line wrapping issue in the report’s Fees summary option. If Billing Notes exist, a reminder now pops up when clicking the “$” button for payment processing in the Bookings form. It is now possible to Auto-Submit forms on a web page when using the AutoFill feature in the Web Form Assistant. This can save extra clicks on sites which have multiple forms to fill out (such as VacationRentPayment.com). Please see Help on Payment Processing for info on the “AutoSubmit” option in form fields. When printing envelopes, the address is now more centered. Improvements were made to the grid in the Properties form including a new column to list the Property Short Names. An update was made to the Skype calling feature to accommodate the latest version of Skype.
5/30/2010 v.1.0.2137 – A new System Preference: “Web Page Footer” was added which can be used to specify Google Analytics Tracking scripts or other Html which is then inserted at the bottom of all posted web pages. Google Analytics is free and provides detailed info on visits to your web pages. Also, a new System Preference for “Web Page Logo” was allows specifying an image which will be inserted at the top of property and group web pages (see Example here). Also, a new “Company Logo image” preference was added along with a %CompanyLogo% Placeholder which can be used in Document Templates. The Properties form Web tab has a new “Property Rank” field which can be used to sort properties within Group web pages. The Group Web page format has been changed to match the newer property web page format (see Example here). You may wish to repost your group pages. Also, a new color option for the Group Photos Background was added. Minor enhancements were made to the Alerts Manager and Bookings form. The 3D Bookings Chart report now includes averages up thru the previous month when the current month is the last month charted. Modified the automatic Database Upgrade process to avoid “access is denied” errors caused by certain virus scanning programs with aggressive, on-access scanning turned on. Note, this type of scanning should be excluded from the Vrpdata folder if possible, since it can temporarily block access to files. Please call support if you have any questions. When posting web pages to a local disk, all files are now created with lower case names in case you wish to modify and upload the files outside of VRP. Changed the default FTP mode for backups and web posting to “Passive mode”. Please contact support if you are unable to upload. The specifications for sharing Rates, Fees and Commissions from other properties has been moved to the Properties form. This allows updating rates, fees and commissions without affecting the Properties form. Corrected a minor issue when importing bookings from HomeAway.
5/1/2010 v.1.0.2121 – When entering Owner Funds or Owner Payment transactions in the Expenses form the Vendor is automatically changed to the Property Owner. A new pre-defined Booking Filter was added which shows Quote/Tentative Follow-ups that are Due. Corrected an issue with the New Update available notice. There’s a new %RatesList% Placeholder which can be used to list rates in a document (or on a web page – in the Long Description text). You can see an example here. Added a new %BookingStatus% Placeholder. Options were added to the Booking Chart report to include Booking Memo’s and Number of Persons. Note: If you are using any of the recently added Booking Status types such as “Owner Stay”, make sure you add these Status types to your report parameters if you want these bookings included in your reports. Almost all reports have a Booking Status types selection. The Web Cleaning Calendar now shows 4 months instead of 6. Speed improvements were made when uploading information and web pages to the web. The Property selections in the reports now show, (and allow sorting on) the Owner, Manager and Cleaner in order to help you select properties to include on reports. Corrected a minor display issue with the email preview form. When clicking on a form’s toolbar button, the form is now automatically restored if it was minimized at the bottom.
4/20/2010 v.1.0.2103 – A new Commissions “Base On” option was added which can be used to give the owner a fixed amount per day booked by creating a commission for the remaining amount per day. The Property Statement report has a new option to Subtract Commissions from the Revenue shown. This can be used in order to show owners their portion of the revenue only. This also prevents commissions from displaying on the report since they are already taken out of Revenue. While in the Bookings form, typing Ctrl+T provides a shortcut to the Tenant options menu. There is a new Bookings Status called “External Booking” which can be used to track bookings created by someone else, such as an owner. There’s also a new option in the Bookings Options button to create a New External Booking. The Web Availability and Cleaning Calendars have had the underlying Html source trimmed down substantially, which should improve update times. While in any of the note type fields, typing Ctrl+D provides an shortcut to insert a Date or Time stamp into the note. When adding payments received, a new option provides setting the amount to the total due. The font size of the main toolbar was increased. Phone extensions can now be included in stored phone numbers following a Space+’x’ and will not interfere with Skype calling. The Help menu has new options to email or phone support using Skype. A new User Preference was added to specify how many Days to Auto Check for New Program Updates. Corrected an issue with the [GetTagItem] Placeholder Option. The Expenses form has 3 new Options to: 1) Duplicate an Expense across multiple Properties. 2) Duplicate all Expenses for a given Transaction Date to the Next Month, Next Quarter, Next 6 Months, or Next Year. and 3) Delete all expenses for a given Transaction Date and Account. A new “Pets per Night” Fee option was added. Corrected an email format issue when using the “Send Future Bookings” button on the Floating Calendar. New Property Placeholders were added for number of Beds and Baths. A new Database Tool was added for purging old Bookings and Expenses.
4/1/2010 v.1.0.2087 – A new Booking Status called “Owner Stay” was added which can optionally be used in order to highlight owner bookings. Both this and the “Block Out” status will show on Web Calendars with Grey colored day numbers instead of Black. This allows owners to distinguish these types of bookings if needed. There is a new Web Calendar Update button on the Bookings form next to the Property selector. This provides a shortcut for updating web calendars for the selected property. When importing reservations from Webervations or HomeAway, the import info goes into a new Source Note on the Bookings form Notes page, rather than the booking Notes. Also, the Billing Name is now included in the import. The Property and Tenant drop-down selections in the Bookings form will now accept typed characters in order to search for properties and tenants without changing the value on each character typed. The Contacts page of the Properties form has a new field for “Required Funds” on account balance. This is used on the Property Statement report when calculating the net amount due to the owner. There is also a Placeholder to include this amount in owner agreements if needed. The HomeAwayPM calendar update now posts the check-out days as booked also. This is required in order to show their calendars correctly. Cosmetic changes were made to the Property Statement and Housekeeping reports. Improved the entry of numeric field values. A “Find” button was added to the Tenants, Properties, Contacts and Expenses forms. The Property Statement now shows “Due From Owner” if the net amount is negative. In the Bookings form Billing Info page, context menus are shown when adding new payments or generating payment schedules. You can now Create and Update Tenants from any Contact in the Contacts form using the Tenants form Options button. This can be helpful when creating Tenants from Owners or other Contacts. Clicking the “Skype” buttons a second time will now hang up the current call. Also, a message is displayed if Skype Client is not installed. When downloading new program updates, the Download button will proceed to the Install when the download finishes. The Bookings form Timeline Forward and Back buttons now move twice the number of days as before.
3/11/2010 v.1.0.2060 – The Tenant and Contact’s Birthday and Anniversary dates now have an option to set recurring Reminders which are included with other Alerts, using the small “R” button next to these dates. Adjustments were made to various reports to accommodate the new reporting engine update, which required some report columns to be expanded slightly. There is a new “Prep Note” in the Bookings form Notes page which can be used to specify Preparation notes, such as “Leave extra linens” for example. The Prep Note is include on cleaning schedules with the “previous” booking’s cleaning notes. The check-in and check-out date selector in the Bookings form does not automatically close now when selecting the check-out date in order to avoid accidentally clicking on a booking when it closed automatically. The Property Statement report now suppresses the totals for the Owner if only 1 property was reported for that Owner to avoid showing the same totals twice. Expanding the Post Transactions form now expands the Transactions grid to view more transactions. Corrected an issue with printing Alerts. The Floating Calendar was updated to recognize the new HomeAway inquiry format. The Floating Calendar also now recognizes inquiries from FlipKey.com. When posting to QuickBooks, the Received From name is now exported for payments received. Two new Fee Base-on options were added which allow creating discounts based on each X number of nights booked. For example, you can specify a discount of 1 nights rent (or a specific amount) for each week booked. You can now edit generated Word documents on the fly when sending emails using Word Doc templates. There is now a “View Sample” button on the Html Editor so you can view a sample of the generated output while in the editor. Also added some new Table options to the Table button in the Html Editor. There are some new Placeholders for Payments Received, allowing you to show the payment dates and amounts in separate columns of a table. For an example, import the latest sample template called “Rent Receipt – Html format”. There are also 3 new “Last Payment” placeholders so that you can reference the last payment received (or returned). When clicking any of the buttons to specify a photo file or other external file, you now have an option to open the “MyFiles” folder to select the file.
3/2/2010 v.1.0.2048 – All web pages posted by VRP now include a reference to an optional external CSS Style Sheet which can be used by your web designer to further customize the web pages posted by VRP if needed. Improvements were made to the Html Editor for fonts, background colors, tables, etc. Various Sample Templates were updated also. Remember you can import any of the latest sample templates using the Import button on the Doc Info page of the Templates form. For example, import the latest “Generic Rental Agreement – Html Format” template. Or the “Available with Rate Quote – Html Format”. The samples will not overwrite your existing templates. When doing “View Sample” for “Inquiry Reply” type templates in the Templates form, you no longer need to use the Floating Calendar. You can now view these samples using the property, dates, tenant, etc. from the selected sample booking. The Housekeeping report has new options to show the Tenant’s Phone or Email address on the report. A new checkbox for “Alert Cleanings Past Due” was added to the Properties form “Misc” page. Mark this checkbox to be alerted when scheduled check-out cleanings are past due. Note that Additional Cleanings past due are always alerted, regardless. The Alerts popup now re-evaluates alerts when you click View Alerts and then select individual alerts to update. A substantial speed improvement was made to the uploading of multiple web pages and calendars to the web. In System Preferences, you can now specify your own field names for Info1, Info2 and Info3 on the Property Notes page. The Timeline grid in the Bookings form now highlights Holidays (specified in System Preferences). The main Toolbar buttons at the top of the screen will now bring the selected form to the front if it is already open, rather than close the form. This way, the top toolbar allows you to easily switch between forms whether they are closed or not. The Follow-up report for outstanding security deposits now includes the specified Return Amount and Notes.
2/23/2010 v.1.0.2038 – VRP now interfaces with HomeAwayPM for uploading available dates to HomeAway calendars. This requires a 5-user license or more and a HomeAwayPM account. Skype phone calling and text messaging is now available in the Tenants and Contacts forms. You can also Skype a Tenant from the Bookings form using the Folder button next to the Tenant. When multiple Commissions are set up for the same Resource in the Property Commissions form, you can now choose between them when selecting commissions in the Bookings form. Inquiries fromAlwaysOnVacation and ValueVacationRentals are now also recognized by the Floating Calendar. When sending Confirmations from the Bookings Workflow page a warning is displayed if the status is not yet Booked. A few new Pre-defined Filters were added to the Bookings form for showing “Bookings Updated Today” and “Created/Updated Last 2 Days”. The Alerts popup now includes scheduled Cleanings not yet cleaned (in the last 30 days). The Alerts popup also color-codes the alert types and allows sorting on the Alert type, Property or Date. The Tenants and Contacts forms have a new “Relations” page for things associated with maintaining relations. These include two new Document Template emailing functions, similar to the Bookings form Work Flow page. Four new Template Types were created for these, which can be customized, renamed and used for any purpose. For example: sending notices about specials, owner appreciation emails, etc. The new Relations page also has two “Last Campaign Sent” dates, which are updated by the Send Bulk Email function. There is also a new “Anniversary” date available which can be used for example, to track when you started business with an Owner or Tenant. There are also new Pre-defined Filters allowing you to see upcoming Anniversaries. Both the Tenants and Contacts form also have a new feature in the Options button to “Send Separate Emails for the Records Listed”. This function which also exists in the Bookings form, is can be used for sending multiple personalized emails with the individual’s names. In addition, both the Tenants and Contacts forms have a new “Bill To” name field, which can be used to specify the billing name if it is different from the main Name. There’s a new Template Placeholder for showing the Bill To name, or the main Name if the Bill To is blank. The “Find Text in Any Field” function in all forms now allow specifying multiple search criteria by separating search terms with ” OR “.
2/11/2010 v.1.0.2025 – A new option was added to allow basing commissions on Rent minus the Cleaning Expense. A few new Placeholder Functions were added (See Help on Placeholder Functions). The Payment Processing Auto-fill feature does not prompt now after successful auto-fills. Example Field Mappings were added to the Help doc for Payment Processing usingVacationRentPayment.com merchant services. A new Expense Account was added called “Non-Expense Item” which can be used to record reminders or other transactions which you do not want included on the Property Statement or other reports. The Bookings form now includes the Tenant’s Telephone number in the top title bar for easy reference. Improvements were made to the Html Editor including: ability to turn table borders on and off, insert page breaks or division blocks, remove all formatting, and others. A few improvements were made to the Bookings form grid, such as a larger border around the currently selected booking. When clicking “View Sample” in the Templates form, you no longer need to Save changes first. Word Template type files (.Dot and .Dotx) can now be used in Document Templates also. A new Description field was added to Commissions. The Description is included on Reports, and is also copied from Property Commissions when creating new bookings. Example descriptions: “Mgmt Fee”, “Referral Fee”, etc. The Commission Note is no longer displayed on reports and is used for Internal notes only. Also, the Property Commissions form and grid columns can now be resized horizontally. When using the %RateQuote% Placeholder in Email Text, the quote is now left justified rather than centered. Minor layout changes were made to the Housekeeping report. When saving double bookings in the Bookings form, typing ‘YES’ is now required. Also, a warning is displayed when saving Quotes for dates that are already booked.
1/30/2010 v.1.0.2011 – A Reminder field was added to the Document Templates form which can display a reminder message when generating documents or emails from that template. The Document Templates form now has Filtering features as with other forms including several pre-defined Filters. The Sample Templates which use Html formatting were updated. If you wish, you can import one or more of these sample templates using the “Import Sample Template” button on the Document Templates form. Various improvements were made to the built-in Html Editor. Improved the Print and Find options in various forms. When replying to inquiries in the Floating Calendar there is a new option to “Show Totals” prior to generating the reply. Additional Cleanings can now be entered in the Expenses form using the new built-in Account called “Additional Cleaning”. These are included in the various cleaning schedules along with cleanings specified in the Bookings form. In addition, a new Booking Status called “Additional Cleaning” is available in the Bookings form if you prefer to create separate bookings for additional cleanings instead. When Replying to inquiries in the Floating Calendar you can now specify a “Flat” Discount amount by adding “F” after the discount. The Expenses form has a new Email button for quickly creating an email to the Vendor. Also, the Expenses form has it’s own Docs folder button for maintaining emails and documents pertaining to individual expenses. The Property Statement report has a new option to Exclude unpaid Owner Payments. All reports have 3 new Date range selection options for: This, Last or Next Week for easier weekly reporting. The Booking Chart Detail report has a new option for whether or not to start each property on a new page. The Find functions have a new option to Acknowledge the currently selected filter or not. The image above the grid in the Bookings form now rotates each day to show a different photo. There is also a small arrow button next to the grid which allows rotating through the images. The “Available?” button feature now shows the number of Beds/Baths when using the “Select Properties” option. Corrected an issue when exporting Contacts to Excel. Resolved a possible issue when clicking too fast on the timeline Forward and Back buttons. New Placeholders have been added to allow showing Commissions in Templates.
12/28/2009 v.1.0.1980 – Outlook Contacts can now be imported into either the Tenants form or the Contacts & Resources form on an individual basis using the Options button at the top of these forms. This feature allows adding or updating individual Tenants or Contacts from the currently selected Contact in Outlook. See Help on Importing Data for more info. Property selections in the reports now show Inactive properties at the bottom of the selection lists. When duplicating properties in the Properties form, all info for Fees and Commissions is now duplicated. Html email text created in external .htm files now include their internal styling when sending emails. The Floating Calendar now shows Blockout dates with a strikethrough mark. The Amenity Name length has been expanded. An Active flag has been added to Contacts, so that Inactive contacts you no longer use, will show at the bottom of various contact selection drop-downs. The Ad Source & Referrals report has a new option to sub-total by Rate Type. When using the Search for Available Properties feature, a larger selection window is displayed when selecting Amenities or Properties. Also, you can now use 2 new Placeholders in the Templates used with the Search for Available Properties feature in order to allow specifying text before or after the list of Properties generated. These Placeholders are: %BeginProps% and %EndProps%. Text between these two placeholders will be generated for each available property. The Contact Short Name was added to the Contacts form grid. A new Birthday field has been added to both the Tenants and Contacts form, along with pre-defined filters for selecting Birthdays in the current or next month. This can be used along with the Send Bulk Email feature to help with tenant and contact relationships. Modified the Floating Calendar to accommodate the new VRBO email Inquiry format. The Property Rates report now includes the Security Deposit, Processing Fee and Tax Rates for each property. Property Rates, Fees and Commissions can now be copied “From” rather than copied “To” another property on the respective forms. A new Placeholder option [WebLink] was added for easily creating Html links in Templates. Several of the pre-defined Filters in the Bookings form now exclude Quoted status bookings. When specifying a fixed Discount or Adjustment amount in the Floating Calendar’s Reply button, the Disc/Adj amount is now either a Daily, Weekly, or Monthly amount depending on the rate type selected.
12/13/2009 v.1.0.1969 – A new Html Editor is now available in both the Document Templates form and the Email Preview form. This provides a WYSIWYG Html editor for designing document and email templates and storing them within the database. You can still use external templates created using Word and other editors also. For customers who use the Weekly booking option on Webervations, VRP will now upload weekly rates if the Default Rate Type specified in the Properties form Misc tab is set to the “By Week” rate. Also, Weekly type reservations downloaded from Webervations now include the weekly rate. Property Rates can now be Imported. See the Importing Data Help topic for more info. Property Amenities can now include Amenities from other Properties on the Properties form Amenities page. This allows you to define common Amenities once and share them across multiple Properties. Two new System Preferences for Company Info1 and Info2 were added. These can be used to store miscellaneous company-wide information and then reference this information in Templates using their corresponding Placeholders. When sending emails from buttons adjacent to email addresses in the Tenants, Contacts and other forms, the format is now set to Html if your Email Preferences are set to the Extended Mapi option. Also, you can now click outside of the email form to look at other forms when sending email since these buttons do not need to wait for the email to be sent. A Preview button was added to the Html Editor. All Text edit boxes now have a Right-click Find and Find Next feature. The Data Import functions now require Short Name columns also. A new sample template is available called: Generic Rental Agreement – Html Format. (Use the Import Sample Templates button on the Document Templates form). Property Fees and Commissions can now be “shared” for individual properties across multiple properties. This is useful and if you have properties with similar fees or commissions. The Floating Calendar has been updated to accommodate HomeAway’s new email inquiry format. Improvements made to the Html Editor including: ability to add Rows and Cells to Tables, and the ability to resize photos and keep the aspect ratio, Ability to set background colors for block areas, and others. When importing reservations from Webervations and the Tenant name already exists, you now have the option of overwriting the Tenant info with the new Tenant info or not in case they have changed their address or other info.
12/1/2009 v.1.0.1951 – A new Template Placeholder option called [GetTagItem] was added for referencing specific text within any Note field. This allows note fields to contain multiple, user-defined informational text items. A new System Preference was added for Company Website, which is automatically included as a link at the top of Property Web pages with the menu bar format. The Bookings Chart Detail report now provides a summary of Rental Fee sub-totals by Fee type at the end of each reporting group if the Show Fees option is selected. There is a new checkbox in the Bookings form Payments grid which is used to specify payments made by check or cash. This allows receiving a mix of cash/check and credit card payments for the same booking and having the processing fee calculated into the booking total accordingly. The Placeholder called %ActualSale% is being phased out. The %TotalSale% Placeholder now always shows the actual booking total sale which includes both applied and projected processing fees. An issue with column sorting in grids was corrected. You can now specify the account Class to use for Quicken and QuickBooks on the Property Accounts page without having to specify the Class individually in each account. Blockout bookings are now included in Alerts and Cleaning schedules, and can be suppressed from Alerts and Cleanings like any other booking. Note: Blockout bookings are intended for things like maintenance and timeshare block outs. Whereas, Owner (or comped) bookings should have a normal Booking Status. In the Bookings form timeline view by Property, you can now sort by Location, Beds/Baths and other columns. The report parameter selection forms have an improved look. Sorting on columns in the Tenants, Contacts and Document Templates forms have been improved. The Expenses report now uses the scheduled cleaning date as the transaction date, and the check-out date for unscheduled cleanings. The Floating Calendar now shows Blockout booking dates as dark grey. The Bookings Chart Detail report now sub-totals by check-in or check-out month depending on the date type selected.
11/13/2009 v.1.0.1939 – If specifying fixed amount payments in Payment Terms you can now specify whether to deduct the fixed amount from either the Next, or All percentage payments. There is a new Right-click option in Note fields that will insert the current Date/Time stamp. You can also use Ctrl+D or Ctrl+T. The Property Statement and Bookings Calendar reports have a new Auto-FTP option for automatically posting reports to your FTP website where owners can view them. There is a new “Block Out Dates” Booking status which can be used for blocking out dates. It is also used by the “Create Owner or Blockout Booking” option in the Bookings form Options button. This feature was also improved to make it easier to block out dates for Time-Share properties. Improvements were made to the Property Web Pages to accommodate extra-wide screen resolutions. You can now specify up to 10 Photos for each Property which can be included in the property web page. Online reservations imported from Webervations can now be merged into existing Quoted Bookings whose Property and Dates match. This is useful if you create Quoted Bookings and then direct guests to book online through Webervations. There is a new Placeholder for showing the Last 4 digits of the credit card used in Bookings. Also, the Last 4 digits now display in the Bookings form and Tenants form. Corrected an issue with the Block Out Dates status. The Help topic on Placeholders was improved and split into multiple sections for easier reading. When clicking the Reply button on the Floating Calendar the rates for the selected dates are displayed when choosing between daily, weekly and monthly rate quotes. New Placeholders were added for the Property Short Name and vertical Address format.
10/12/2009 v.1.0.1912 – You can now generate Payment Schedules for one or more payments in the Bookings form Billing Info page. You can also define default Payment Terms in the Properties form Misc page. The Next Payment Placeholders will show the earliest outstanding scheduled payment due. You can still schedule single payments by adding new payments on the Billing Info page. There are two new placeholders for showing payment schedules: %BookingPaymentSchedule% and %PropertyPaymentSchedule%. These generate payment schedules based on the payment terms defined in the Booking or the Property. See Help for more info. There is a new “Find” button above the Bookings form grid for easily searching both bookings and tenants. You can now record the date Booked and date Canceled separately from agreement dates on the Bookings form Work Flow page. There are also new Placeholders for %BookingDate% and %DailyRentTaxed% which can be used in the Payment Terms. The length of the Company Name, Email and Phone fields have been expanded. Improvements were made to the Data Import features. You can now set the Ready-to-Post transaction flag for multiple bookings at a time when clicking on the Ready to Post checkbox in the Bookings form Work Flow. The Pay Fees and Commissions uses the Check-out date for Commission transactions rather than the Check-in date. There are also additional pre-defined filters which are selectable at the top of the form. A issue was corrected in the Webform Assistant when auto-filling CC info. The Available Properties selection form now has a new option to allow Selecting Properties and changing the order they are displayed in when generating the email properties list. The photos in uploaded Property Web Pages can now be clicked on to see the original image. Amenities are also now listed vertically on the Menu Bar format Web Page.
9/24/2009 v.1.0.1881 – There is a new GetListItem() and GetTagItem() function that can be used in Expression Placeholders for returning a specific part of any note field. This allows defining multiple custom fields within any note field, such as multiple web addresses to be shown separately in templates, etc. Some speed improvements were made to the Outlook Calendar interface. Generated documents are now created in the user’s temporary folder to prevent conflicts with other user sessions on the same computer. When clicking “Reply” in the Floating Calendar you can now select to exclude Sales Tax or Lodging Tax in the Rate Quote in case it is for a longer term which taxes are not required. You can now change the “Closed 2 and Closed 3” Booking Status names for your specific needs in the Booking Status form. Two new checkboxes on the Bookings form Rental Info page allow Excluding Rent Revenue in the Taxable Revenue totals on the Property Statement report, which can be used for long term bookings where certain taxes do not apply. The Tenants form Options button has a new option to Create a new Booking for this Tenant. You can now upload Daily and Weekend Rental Rates to Webervations (in addition to Available Dates). There is a new checkbox option for this on the Properties form Interface page. The Floating Calendar now indicates whether the Tenant Name already exists or not. When Replying to Inquiries you can optionally specify a Discount or Adjustment as a percent of Rent by including the “%” sign. Otherwise the specified value is used. Bookings synchronized with Outlook Calendar now include the number of Adults/Childs/Pets. The Web Page format option which includes a Menu Bar, now provides the option of being able to add additional menu items and sections to your web page. You can also use the Property and Miscellaneous Placeholders within the Long Description of your web page. See Help topic on Posting Property Web Pages for more info. Improvements were made to the Webervations interface. You can now download reservations for invalid properties and assign the property later or delete the reservation.
9/2/2009 v.1.0.1866 – A new PaymentSchedule() function is available for use with Expression Placeholders in Templates. This provides an easy method to show payment terms in documents and emails. It also acknowledges any payments already made and whether payments are past due. See the Help topic on Placeholders for info and examples. A new Property Web Page Format option was added to the Web Post page of the Properties form. See example here. New System Preferences were added for Company Email and Phone number. These are used in the new web page format. The Interface page of the Properties form has a new Unit ID field for optionally specifying the Webervations “Room ID”. This is also used in the new web page format for incorporating the Webervations Online Booking form. The Photos page of the Properties form now allows photo descriptions of unlimited length. You can now also click-and-drag photos between positions. You can now open multiple instances of the: Bookings, Properties, Tenants and Contacts forms using the “Options” button at the top of each form. This can be useful for comparing information. There is an additional web page background color that can be set in the Properties form Web Post tab. The Webervations Member ID can now be specified in the Properties form Interfaces page for cases where the Member ID is different than the User Name. Various changes were made to the posted web pages in order to pass Html and CSS compliance standards. Cleaning Schedules now exclude the Booking Status. An option was added to the Housekeeping Report to Show Booking Status. A new top Toolbar button was added which will Resize the screen to the currently Active form and Keep it on Top of other applications. This is useful for copying information from other applications without having to manually resize and move multiple windows. An example is when entering a Booking or Tenant information from a scanned contract image. You no longer need to restart the program after changing System Preferences for them to take effect.
8/11/2009 v.1.0.1847 – Holidays specified in System Preferences can now include line breaks for easier editing. When deleting Bookings an additional confirmation is now required. Bookings can now be “synchronized” with Outlook Calendar for All Current and Future bookings using a new option in the Bookings form Options button. This allows multiple users to synchronize their Outlook Calendars. Bookings Notes are now also included in the Outlook Calendar entries. There is a new LineBreak() function for Expression Placeholders in Templates. The Housekeeping report now includes Un-scheduled Cleanings for check-out dates that fall in the selected date range. The %PreviousBooking% and %NextBooking% Placeholders now exclude the Tenant Name. You can include the Tenant Name by using the new Placeholders for Previous/Next Tenant Name. This allows tenant names to be included or excluded in Cleaning Notices. Months in the Bookings form Timeline grid are delineated with vertical lines for easier viewing. The Floating Calendar will now bring Outlook to the front when reading email inquiries from Outlook to make it easier to delete or move inquiries once they have been replied to. Also, when replying to Plain Text inquiries in Outlook such as VRBO inquires, the email format is now automatically switched to Html format if the Template is defined in Html format. When editing external Html templates, you can now select to edit them using Word. You can now Double-click on the Tenant column in the Bookings form timeline in order to view that tenant in the Tenant form. The Housekeeping Cleaning Schedule Report can now generate a list of Check-ins and Check-outs by date. This can be useful for planning the cleaning dates. Minor changes to Bookings Chart Detail Report to remove empty space.
7/9/2009 v.1.0.1832 – Additional cleanings can now be scheduled for existing bookings and included on the cleaning schedules. See Help topic on “Additional Cleanings”. The current Tenant and other booking information is now shown at the top of the Bookings form. The Document Templates and Properties forms also show the currently selected item at the top. The Document Templates form has a new “Active” checkbox. This allows sorting Inactive Templates at the bottom of the list and can be used rather than deleting templates that you wish to keep. The PDA Sync file now includes the Other Info and Memo notes from Bookings. The Bookings Chart detail report has a new option to include Commissions on the report. Also, the Export to Excel option on both the Bookings Chart and Commissions reports will generate separate worksheets for each type of data (Booking info, Rental Fees, Commissions and Payments). These can be used when preparing spreadsheets for Travel Insurance reporting. The Timelines in the Bookings form have been expanded from 84 to 128 days/units. They also have a new new column header. Cleaning dates can now be scheduled by setting the new “Clean on” date in the Bookings form Workflow 2 page. This date can be set automatically to the Check-out date by selecting the new option in the Properties form Misc page. There is also a new Placeholder for the “Clean on” date. Future changes to Tax Rates can now be specified and automatically applied for future bookings and quotes. The new tax rates and effective date can be specified in the Properties form by clicking the new button next to the current Tax Rates. A new “Cleaned” checkbox was added to the Bookings form Workflow 2 page, which can be used to mark the scheduled cleaning as being completed. This Cleaned status is also shown in the Housekeeping report and Cleaning schedules, and a “Not Cleaned” pre-defined Filter was added to the Bookings form. Corrected an issue with the Property Statement for multiple properties to foot net amounts to the summary total.
6/10/2009 v.1.0.1816 – When synchronizing bookings with Outlook Calendar, the Booking notes: Other Info, Memo1 and Memo2 are now included in the calendar entries in case these contain guest arrival and departure information. Updated the Floating Calendar to accommodate HomeAway PM inquiry changes. The default Booking Status for new bookings can now be defined at the Property level, using the new drop-down on the Properties form Misc page. Important: Credit Card CVV codes are no longer stored as per accordance with PCI compliance (see article). This update removes any existing CVV codes from Tenants and recommends removing any from Bookings. This also follows Webervations’ recent removal of CVV codes. When processing payments for multiple bookings, the Web Form Assistant now automatically appears in front of the Bookings form. There are new “Duplicate this Expense” and “Duplicate this Property” functions in the Expenses and Properties forms under the Options buttons. These can be used to quickly duplicate an existing Expense or an entire Property along with Rates, Fees, Commissions, etc. A new Placeholder option [Set Variable] has been added which allows creating user-defined variables within the templates. These are helpful when using complex expressions. The Placeholder option [NoLineBreak] was also added, which can be used to remove unwanted line breaks after Placeholders. This is useful with conditional expression placeholders. Also, corrected an issue with the Bookings form timeline grid. The Reply feature in the Floating Calendar now allows a Discount or Adjustment to be specified on-the-fly to be included in the quote. The Property Statement report will now exclude the Lodge Tax column if the Tax name is set to “N/A” in System Preferences. Inactive Properties are now at the bottom of the Property selection list in the Bookings form.
5/9/2009 v.1.0.1795 – There is a new option in User Preferences to “Show Email Preview form” or not. This option is available if you have selected either of the Mapi email methods. Rental Rates can now be defined once for one or more properties and shared by other properties with the same (or similar rates), using the new “Use Rates for” selection in the Properties form Misc page. This feature also allows overlaying additional rates for individual properties if needed. A column was also added to the Properties form list grid to show these selections. The Property Rates report was also updated. Templates for Inquiry Replies and Generic Emails can now optionally generate a document as with other types of templates. This allows including attached documents such as rental agreements along with inquiry replies generated from the Floating Calendar. Other improvements were made with managing the forms displays. You can now specify text in the Ad Source form to search for in emails in order to automatically set the Ad Source when creating bookings from the Floating Calendar’s Paste All button. The Placeholder option [Proper] was added which can be used to upper-case the first character of names and other text values. The Import Data feature can now import Properties (in addition to Tenants and Contacts), for use when migrating data from previous systems. The Booking Charts report has 2 new options for creating 3D graphical charts (in addition to the 2D charts). See example here. Another new option creates a 3D Property Comparison Chart. See example here. Rate Quotes now exclude the Security Deposit and Tax lines if they are 0 (rather than showing 0.00).
4/18/2009 v.1.0.1776 – The Post Transactions form now allows removing multiple transactions in addition to single transactions. Document Templates created in Word 2007 can now be saved as the default “.Docx” file type. This also works with Word 2007 “Forms” with Fill-in fields. The Booking Chart detail report has a new option to only show the selected Rental Fees. A total for the fees shown has also been added to the report. This can be used to obtain a total for one or more fees. In addition, indicators were added to the report for each fee, which shows if the fee was Sales taxed, Lodge taxed or flagged as Revenue. A new checkbox was added to the Floating Calendar for specifying if you wish to Move the cursor to the top of the email after creating the Reply in Outlook. Minor improvements to the Property Statement report were made. The Tenants form now closes automatically when selecting “Create New Tenant” from the Bookings form Tenant selection button. When posting Property Group web pages, a new Group Cleaning Schedule web page is also posted, which provides a consolidated online cleaning calendar. See example here. Also, the format of the web Cleaning Schedule has changed slightly to accommodate the new Group Cleaning Schedule web page. The Properties form now includes “Property Group” and “Location” pre-defined Filters in the “Show” drop-down list. In the Document Templates form, a Reminder can now be specified in the Note field, which will notify you each time the template is generated.
4/6/2009 v.1.0.1761 – You can now create Available Property Lists from the Floating Calendar, as you can with the “Available?” feature in the Bookings form. To do so, click on “Property” at the top of the Floating Calendar. Corrected a minor issue with the “Find Text in Any Field” (F4 key) feature. This feature now also remembers the last search text specified. You can now do initial imports of Tenants and Contacts directly from Excel spreadsheets, rather than first saving them to another file format. Updated the Floating Calendar’s “Paste All” feature so that it can decipher more date variations in VRBO inquiries. It can also now read HomeAway PM inquiries (in addition to normal HomeAway inquiries). Changed the status color for Canceled bookings. Property drop-down selections are now color-coded by property. The Search for Available Properties feature can now search for Properties with specific Amenities also. The Send Bulk Email option in both the Tenants and Contacts forms can now optionally send bulk emails directly from within the program using Generic Email type Templates. The Bookings Chart report has a new option to “Show Payments Received”. Reply template Placeholders were added to access the Tenant Name, Phone and Email fields specified in the Floating Calendar. All numeric type fields with calculator-style entry were improved. The Check-in and Check-out date selections in the Bookings form and Floating Calendar have new speed settings for 1 Week and 1 Month. Htm type Document Templates created in Word are now automatically converted to Web Page, Filtered.
3/12/2009 v.1.0.1741 – The Floating Calendar can now read email inquiries directly from Microsoft Outlook without having to copy the email to the Windows Clipboard. To use this feature, check the checkbox next to the “Clear” button and then click “Paste All” in the Floating Calendar. This option will also create email Replies in Outlook automatically when clicking the “Reply” button in the Floating Calendar. The Interface page of the Properties form has a new field for specifying a list of Property IDs and/or Name text for automatically identifying which property an email Inquiry is for. This eliminates the need to select the Property when using the “Paste All” feature in the Floating Calendar. These two features make it even easier to reply to Rental Inquiries than ever before! The Document Templates form has a new button which can “Import the Latest Sample Templates”, in order to get any new or updated Sample Templates, which are periodically included in program updates. When specifying the Tenant in the Bookings form, the Tenant’s default number of Adults, Childs and Pets is now copied to the Booking. The Web Cleaning Schedule format has been improved. Corrected an issue in the Property Statement report totals by property when the New Page option is deselected. A new Received date was added to the User-defined Doc on the Bookings form Work Flow page. This can be used for example, when you need to request approval from owners. Clicking on “Show” in the form toolbars will now Requery the Selected Filter. In the Floating Calendar you can now limit the list of Properties in the drop-down selection to only properties which are available for the selected dates, by clicking on “Property” next to the Property selection (very useful, try it!). Corrected an issue on the Expenses report when selecting the Cleaning Expense Only option. A new privilege was added to User Security for allowing Backup/Restore.
3/4/2009 v.1.0.1726 – The main screen size is remembered between sessions. Corrected an issue with the Print Option in the Bookings form. In the Workflow 2 page of the Bookings form you can now select the cleaner “-Do Not Clean-” in order to exclude this booking from cleaning schedules. The Bookings Chart Report can now be limited to a selected list of Rental Fees. A new “Base On” option has been added to Rental Fees, which applies the fee “If the Security Deposit is 0”, as in Security Waiver Insurance fees. The default Rate Type (Daily, Weekly, etc) for new bookings can now be set in the Properties form Misc page. The graphical Bookings Calendar has a new option to specify the Maximum number of Months per Page. The HomeAway Calendar interface has a new option to “Import” booked dates from HomeAway as “Blockout” Bookings. This can be useful if Owners or other parties are updating your HomeAway calendars also. See the Help topic “HomeAway Calendars Interface” for more info. The “Expense Fees and Commissions” heading on the Property Statement report has been changed to “Booking Expenses”. A new button shortcut for Posting Imported Reservations has been added above the grid in the Bookings form. Direct links to specific Help topics have been added in various forms.
2/13/2009 v.1.0.1711 – The Property Statement report can now be run for date ranges based on Booked Nights, with the rental revenue and commissions allocated accordingly. (Please see notes in the Help topic on Property Statement report). The State field in various forms is no longer limited to 3 characters so that you can optionally enter the names of the foreign counties or states. Backspacing at the beginning of fields will not jump to the previous field now. The “Print this Record” option in the the Options button at the top of forms can now print multiple records also. The folder selection dialog used in various places has been updated to work with Vista 64bit OS. A new option was added to the Property Statement report to Page Break on each Property. In the Bookings form Timeline grid, Right-clicking on Property or Tenant will open the selected form. Notes entered on default Property Commissions are now copied to new Bookings. An automatic check for new program updates is performed every few days and displayed on the bottom line of the main screen. Monthly Extension bookings are now created with a default checkout day of the same day in the following month. Multiple Commissions for the same Resource can be differentiated using the new “#” column in Commissions if necessary. A new System Preference was added to use the Check-Out Date when Posting Accounting Transactions. Fixed an issue with Funds on Account on the Property Statement report.
1/20/2009 v.1.0.1695 – You can now specify a fee based on the number of Pets which is then calculated automatically. The Floating Calendar will also accept the number of Pets so that the Fee can be included in Rate Quotes. A new “Quoted/Tentative Followup Reminder Date” has been added to the Bookings form Work Flow page. Along with this, you can specify a default number of Days in the Properties form Misc page, in order to automatically calculate this reminder when creating new bookings. The purpose of this reminder is for those who wish to be reminded to follow up on Quoted or Tentative bookings. When setting the Next Payment date in the Booking form, there are three new options for setting the next payment amount. When viewing Alerts, the Print button now creates a formatted report that can be printed or emailed. The Expense Report can now be limited to selected Vendors. There is a new “My Photo” specification in the User Preferences. This can used for a self portrait or company log and included in various Templates and Emails using the %MyPhoto% placeholder. Some improvements were made to the Filtering features. The Expenses form can now include Planned/Scheduled Work, including Reminders. This provides the ability to schedule planned maintenance and other types of repairs. The Expense Report has also been updated. The Web Form Assistant can now be used with the PPI payment processing website (Check the new checkbox on the Browser form to allow popups). The Expense Report has a new option to only show Cleaning Expenses. The Ad and Referral Sources report now includes the Date the booking was Entered. You can select on this date too. The Pay Fees and Commissions form now exlcudes Cleanings for bookings with less than a Booked status. The Floating Calendar has a new “Clear” button.
1/5/2009 v.1.0.1678 – The “Available?” button on the Bookings form can now use Templates to generate formatted lists of available properties (including photos), which are available for a specific date range. See Example Here. All Html formatted Replies can now be viewed without pasting them into the email first, by using the “Show me” button when generating replies. The Auto Email Report Templates can now use Html Formatted Email text. A new Placeholder %PropertyPhoto1%, allows dynamically inserting photos in both Word Docs and Html Docs/Emails. It can be used with the new Placeholder Option [Width=xxx] to specify the width of the Photo. There is another new Placeholder Option [Photo] which allows easily inserting any image in Word Docs and Html Docs/Emails. The speed of converting Html formatted Replies to the Clipboard has been improved. Some improvements were made to both the Word Document and Html Sample Agreements in the Sample Files folder. When using the “Copy Rate Quote to Clipboard” feature from the Booking form’s Options button, you can now select either Html or Plain Text format. You can also select any of the Reply Templates as well. In the Floating Calendar’s “Fill Clipboard With” button you can also select either Html or Plain Text format. All Note fields now show Hyperlinks if they contain web addresses. The Reason and Ad Source codes now have “-Not Specified-” options which can be selected in Reports. There is a new “Doc Photo” field in the Properties form which can be used to specify a smaller sized photo for use in Document and Email Templates in order to limit the size of generated documents and emails. Resolved an issue with Templates using Word 2007. Photos in the Properties form are now isometric rather than stretched to fill the frames.
12/19/2008 v.1.0.1665 – This update includes serveral enhancements to the Document Templates: You do not need to save Word Html templates as “Web Page Filtered” files. You can save them as “Web page”. Also, you can create both Email Text and Reply Text in Html format. This allows formatting emails with bolding, tables, photos, etc. In addition, your email message Templates can be a saved “.Htm” file created in Word or another editor. See Example Here. To use this feature, check the option on the Email text page of your Template and select the new Email setting in the Preferences form for “Extended Mapi”. Other improvements include a new Placeholder Option called [FullPath]. This allows you to specify “dynamic” photos in your Html Templates. For example, including the following Html tag in your Html Template will insert the first photo for the current property: <img src=”%Prop.Photo1Path%[FullPath]”>. Posted web pages for Property and Property Groups have been enhanced. See examples Here. You can now use Password Protected Word Forms in your Templates (a nice way to send agreements). There is a new “Password” field for this on the Document page of the Templates form. The Floating Calendar’s “Paste All” feature has been updated to recognize the new Inquiry Reply format from VacationRentals.com. The Booking Chart Detail Reports now allow selecting dates based on “Nights Booked”. Booking Reminders in the Bookings form are now cleared when changing the Property.
12/11/2008 v.1.0.1650 – Product name changed to “Vacation RentPro”. The Property Web pages format has been improved. There is a new option to “Skip Photos” when posting property web pages, in case you’ve only changed the text or layout and not the photos. There is a new “Format” option in the Property Groups Web Post tab, which allows posting group pages with or without embedded calendars. Or you can post both formats with links to switch back and forth. See examples Here. A new Group Page Summary fields was added to the Properties form Web page. When Checking for New Updates from the Tools menu, and a new update is available, you do not need to re-run the application “As Administrator” in order to install the update. The program does this for you now. The Rates drop-down selection in the Bookings excludes rates for previous periods. Forms have a new look with more color to help offset the entry fields. The Booking Status drop-down now has colors for each status. There are 2 new Booking Statuses which can be used for your own reporting purposes if needed (Closed 2, Closed 3). The Graphical Booking Calendar report has 2 new options to show the calendar without any text, and with just the Property names. The Commissions Report now allows selecting commission recipients. Improvements to the Bookings grid on startup.
12/2/2008 v.1.0.1642 – The icon image used for the application desktop shortcut has a different file name. Note, if you’ve created any shortcuts manually, you may need to change the icon by right-clicking the shortcut and selecting Properties. New Placeholder Options have been added including: [ShortDate], [NoDash] and [NoComma]. These can be useful with the AutoFill Payment Processing feature. Script Errors are now ignored in the Web Form Assistant. Also, you can now keep the Web Form Assistant open and logged into your Payment Processing site in order to process a different booking. There are several new Functions available for the %Expression% Placeholder (See Help). The Floating Calendar now shows the color of the selected property. Expression Placeholders in Html templates now ignore html characters that Word inserts behind the scenes. The Available date range bars in the Bookings timeline now overlay booked dates. The Housekeeping Report now includes Number of Adults/Childs/Pets for the Arriving tenant in case the Cleaner needs to include extra towels, etc. The Alerts view popup now shows a portion of the Reminder text without having to open the Booking. The Property has an additional “Info3” note field. Some form display improvements were made. There is a new checkbox in the Floating Calendar to specify Auto Reply when selecting a Template. Corrected a minor issue with the Property Statement and Occupancy reports.
11/14/2008 v.1.0.1624 – A new Template type called “Owner Agreement” as been added and can be generated and sent from the Documents tab in the Properties form. This can be used to generate and send Management Agreements to Owners. When creating your template, you can use the sample Owner Agreement html file in the Sample Files folder. In the Floating Calendar you can now go directly to the Properties from by clicking on the word “Property” next to the Property selection. The Billing Info form now includes the Property Name in the Comment field for pasting into Virtual Terminals. A new “Active” flag was added to the Tenants form. A new Expense Report was added to the Reports selection. In report headers, property selections are now kept to one line. There are two new placeholders to show Additional Tenants. A new and exciting feature has been added to VRP which provides “Auto Form Fill” for Payment Processing web sites. (Note, AutoFill requires a 3-user license). This feature is available from the “$” sign button on the Bookings Billing Info page. It allows you to fill in the credit card transaction details with the click of a button. Please see the Help topic on Payment Processing. You can see a video of this feature on the Slide Show page. A new placeholder option ([ReverseName]) has been added which reverses Last Name, First to First Last. The Property Statement and Occupancy reports now include a report for each property that has no bookings when multiple properties are selected.
10/22/2008 v.1.0.1596 – The Bulk Email options in both the Tenants and Contacts forms have been updated so that the lists of email addresses can be processed in “batches”. This is useful since most email servers have a maximum limit on the number of emails addressed in a single email. There is a new feature in the Tenant form Options for “Collecting Prospect Tenants from Websites”. This can be used to quickly add prospect Tenants or other business leads for purposes of sending bulk email to market your properties. This feature requires a 5 user license. There is a new “Ad Notes” field in the Tenants form which is used to record both Prospect Collection Info and Bulk Advertising Emails Sent. Minor changes were made to reports for spacing and margin requirements on some printers. The status of “Refund Due” in the Bookings form now has its own display color. A message with instructions is now displayed when an OLE email error in Vista occurs due to the program running in a different security zone than your mail program. You can now associate “Additional Tenants” with a Booking by using a new “Right-arrow” button next to the Tenant selection on the Bookings form. This can be used for example, when you wish to track multiple parties who are paying different portions of a booking, or any other purpose. Zoom Edit buttons have been added to the Phone and Email fields on the Tenants and Contacts forms.
10/8/2008 v.1.0.1585 – The Rental Info page of the Bookings form has two new options to “Ignore Check-in or Check-out Alerts”. These can be used for example, to turn off Alerts for Owner Bookings or Extended bookings. The order of Tenant Names in the Tenants form is now case insensitive. Extension Bookings are now created with the same rate, number of guests, and Ad Source as the original booking. The rows in the Bookings form timeline have been slightly expanded vertically for easier viewing. There is a new “Reason” drop-down selection in the Bookings form, along with a new “Reasons form” for maintaining different Reasons you wish to track. These can be used to track why tenants booked or why they canceled (ie. Wedding, Postponed trip, etc). The Bookings Chart and Follow-up reports have been updated to allow selecting and reporting Reasons on reports. The date selection popup calendars have been updated to show the currently Selected number of days. The Bookings form date popup also allows selecting Check-in date plus Number of days, as in the Floating Calendar. “Zip” code fields have been changed to “Postcode”.
9/23/2008 v.1.0.1567 – The Ad Source Report now allows selecting which Ad Sources to include on the report. There is a new “$” sign button on the Bookings form Billing Info page, which displays the Tenant Billing info in a “Floating” window on top of your Browser. This can be used in conjunction with a new User Preference (Options 2 page) field called “Payment Processing website” for specifying your Virtual Terminal or Payment Processing website URL. This makes it easy to use any Virtual Terminal or Payment Processing merchant you choose by allowing you to view, copy and paste the billing info into your payment processing form. The graphical Bookings Calendar now includes the user-defined Holidays on the Calendar. In the Properties form “Misc” page, you can now specify the default booking option for “Keep Web Calendar Dates Open”. This option was recently added to the Bookings form. The Bookings form Options button has an option that will now do all 3 web calendar update and interface functions for the current Booking’s Property. The Property Statement Report now sorts by Check-in Date, rather than Book ID.
9/11/2008 v.1.0.1552 – A new Booking Status called “Canceled w/Revenue” as been added. This can be used for example, to denote Canceled bookings which have revenue that you wish to record. Such as when a Tenant has canceled a booking after your refund cutoff date. This status can be selected on various reports in order to include this revenue. When clicking on dates in the Floating Calendar or the Bookings form, a new option was added to “Show Rates for this Date”. The Help for the Query Designer has been updated to a new format. The application shortcut icons have been changed. On the Work Flow page of the Bookings form you can now specify to “Keep Web Calendar Dates Open”. This can be used in cases where you do not want to block out dates on your Web Calendars for a particular booking. The Post Web Calendars function has a new option to post only “Changed” calendars, thus making the calendar updates much faster when posting all calendars. The system keeps track of the last calendar posted and the web location it was posted to. A minor issue was fixed when posting Property Groups where the Property web site specified is different than the Group web site.
9/5/2008 v.1.0.1545 – The Floating Calendar has a new option to “Set Check-in Date and Number of Nights”. The calendar now also highlights selected dates and shows overlapping booked dates in Red. The Bookings form date selection calendar has a new option to “Move Check-In Date”, which allows moving the booking forwards or backwards. The Timeline grid header has also been changed to help identify weekend days. Web calendars and property pages now show the date and time they were posted. There is a new “Occupancy Report” with many options, including whether to show average revenue per booked nights, and the ability to merge properties. You can now create Queries from the booking form that include the Booking Payments table. The Today Line in the Bookings Timeline now overlays on “top” of bookings for easier visibility. The Bookings Calendar has two new options to: Set the Maximum Lines per Cell, and to Show Check-out Days. Using these and turning off the Compact Calendar option will show Properties on a straight line across the week with more or less info that you wish to show.8/29/2008 v.1.0.1536 – The Bookings form Timeline has a new “Go To” button allowing you to jump forwards or backwards 1 to 6 months. The Paste All button in the Floating Calendar has been updated to accommodate VRBO’s new format for email inquiries. A new “Base Fee % On” option has been added to the Rental Fees, and is called “Nights after Min Days”. This allows adding discounts or fees for “each night” reserved “after” the specified Minimum Days. The Linked Bookings feature has been enhanced for pre-checking double-bookings. A notice is now displayed in the Bookings form when the Check-in date is set to over 1 week prior to the current date. In the Properties form Misc page you can now set default reminders based on the Check-out date (in addition to Check-in date). The Property Rates form has a new button to allow Copying and Deleting Rates for a specified Year. This is helpful when updating rates for new years and optionally, purging rates for old years. When saving a Canceled or Declined booking, which has open reminders, a message is displayed with an option to remove the reminders. Holidays in the various calendars are now displayed in Red.
8/16/2008 v.1.0.1522 – Commissions can now be based on different amounts within each booking. For example, a commission to the rental agent can be 10% of Rent, and the commission to the manager can be 10% of Rent + Fees + Security Deposit. Several customers have asked for this so we decided to provide this feature. There is a new Cleaning Note on the Bookings form Work Flow 2 page, which can be used to specify special instructions to the Cleaner. This note is included in the Housekeeping schedule and the Online Cleaning calendars. It can also be included in Templates using the %CleaningNote% placeholder. The Pay Fees and Commissions form has been changed so that Cleaning Fees now use a transaction date of the Booking checkout date. Other minor changes have been made to the form also. The format of printed Vouchers have changed slightly also. A new Language option for Australia has been added to System Preferences. Also State fields have been expanded to 3 characters. The top toolbar now includes abbreviations. FTP backups now include any sub-folders in the Vrpdata\MyFiles folder. There are 2 new hotkeys you can use (F4 and F5) while in the forms which have Filter features. See the “Filter” button at the top of the forms for which functions these apply to. (These are two very handy functions, in case you’re not aware of them already). You can now execute various forms using Alt+… hotkeys. For example Alt+B will open the Bookings form. Also, the “Esc” keyboard key will now close the currently active form.
8/6/2008 v.1.0.1511 – For new users who have existing Tenants or Contacts & Resources from a previous system, these can now be imported from Excel spreadsheets. A Country field has been added to the Properties form. In the Properties form Photos page, you can now click on the thumbnails in order to view the photos. Invoices printed from the Bookings form Options button now include payments received. Selecting Check-in and Check-out dates in the Bookings form can now be done in a single popup calendar. Template Placeholders for Number of Adults, Children and Pets have been added. The “Available?” button in the Bookings form can now show a date range without applying a filter. Corrected an issue when selecting Contacts in the Email preview form, and also with the Reminder alerts and Webervations import. The Graphical Booking Calendar has a new option for showing Available days in color. Also, properties on the calendar are lined up horizontally across weeks.
7/14/2008 v.1.0.1495 – By using the Expenses form you can now maintain an “Owner Funds on Account” balance, which will show on the Property Statement report as “Funds on Account”. You can also add “Payments to Owner” transactions, which will also show on the Property Statement report. See Help for more info. The Expenses form has been upgraded to show a “Running Total”, and also allow selecting pre-defined Filters and Property Filters. The Floating Calendar can now automatically parse out the Tenant Name, Phone, Email, Requested Dates, and Number of Adults/Children from email inquiries in one click. See the new Clipboard button labeled “All” on the Floating Calendar. This feature works with inquiries originating from HomeAway.com, VRBO.com, VacationRentals.com and other sites, making it easier to create new bookings. Credit Card information is now “Hidden” from view by default. A new password in the System Preferences can be set in order to allow Viewing and Editing of Credit Card information in forms. This helps decrease the risks when people walk away from their computers, or laptops are stolen, etc. The Property Statement report now shows Check-out date if the Check-out date was used in the selection criteria. Both the Tenants and Bookings forms have a new “Billing Notes” field. A new System Preference for “CC Password Option” was added. New Bookings will now default the property if you have only one property.
6/29/2008 v.1.0.1488 – HomeAway.com calendars (formerly Rentors.org) can now be automatically checked for accuracy, for all properties, at the click of a button. Any required changes are listed in a window that is viewable while you are updating your calendars. This allows you to easily keep your HomeAway calendars up to date, and is a useful feature if you use their calendars. See the Help topic “HomeAway Calendars Interface” for more info. (Note, this feature requires at least a 2-user license). Also, Web Availability Calendars posted by VRP now have a new hidden tag containing availability info. This allows availability info to be easily retrieved by other online sites and servcies. Currently, JustPerfectVacationRentals.com has an interface utilizing this capability in order to read VRP availability info into their system. The Bookings form timelines were improved to speed up the display. Web Availability Calendars will now exclude the “Tentative” legend when the Property is set to not show Tentative bookings in the calendar. All display messages can now be easily copied to the Windows Clipboard using a new icon or the Right-click menu. A new User Preference for Envelope Printer Alignment was added.
6/18/2008 v.1.0.1478 – All Reports will now generate a report when the selection criteria returns no results, rather than just displaying a message. The Floating Calendar’s Send Future Bookings email features have been changed to display the email form in the main application window, and some features have been enhanced. The Property Statement for Owner report has a new option to “Group by Property Owner”. This option will sort properties by owner and start the page number at 1 for each owner. This new option also works with the “Auto Email reports” feature, thereby, allowing you to send only one report/email per property owner, rather than separate emails for each property. You can now specify the default “Tenant Type” in the User Preferences, which will be used when new Tenants are added. The Property Statement for Owner report has a new option to “Show Taxes Collected”. Note, that the Booking Status and Check-out date columns have been removed from the report. A fix was made to the translation of Placeholders in Word Docs. A new option for posting both the Web Calendars and Interfaces with one click has been added in order to combine these functions. In the Bookings form, the Next Payment Due date is set to today if it calculates to a previous day.
6/8/2008 v.1.0.1465 – Fee names shown in templates (using the %FeesList% or %FeeNames% placeholders) have been expanded to always show the long Fee Name (instead of the Short Fee Name when a Note is added to the Fee). Please check the column alignment in your Templates if you use these placeholders. Booked dates shown in the Floating Calendar are now automatically updated if the calendar is currently open while Saving or Deleting Bookings in the Bookings form. The Property Fees form has a new “Short Note” column which allows you to specify a default note for fees which are flagged to be automatically added to new bookings. The “Capture Image” feature (see small Camera button in the main toolbar) now captures the screen and forms images as a .jpg file and provides an option to email the image. Placeholders in Word Doc Templates can now insert large blocks of text such as Note fields, etc. The Filter Option for “Find text in Any Field” in the Bookings form now searches Tenant fields also, making it easier to search for bookings based on Tenant email addresses, notes, etc. New Keyboard shortcuts: Alt+F and Alt+O have been added to all forms which have the “Filter” and “Options” toolbar buttons, allowing these features can be accessed quickly without using the mouse. Negative payments will now export to QuickBooks. The Floating Calendar is now minimized automatically when previewing generated documents.
5/21/2008 v.1.0.1454 – All email functions now provide the option of saving sent emails and attachments into a “Docs folder” stored separately for each individual Booking, Tenant or Contact. There is also a new button added to each of these forms allowing you to open the Docs folders in order to view, copy, add or delete saved emails or any other files. The Bookings form popup calendars for both Check-in and Check-out dates now show color-shaded days pertaining to other bookings for the specified property. This provides another means to easily see other booked dates while selecting dates for the current booking. The “Options” button in the Bookings, Tenant, and Contacts forms has been moved to the toolbar at the top of the forms. There is a new “Flat Rate” rate type which can be selected in the Bookings form “Rate Override” or when Replying to Inquiries in the Floating Calendar. This allows you to specify a flat rate regardless of the number of nights booked.
5/13/2008 v.1.0.1447 – The Bookings form has a new “Available?” button above the grid, which provides another means to quickly search for available dates in a specified range across multiple properties. This also allows printing or pasting into emails – the list of available properties along with their descriptions, rates, and available dates. See the Help topic on “Searching Available Dates” for more info. The Floating Calendar now shows Tentative status bookings in shades of Red. Actual/confirmed bookings are shown in other colors in order to help identify dates that are “open or Tentative” vs. Unavailable. Holding the mouse over the Status column in the Bookings grid now shows the Total Sale amount of the bookings without having to open the bookings. There is a new pre-defined filter in the Bookings form for “Payments Due”. There is also a new option in the Bookings “Options…” button to “Send emails for the Bookings listed”. This option can be used for example to send Payment Due notices for all Bookings with payments due. See the new Help topic on “Emailing Multiple Bookings”.
5/4/2008 v.1.0.1441 – Important: This version includes a new Template Placeholder and a change to an existing Placeholder. The new Placeholder is %ActualSale% which is the Total Sale of the Booking – and acknowledges any processing fee or discount based on if the booking is marked as ‘Paid by cash/check’. The existing %TotalSale% Placeholder was modified to now be the Sale amount plus the processing fee or discount – regardless if the booking is marked as ‘Paid by cash/check’ or not. Therefore, you may wish to change your templates that use the %TotalSale% placeholder to use %ActualSale% instead if you intend to show the “Actual Sale” (acknowledging if it was paid by cash/check or not). For Rate Quotes and Inquiry Replies you’ll want to continue using %TotalSale%. However, for Rental Receipts you’ll want to use %ActualSale%. Please review your Templates and change them as preferred. In addition, this version allows setting up Default Booking Reminders in the Properties form “Misc page”. Also, the standard Rate Quotes used in Word and Html Templates now suppress printing of the Adjustment and Processing Fee amounts if these are zero.
4/29/2008 v.1.0.1438 – In the Bookings form you can now Filter on the Fees and Commissions, either from the Fees page or Commissions page, or from the Query Designer. Report Previews are now shown in a separate window so that it is easier to close the preview display. You can now use the new %MyFilesFolder% Placeholder in the Property Photos page, too. After posting web pages, you can now Ctrl+click on the links shown in order to view the posted web pages. The last Backup folder selected is now remembered between backups and restores. In all Accounts/Categories you can now include the ‘Class’ to post transactions to in QuickBooks and Quicken (using ‘%C=Class’). The grids in both the Bookings and Properties forms now maintain the color coding of the currently selected row in the grid. There is a new option in the Bookings form ‘Options’ button which allows ‘Locking in the amounts’. This allows you to change the dates of the booking without effecting the total rent. This can be used for example when a tenant leaves early and you want to open up the dates without changing the total rent, and other scenarios.
4/16/2008 v.1.0.1426 – The Housekeeping Report can now be run for selected Cleaners. The Booking Chart report has a new option to show Tenant detail information. A new %MyFilesFolder% Placeholder exists for specifying the “MyFiles” disk folder location, which can be used to specify attachment files, logo or signature images in Document Templates. In the various Calendar popups, you can now jump forward or backward 6 months by clicking on the month name. Inquiry Reply template text can now optionally have Html formatting. A log of Backups and Restores is now kept by the system. You can view the Backup log in the File menu. There is a new User Preference for Days to Remind between doing Backups. There is a new User Preference for automatically changing the Booking status from Quoted to Tentative when the Agreement is sent. You can now embed %Expression% placeholders within %Expression% placeholders in Document Templates to allow more flexibility with expressions. The Booking Chart report has a new option to include Security Deposits in the Gross Receipts. You can now export to Excel Tenant and Contact info (See the Options button on both forms). This can be used for Word Mail Merge, etc.
3/26/2008 v.1.0.1412 – The Security Deposit Return Date can now be overridden in the Bookings form, and changed from the calculated date based on the Property setting. The Housekeeping Cleaning Schedule report now includes the number of Adults/Childs/Pets. FTP backups now also keep a copy of the backup zip file on the local drive. In the Bookings form, you can now designate the originating booking for “Extension bookings”. Extension bookings can be generated when tenants extend their stay by selecting a new option in the Bookings form’s “Options” button. See the Help topic on “Extending Bookings” for more info. When specifying “Special Check-in or Check-out Times” in the Bookings form, a new Red box is added to the beginning or end of the Bookings form timeline grid. There are two new options for “Printing Invoices” in the Bookings form’s “Options” button. See the Help topic on “Printing Invoices” for more info. When defining Htm formatted Document Templates you can now specify whether to convert the document to a PDF file or not. The Booking Chart reports has a new option to chart Total Sale in addition to Total Revenue.
3/12/2008 v.1.0.1403 – The Bookings form now alerts you when manually changing the Booking Status to “Fully Paid” when there is still an Amount Due. You can now resize the Bookings form “Horizontally”, in addition to vertically. It can also be “Maximized” to fill the entire screen. The columns in the Time Line grid can also be resized. There is a new option to “Base” Rental Fee percentages on – called “Security Deposit”. This can be helpful if you charge Tenants a Processing Fee on the Security Deposit separately. Also, you can now specify the default “Apply Processing Fee” setting in the Property Fees form. The Floating Calendar now allows you to choose the type of rate up front when clicking the “Create a New Booking” button. Added validation for JCB credit cards.
2/24/2008 v.1.0.1395 – This version adds the option to Interface with Webervations.com for Online Bookings & Interactive Availability Calendars. This requires that you already have an account and properties set up on Webervations.com. Currently, they charge $80/year, and this includes multiple “Units”. “Units” in Webervations is the same as Properties in VRP. Note, that the interface feature in VRP requires a 3 user or more license. You can upgrade to this license on the Purchase page if needed. We are excited about our relationship with Webervations and their experience in this area. We think this is a great site with outstanding features at a great price. Note, that Webervations is close to rolling out a new interface on their site that will provide more options and ease of use. Along with this, the Properties form has a new “Interface” page, for specifying your Webervations Account and interface options. Please see the new Help topic in VRP for “Online Booking Interfaces” for more info.
Click on the link below to view a sample of how you can have your Webervations Online Bookings site appear. You can add a link such as this to your existing Property web sites, (after changing the “memberid=” portion to be your Account ID).http://www.webervations.com/magic-scripts/resbook.asp?memberid=bbbinnresWebervations offers many different options for how you want your booking site to appear. You can learn about these options on their site.
2/18/2008 v.1.0.1387 – You can now designate that a Booking has a “Special Check-in or Check-out” by checking either of the checkboxes next to the Check-in and Check-out times in the Bookings form. This will also cause the Check-in and Check-out dates in the Bookings grid to show bright red in order to alert you when viewing the grid by Bookings. The Property Linking feature has been changed to only block out linked properties when the Booking status is set to “Signed Agreement” or higher and not “Closed”. This is so that bookings for related properties will only be created automatically when there is a firm booking. The Available Dates inserted in the Inquiry Reply templates (using the %AvailDates% Placeholder) now ignore Tentative bookings, meaning that Tentatively booked dates will show as available in Inquiry Replies. Fixed a recent issue with posting Property Group web pages. The Book ID column in the Bookings from grid now shows with a grey background for Linked bookings to help identify these at a glance. In the Query Designer and Filter Recall you can now modify someone else’s saved Filter if needed. The Commissions & Payments Received report now identifies cash and credit card payments seperately with totals for each. When sending emails from the Bookings form, you can now select to “Send Email without Document Preview”. The selection for “Show/Hide dates outside the current month” in the Floating Calendar is now remembered when rerunning the form.
2/7/2008 v.1.0.1382 – There is a new item in the Tools menu to View the Current Users and when they last accessed the application. When creating a new booking, any Credit Card info for the Tenant is now copied to the new booking. When specifying the Next Payment Due date in the booking, an alert message is displayed if the Credit Card expires before the payment due date. The Credit Card# in the Bookings form now shows the CC Type (as determined from the CC#). The Contact and Resources form now includes a “Country” field. This form also includes a new “Options” button, which allows printing envelopes and doing mass emailings for Contacts (the same as Tenants). If you use the option in the Floating Calendar’s Tenant Name field to include a mailing address after the Tenant Name, then you must now include the Country as the last item of the address. See Help on “Creating a Booking from the Floating Calendar” for more info. The Bookings form Filter drop-down selection at the top of the form now remembers the “most recently used selections”. This can be turned on and off by right-clicking on the drop-down box. Other minor changes.
1/20/2008 v.1.0.1377 – Holidays can now be specified in the System Preferences and will appear in all date selection calendars and the Floating Calendar. Individual Booking Fee amounts can now be referenced in the Templates by using a new Placeholder: “%Fee.FeeShortName.Amount%, where “FeeShortName” refers to an individual Fee’s Short Name. This is also available to “Inquiry Reply” Templates. See Help on Placeholders. There is a new option to “Exclude Cleaning Expenses” on the Property Statement reports. The download time when doing “Check for updates” is reduced to approx 50%. Also, you can now specify a disk location to download the updates to, and then subsequently install the updates from this location. This is helpful for network installations so that one user can download the updates to a network drive and then other users on the network can install from that disk location. A new “camera” button in the toolbar allows you to capture / print an image of the screen or the currently active form. The Property Statement report has a new option to “Show Rental Rates” on the report.
1/8/2008 v.1.0.1372 – There is a new feature to allow tracking “Owner Pre-payments” in the Commissions page of the Bookings form. Owner pre-payments are not actually commissions, but are deducted from the Net Due to Owner amount on the Property Statements. As such, the Property Statement report now includes a new section to show Owner Pre-payments and the amount deducted. Other minor changes: The Bookings form grid rows have been made slightly taller to make the grid a little easier to read. Also, the Filter of “Current & Future Bookings” now includes “previous bookings” as you click the “Back” buttons in the Timeline. The “Property” and “Reply” drop-down selections in the Floating Calendar have a new Right-click option to turn on and off the “Recent Items” list when making selections. The graphical Bookings Chart reports now include months in the selected date range which do not have bookings. There is also a new option on this report to specify how to calculate average nights and average rental revenue. Various reports have been modified to exclude “Linked bookings” generated by the recently added Property Linking feature.
12/26/2007 v.1.0.1361 – A new feature called “Property Linking” has been added. (Note, this feature requires a 3-user license or higher). This allows defining Parent/Child Property relationships for purposes of automatically blocking out dates when booking adjoining properties of a larger suite, and vice versa. Property relationships can be defined in the Properties form Misc page. Added a new Booking Status called “Declined” in order to provide the option of distinguishing between bookings that were only Quoted and then declined by the tenant, and those that were actually booked and later canceled. Use of this new status is optional. There is a new System Preference option called “Explicit Edit Mode”. Turning this mode “on” will require pressing an “Edit” button at the top of each form before making any changes. There is a new “Quoted Bookings” option in the Bookings form pre-defined Filters. Selecting this option automatically selects the “Show Quotes” check-box also. There is a new option in the Bookings form Options button to “Create a New Owner or Blockout Booking”. This provides a second and faster method to block out days for a property. Other minor changes.
12/20/2007 v.1.0.1357 – The Floating Calendar can now be “expanded” to show multiple months (up to 5) by clicking on the new Expand button. You can see an example here. Note that this requires additional overhead and can slow down the calendar slightly when changing months and properties. When adding new Payments in the Bookings form, the payment amount defaults to 0 now, not the amount due. This is so the prompt for clearing the Next Payment Due can be triggered when a payment in is made in full. The Cleaning Notice placeholders for %PreviousBooking, %ThisBooking% and %NextBooking% now include the number of Adults, Children and Pets. The Bookings form grid has been improved as follows: 1) Setting the Timeline Compression factor to 0 spreads out the days. 2) Columns for each day, (not just weekend days), now have alternate shading. 3) The Check-in and Check-out dates in the grid have been changed to the format as in “Dec 01”. These changes should make it easier to identify days in the grid and view more days in the timeline. Also, the grids in all forms are now a little more “mouse-wheel friendly” – by not requiring you to first click into the grid if the grid does not currently have the focus. There is a new Property Title field on the Properties form Web page for specifying the web page title bar text. Three new fields have been added to the Property Groups form: Title, Short Description and Long Description. These allow you to add text to the property group web pages, similar to the property pages. The field Right-click menus now show the Copy, Cut and Paste options. Fixed an issue when emailing multiple attachments using the Smtp option.
12/13/2007 v.1.0.1345 – The Floating Calendar has two new buttons to show the “Calendar Web Site” and “Property Web Site”. These provide a means to quickly access your calendars on Rentors.org, for example. The web sites can be specified in the Properties form. You can also specify the number of Adults / Children in the Floating Calendar now. This enables the inclusion of Fees based on Extra Persons in the generated Rate Quotes. The number of Adults/Children is also used when Creating a New Booking from the Floating Calendar. Added an option to the Bookings and Properties forms to specify whether Security Deposits are Commissionable or not. Implemented verification of current licenses for program updates. The uploading speed of multiple web pages has been increased. You can now post a Property Group web page (without reposting each individual property page). The maximum length of the Property Summary field has been increased. Other minor changes.
12/7/2007 v.1.0.1340 – For users who have a 5 user license or higher, there is a new option in the Tools menu for designing queries and reports using “any” tables in the database. This is for experienced SQL users who need to export or report on information for which the current system does not already provide. This update also includes other enhancements including the following: The Name of the various Note fields in the Bookings form can be customized in System Preferences so that the use of these notes can be specified. The Bookings Calendar Report has a new option to post the report directly to an FTP web site. The Bookings Calendar also has two more options for specifying what information to include on the Calendar (ie. Tenant Names). The FTP Backup System Preference can now include the backup filename. The Bookings form grid has two new buttons for Fast Backward and Fast Forward. The Bookings Chart Report can be run now directly from the Options button on the Bookings form. Fixed an issue with auto emailing reports and printing envelopes.
11/29/2007 v.1.0.1335 – You can now design and send your Document Templates as Microsoft Word documents. This provides a third option for creating Templates, and provides the benefits of: 1) Allowing you to format your documents anyway you want with images, footers, etc. 2) Allows you to make any special changes to the generated document before clicking the email Send button. See the Help topic on Word Document Templates. Fees can now be created for “Extra Persons” and “Extra Fees per night”. See the “Base % on” selection in the Rental Fees. The Extra Fees can be useful, for example, if the tenant wants to rent a parking space, or have coffee served each morning. Also, you can now specify the “Standard Number of Persons” and an amount to “Pay Cleaner per Extra Person” in the Property form’s “Misc” page. The extra amount to pay the cleaner will get calculated in the Bookings form automatically. The background image in the Floating Calendar has been changed to a gradient color. A few people said it was hard to read the the text over the image.
11/20/2007 v.1.0.1328 – Your Company Name, (optionally specified in System Preferences) is now included in the header of all reports. The Floating Calendar’s Property and Reply drop-down selections now “remember” the most recently selected items, and lists these at the top of the drop-down lists. This facilitates selecting commonly used items. Other minor changes.
10/31/2007 v.1.0.1325 – A new check-box has been added to the Rental Fees in order to designate whether or not to include each fee in Commission calculations. Previously, the “Is Revenue” check-box served this purpose. This allows you to designate these two categories independently now. The Property Statement report has been changed to: 1) simplify the columns shown, and 2) include Taxes and Processing Fees in the Total Revenue according to the designation in each Booking. This may or may not effect your Net Check to Owner amount, depending if you have Taxes and Processing Fees flagged as Revenue in your bookings. Please double-check your next Property Statement reports. A new Placeholder Option called [Value] is available. (See Help on Placeholders for more info). Also, you can now do date calculations on Placeholders. (ie. %CheckInDate%[-30] will insert a date 30 days prior to the check-in date). The graphical Bookings Calendar report has a new option to show the Check-In/Out times and Other Info. This allows the report to be “another” option for Housekeeping use. A new Placeholder %PaymentsList2% has been added which includes payment notes. Added a “Reply-to” tab to the Document Templates form, which allows overriding the default Reply-to for emails sent. The default Reply-to is specified in User Preferences. Web pages can now be posted to an FTP site without a folder name specified. A new Report Option was added to the Booking Chart Report, which shows Taxes Received.
10/24/2007 v.1.0.1320 – The Filter button’s “Find Text in Any Field” option now includes the Tenant name in the Bookings form and Vendor name in the Expense form when it searches. This Filter option can be very handy in case you haven’t used it before, and is available in all forms. A “Lock-in Rate” option has been added to the “Rate” drop-down box on the Bookings form. This new option “Locks-in” the rate regardless if the Booking dates change to a different Rate period. A new option has been added to the Bookings form (Options button) to allow changing the Rate Calculation Method for existing bookings. A new “Property Rates” report was added to the Reports menu. The application has been updated to the latest underlying technology released by Microsoft this month. New runtime libraries are included in this update. If you notice any issues, please report them to us promptly. Actual bookings now overlay any Quoted and Tentative bookings in the “View by Property” grid on Bookings form.
10/20/2007 v.1.0.1313 – You can now specify the Rental Rate Calculation Method for each Property. This determines how default rates are retrieved from the Property Rates table. The two methods are: “Use the Check-In date” or “Use an Average of rates that match the booking dates”. This allows rates for bookings that cross multiple rate date ranges to reflect the different rates. As before, you can always override the rates on Bookings or Inquiry Replies. Changing the rate method does not affect existing Bookings. See the Help topic on Property Rates for more info. The Bookings Chart Report was modified to show the Total Non-Revenue and Sale before Security Deposit in order to make it easier to reconcile. Fixed an issue with using images in Html Templates. Expanded the Short Note on Rental Fees by 1 character. This effects the Rental Fee lists returned by the %FeesList% and %FeeNames% Placeholders. Please check any custom Rate Quotes in your Templates to make sure they line up as expected. A new “Company Name” system preference was added which will display in the screen title bar. A new check-box option to “Show Quotes” was added to the Bookings form grid, allowing Quotes to be included in the list or not.
10/15/2007 v.1.0.1309 – Rental Fees can now be entered as a Percentage based on either Total Rent, Total Sale, or other options. This allows you to add fees such as Travel Insurance, which are calculated based on the total sale as opposed to the rental amount. The total for fees based on Total Sale will show on the Billing Info page of the Bookings Form as “Additional Fees”. Also, you can now specify a “Min and Max Days” for each Fee. This in effect “triggers” when the fee will be applied. For example, this can be used to add a fee (or issue a discount) if the number of nights occupied meets a certain criteria. In addition, both the Bookings, Properties, and Tenants forms now show who initially entered the Booking or Property, and when. These fields will be initially set to the “Last Update By” fields. The graphical Bookings Calendar includes a few minor changes regarding sorting and default property colors. The Calendar also has a new option to “Compact” the calendar or not. This basically removes space on the calendar for days that are not booked. An option was added to the Bookings form to “Create a New Booking for this Tenant”, which can be useful for month-to-month type bookings.
10/9/2007 v.1.0.1305 – This update requires a download and re-install of the software from the website, as the message shows when doing “Check for Updates”. A new 3rd-party component was purchased and incorporated in this version which allows generating PDF files from your Html Formatted Templates (if you use the Html Formatted Templates option). This has the benefit that any images used in your Html Templates will now be included in the PDF document file generated. Previously, if you used the Html option with images, you had to store and reference your images on the web. There is a new section in the Help on Html Document Templates. Please read this if you use this option. Also, going forward, each update will be installed using an “installer”, rather than unzipping and replacing files as it used to do. This will make it easier for us to include new components in the future.
10/4/2007 v.1.0.1302 – The Property Statement report has a new option to “Summarize Commissions”. A new System Preference to “Show Tenant in Cleaning Schedules” was added. (We recommend setting this to the default: “No”, so that Tenant names are not shown, unless necessary). A new Security Privilege is now available to “disallow” certain users or groups from running Financial type reports. See the Help topic on Security. Added a new Report to generate a graphical “Booking Calendar”, which can be run for one or more months and one or more properties at a time. See a sample here. You can also generate Booking Calendars from the Booking form’s “Options” button. Added a “Click to Refresh” button to the Availability and Cleaning Calendar web pages. A new predefined Filter was added to the Bookings form which will show “Current & Future Bookings excluding Quotes”.
9/25/2007 v.1.0.1298 – The Sales Tax and Lodging Tax fields displayed throughout the application can now be changed in the System Preferences to any tax names you like. In addition, the Tax Calculation Method can also be specified for each property. Note, this will not effect existing bookings unless the booking is changed to a different property. These changes are to accommodate Canadian and other tax requirements. Other changes include a new option in the Tenant form’s Options to allow printing Envelopes for one or more Tenants. There is also a new “My Return Address” field in the User Preferences form. Fixed a couple of issues involving Weekend Rate Adjustments, Mapi emails, and copying Templates. Added a pre-defined filter in the Bookings form to show “This Tenant’s Bookings” so you can quickly see all bookings for a tenant.
9/21/2007 v.1.0.1292 – Added user-defined “Booking Reminders” to the Bookings Workflow page. Any reminders that are due will be included in the Alerts popup. Also added a pre-defined filter in the Bookings form to show only bookings with Outstanding Reminders. The Floating Calendar now allows an optional “Address” to be included along with the “Tenant Name” (using semi-colons as delimiters), as in: “John Doe; 111 Some St; Some City, HI 99999”. See the Help topic on the Floating Calendar for more info. Added a new “Weekend Daily Rate” field to the Bookings form. Having this in the Bookings form allows you to see the weekend rate that was used and also allows you to override it. In addition you can include it in the Document Templates using two new Placeholders. The standard rate quote used in the agreements, and the rate quote used when replying to rental inquries have both been modified to include the Weekend Daily Rate if it is not zero. Note that previous bookings are not changed during the update and will not show the new weekend rate. However, you can set the weekend rate manually or by changing the rate, the check-in/out dates, property, etc., which will cause the weekend rate to be pulled in from the property rates. Also added a new option on the Tenants form to allow copying the Tenant’s name and address to the Windows Clipboard. This can be helpful for pasting the tenant’s info into a Word doc as when printing envelopes.
9/17/2007 v.1.0.1290 – Added a gradient color appearance to all forms. Added the ability to automatically email reports (ie. Property Statements) to multiple parties using a new Template type called “Auto Email”. See the instructions when creating a template of this type. Added an “Alert upon Booking” flag to the Tenant form, which will display an alert whenever new Bookings are made for the tenant. (Useful for flagging problematic tenants). Changed the Floating Calendar and the Show Available Dates option in the Bookings form to ignore “Quoted” bookings. Added an option to the Preferences to set the Default Bookings Status to use when new bookings are created. The Web Cleaning Schedule now includes the “Other Info” Booking Notes and the number of Adults/Children/Pets. This allows special instructions and the number of guests to be provided to the Cleaner in the cleaning schedule. Added calendar date popup buttons to the Property Rates form. Also rates can now be modified similar to a spreadsheet without having to Save each individual rate. Removed the requirement to “Refresh lists” on all drop-down selections when the underlying lists have been updated.
9/4/2007 v.1.0.1284 – Added 2 new Template Placeholders (%PreviousBooking.Fieldname% and %NextBooking.Fieldname%). These can be used to include any field from either the Previous Booking or the Next Booking in relation to the current booking into a document or email Template. Also added 2 new Placeholder Options ([FirstWord] and [LastWord]) which can be used to include just the First Name or Last Name of a Tenant, Contact, etc. Added 3 new fields to the Property Notes page, which can be included in the Document Templates for specifying the property web site and other info.
8/20/2007 v.1.0.1282 – The Data Restore was improved to remove any “read-only” attributes which can occur when files are backed up to “write-once” type CDs. Updated the Commissions Report to prevent duplicate records when Payment dates are selected.
8/08/2007 v.1.0.1281 – Added a new “Property Groups” form so that properties can be assigned to user-defined “groups” (in addition to “Locations”). In addition, you can now post Property Group Web pages, which list each property in the group along with links to each property’s web page. See a sample here. There is also a new “Property Web Page Format” option on the Properties form with an option that allows Availability Calendars to be “embeded” in Property Web pages. See a sample here. You can also specify the FTP information once for each Property Group rather than having to specify it for each Property. Also, the format of the Availability Web Calendars has changed to accommodate showing “In-line” calendars on web pages. Added a “Check-out date” selection to the Commissions report. Expanded the Tax Rate fields from 3 to 4 decimal places.
7/23/2007 v.1.0.1275 – Added Security Deposit Amount Returned to the Bookings Workflow page. Enhanced the Bulk Email List functions in the Tenants and Bookings forms so that you can track which email campaigns were sent and when. The Status column on the Bookings Grid now shows Alerts in Red when Payments are Due or Security Deposit Returns are due. Tested and verified integration with the new Outlook 2007 calendar. Corrected a grid display issue in the Document Templates form. Changed the Post Availability Calendar so that the “Avail Calendar Columns” preference cannot be set to zero. Added a new option to the Filter button at the top of forms to allow filtering on a specified text value contained in any text field. This is helpful for quickly locating tenants or other information based on text in a note field, name, etc. Fixed an issue with the Check for Updates function. Other minor changes.
6/26/2007 v.1.0.1258 – You can now schedule when to return security deposits by setting the new Number of Days to Return Deposits after Check-out in the Properties form. The Alerts popup will also notify you of past due or upcoming Deposit Return dates. The Follow-up Report has 3 new reporting options which show: Outstanding Security Deposits not Returned, Unpaid Cleaner Payments, and Balances Due from Tenants. The report can also be run based on Check-in or Check-out dates. The Bookings form now allows Inactive Properties to be selected in the Property Filter drop-down. A Country field was added to the Tenant form. Also, the option to build a list of tenant email addresses for mass mailings was fixed. The Options button in the Tenant form has a new option to “Show all Bookings for this Tenant”. Fixed minor issue when entering negative values. An option was added to both the Property Commissions form and Property Fees form to quickly copy records to another property. The Help file is now stored on the local drive, even in a network installation. This allows the Help to be opened faster on a network and avoids security issues that can prevent proper display of remote help.chm files.
6/13/2007 v.1.0.1250 – A new Housekeeping Cleaning Schedule report was added. This report has several options, and shows a prioritized view of cleaning schedules for the properties and time period selected. It also includes a separate Check-Ins list which can be used for a final “room check”. The Property Statement report has two new options to include the Gross Receipts and Adjustment & Fees or not. All forms now have the ability to quickly print out the current record and select which fields to include. This option is in the “Find” button at the top of all forms. All reports now have “dynamic date” ranges that can be selected (ie. This Year, Last Quarter, Last Year, Next 7 Days, etc.). New checkboxes were added to both the Bookings form and Properties form to specify whether Taxes Received and Processing Fees are to be included in Commission calculations. The Bookings Chart Detail report now optionally includes a list of the Rental Fees. Both the Booking Chart and Property Statement reports can now use either the Check-in or Check-out dates for report data selection. A duplicate booking check is not performed if the current booking status is less than “Tentative”. There is a new option in the Properties Web/Misc page for specifying the number of monthly columns to display in the Web Availability Calendar. Other minor changes.
6/4/2007 v.1.0.1243 – When entering partial payments, the Booking status changes to Partial Paid. The Alerts popup excludes purged bookings. The Bookings Chart detail listing report now also shows totals by month as well as property. There is also a new report option to include Revenue type fees in the total rent amount. Highlighting issue with drop-down boxes was fixed when running under Vista. The web Cleaning Schedules now show the “internal” booking status, rather than the “display availability” status, (which the Availability calendar displays). Minor changes to the Registration form and the version Update process.
5/24/2007 v.1.0.1235 – You can now change the final sale amount on bookings and bypass any processing fee calculations due to a new column in the Booking Fees page which allows turning off the processing fee or cash discount calculation. This can be useful if a tenant pays part of the booking with a credit card and part with a check. Another change in this release allows “Canceled” bookings to be posted to QuickBooks or Quicken with all the amounts reversed. This is only useful if you’ve already posted a booking which is later canceled. The Alerts popup screen now lets you go directly to any of the bookings listed that have alerts. There is a new field in the Properties form for setting the default number of days for Payment Due prior to Check-In. There is also a new button in the Bookings form on the Billings page for setting the Next Payment due. Some minor changes to the report preview, backup, restore, filtering and post transactions.
5/17/2007 v.1.0.1230 – A new reporting preview engine was implemented, which provides outputting reports to any of the following formats: PDF, Html, RTF, Excel, and image. A new charting engine was also implemented for the Booking Chart reports. The booking chart graphs now show both the nights rented and the rental revenue together on one page. Also, the graphs can be generated for each selected property or in summary form. You can see a sample here. The Document Template previews now match the PDF output, where the line spacing used to be slightly different, it is now the same. Two additional photos (8 total) can now be specified in the Properties form, and posted to the property web sites. The Availability and Cleaning calendars have a slightly changed background color. Tax rates with 3 decimal places are now displayed without rounding.
5/12/2007 v.1.0.1227 – If your application database currently resides within the ‘Program Files’ folder, a message will be displayed upon startup. This message asks you to change the database location by using the option in the File menu. This will prevent problems if you ever upgrade to the Vista operating system in the future. Also, some minor changes.
5/7/2007 v.1.0.1221 – A new form was added (in the Forms menu) called “Pay Fees and Commissions”. This form provides the ability to print “Payment Vouchers” and to set the “Paid Dates” for cleanings and commissions across multiple bookings. Expenses can also be printed and marked as paid using this form. See the Help topic for information on using this form. A “Received Date” was added to the Welcome Info/Confirmation, and a “Confirmed Date” was added to the Cleaner Notified workflow areas in the Bookings form. A “Cleaner Charges” amount field was added to the Property form. This is used as the default “Pay Cleaner” amount for new Bookings. Basically, these new features provide more tools to monitor and pay for cleanings, commissions and expenses owed. Also, two new buttons were added to the Property form to copy Document Templates and Accounts from another Property to the current Property, thus making it easier to create multiple properties using the same templates and accounts.
4/28/2007 v.1.0.1217 – This update brings several important changes in order to comply with the new Vista operating system standards. You can now specify and change the location of your database. See the option in the File menu. If you are running Vista, you may be prompted in various places to run the application with an elevated privilege when trying to run certain functions such as updating the software, changing the data location, etc. Beginning with this version, the logic for determining the maximum number of users per license has changed. User licenses are now on a per User ID basis. Registered users prior to this date are automatically given 2 extra user licenses in order to help with this change. Licenses used to be based on the number of concurrent users, but that logic is more difficult in Vista, and the new method frees up some processing overhead. There are 2 new pre-defined filters for “Un-paid” and “Paid Commissions” in the Bookings form. Placeholders can now be used in the 3 file specifications in the templates, allowing attachment and image filenames to be generated based on the property. For example you can create generic templates with different attachment and image files included automatically based on the property. There are several new Placeholder “prefixes” that allow you to access all fields in the Bookings, Property, Tenant, Cleaner, Owner, and Manager records. Examples are: %Cleaner.Name%, %Owner.WorkPhone%, etc. One benefit is that you now have access to the Cleaner, Owner, and Manager information in the templates. See the template instructions for the new placeholders. You can now post property calendars as well as property web pages from the Web Post page of the Properties form. The Booking Chart Detail and Follow-up reports have property subtotals added. As usual, please report any issues. Mahalo.
4/20/2007 v.1.0.1213 – For those who’ve asked for more workflow flexibility, you’ll be pleased with this update. Many changes in the Document Templates and Workflow area include the following: Two new user-defined workflow documents with sent dates. You can now customize 5 of the 7 workflow items with your own descriptions and notes using the new Document Types form. So if you don’t use a ‘Thank You Note’ or a ‘Rental Receipt’ for example, you can change it to something else. All 7 of the workflow document templates now allow you to generate a user-defined document in addition to the email message. You can also specify the Send To:, CC:, and BCC: recipients (using placeholders), and include 2 images in the document. Basically, the same logic used for generating the Rental Agreement is now available for all workflow documents, and they can be generated as both PDF or Html. There are also some new placeholders. You can now define whether or not the Cleaning Notice displays the Previous, Current, and/or Next booking info, depending on how you want to notify your cleaner (before or after a booking). There are 3 new Placeholders to do this. A couple of new options were added to the Options… button on the Bookings form. One is to ‘Clear all amounts (Owner bookings)’, another is to run the Follow-up Report for the current bookings listed.
4/18/2007 v.1.0.1212 – Added Cleaning Fee Payable amount to the Workflow page of the Bookings form. This cleaning fee amount is also included in the Property Statement report. The Cleaning fee amount can also be exported to Quicken/QuickBooks as an expense. Added Cleaner Paid Date to the Follow Up report. Added ability to specify fixed commission amounts in the Bookings form – by specifying a 0% commission rate. Added the ability to backup and restore to and from your own FTP web site. All data including the MyFiles folder is backed up and encrypted for secure storage. You can now use multiple email attachments when emailing through Outlook using the Mapi preference. Other minor changes.
3/31/2007 v.1.0.1198 – Added the ability to design your own rate quotes used for the Inquiry Reply templates (see the Rate Quote page in the templates). Added a few additional template placeholders. Added a ‘Location’ drop-down selection to the Properties form so bookings and available dates can be viewed by location in the Bookings form (using the Property filter drop-down). Added an Active/Inactive flag to the Properties form. This can also be selected in the Property filter in the Bookings form. Attachments can now be added to the Welcome Info, Cleaning Notice, and Rental Receipt email templates. Expanded the Properties list timeline in the Bookings form to show more days going across. Added two new filters for selecting ‘Closed’ bookings in the Bookings form. Fixed an alignment issue with the generated Rate Quotes. Added ‘PDA Sync Folder’ specification to the Preferences form.
3/19/2007 v.1.0.1188 – Added an option to list bookings by property (one row per property) in the Bookings form. (See the ‘Show Properties’ button). Also corrected some emailing functions. There is a new ‘Booking Notes’ field in the Property form’s Notes page. This is displayed in the Booking form on the new Properties grid as a quick reference when making bookings.
3/13/2007 v.1.0.1185 – The standard Rate Quote format was changed to make it simpler to understand. Some template placeholders were changed (they will be converted during the update), and some were added. Please carefully review your templates and generated documents. Two Memo note fields were added to the Bookings form Notes page (with correlating placeholders). You can now Remove Posted History Transactions after they are finalized if you need to re-export them to QuickBooks or Quicken. Web posting and Check for Updates was modified in order to work on PC’s where IE 7 is installed.
3/9/2007 v.1.0.1179 – Several new and important features were added. Also, due to a recent 4-day outage by our hosting service we have switched to a new hosting service. Sorry for the inconvenience. This switch prompted us to change the mechanism we use for uploading calendars and checking for new updates. To get this update you need to download the evaluation software from this website and re-install it into the same location on your hard drive. (Your data will be preserved and automatically backed up). From then on you can continue to use the Check for Updates function in VRP.

Important changes include: 1) Changes to the Template Placeholders. Several placeholders have been added and a few have changed. 2) The angle < > brackets used for Placeholder Options have been changed to square [ ] brackets (to allow for the new Html option – see below). They will be converted during the update 3) Currency symbols are no longer added to monetary values by default. There is a new [$] option you can use. 4) Leading spaces are no longer removed from numeric values by default. There is a new [trim] option you can use. Please carefully review your templates and generated documents and emails.

New features and fixes in this version include: 1) You can now optionally create documents and emails in “Html format”. This allows you to use an Html editor such as FrontPage in order to create even more highly formatted templates. The Html option is only suggested for those who understand Html and are familiar with using tools like FrontPage. See the new sample Html Templates in the MyFiles folder in VRP. 2) Tenant addresses now get exported to Quickbooks. 3) There is a new ‘Include Notes’ option on the Booking Chart reports. 4) Bookings are now viewable in the Alerts popup. 5) You can now set which days are Weekend days for weekend rate calculations (See the System Prefs Help topic. The default is Friday & Saturday.) 6) Bookings with a status of Closed now have a different color on the Bookings grid. 7) A new “CSC” field has been added to the credit card number fields. 8) The credit card fields have been fixed. 9) A new “Pets” field has been added. 10) New “Beds” and “Baths” fields have been added to the Property form and are also displayed in the Bookings grid. 11) The Bookings form now removes any previous commissions and fees when the Property is changed. 12) You can now view sample email messages from the Document Templates form and select which booking to use as a sample. Plus, other minor changes.
2/27/2007 v.1.0.1173 – Added Expense Tracking form. Also added a new Property Statement for Owners report which shows the bookings, commissions and expenses for the date range and properties selected.
2/20/2007 v.1.0.1169 – Implemented a new Reporting engine, along with new PDF and Zip drivers for Windows Vista compatibility and improved functionality. Added option to include a logo image on generated rental agreements. Also added a “Rate Quote” tab to the Rental Agreements Template where you can design your own rate quote format.
2/3/2007 v.1.0.1160 – Added ability to create and post Property web pages. Also added the option to post both calendars and property pages to your own web site using your own FTP site information. In addition, up to six photos can now be specified for each property along with other web page related info.
1/23/2007 v.1.0.1148 – Added Agreement Received Date and Security Deposit Returned Note fields to the Bookings form. Also added pre-defined filters that show bookings with Checkins & Checkouts occurring today or in the next 5 days. Added 2 reports to the Options button of the Bookings form so that these reports can now be printed or emailed directly from within the Bookings form using the current filter.
12/30/2006 v1.0.1133 – Added a Property filter selection box above the Bookings form grid. Added an option to the Bookings Chart Report to exclude financial info, which can be used to fax bookings to housekeepers, etc. Resizing of forms is now remembered between sessions. A new Preferences option allows Automatically updating Outlook’s calendar when bookings are added or changed. Other minor improvements.
12/12/2006 v1.0.1127 – Added an option in the Bookings form to create Microsoft Outlook calendar entries for individual bookings. Modified the Quicken and Quickbooks Export so that dates are forced to US format in the Import files, regardless of the Regional Settings. Other minor improvements.
10/31/2006 v1.0.1119 – In both the Bookings and Tenant forms, there is a new Options button. One of the options builds a list of Tenant email addresses for the list of bookings or tenants shown in the current filter. This is useful for emailing tenants that meet a specific criteria.
10/9/2006 v1.0.1105 – New feature to post Availability Calendars and Cleaning Schedules to the Web was added. Currency symbol and dates format can now be changed (see Help). New “Web” tab was added to the Properties form. Added “Other Info” field and a corresponding Template Placeholder to the Bookings Notes which can be used for special instructions to the tenant, manager or housekeeper.
9/20/2006 v1.0.1097 – Added option to the Bookings Chart report to graph the number of nights and rent earned per month. Added an option in the Preferences to specify how many days in advance to remind you of check-ins, check-outs and payments due.
9/17/2006 – You can now track Advertising and Referral Sources for your bookings. In addition, a new Advertising & Referral Sources Report helps you analyze how to better spend your advertising budget. A new option in the Preferences allows the mobile PDA sync file to be updated automatically whenever there are changes to bookings. When you set the Security Deposit Returned date for a booking, the status will automatically change from Fully Paid to Closed.
9/9/2006 – In addition to Weekly and Monthly rental rates, there is a new “By Week” and “By Month” rental rate. This allows calculating weekly and monthly rentals both ways, either by the number of nights, or the number of weeks or months. The Rental Agreement Templates have a new button which allows viewing how the entire agreement will appear without having to go to the bookings form. Email addresses of Contacts and Resources can now be selected from a list, as in Outlook or Outlook Express.
8/18/2006 – All columns on all grids in all forms are now sortable by clicking on the column headers. The templates form has been improved with specific pages for each type of template. A new template type called “Generic Email” was created. This is very useful for things like emailing tenant referral requests to other property owners and managers.
8/11/2006 – Several new and powerful Placeholders were added for use with the templates. The Check for new updates and email functions have been improved. The text Zoom windows have a new Print and Find option. A new Tools menu was added.
7/24/2006 – Added Payments Received to the Commissions Report and the ability to select on Payment Receipt dates. This provides a variety of data on one report that can be used for determining taxes, total rent, payments received, commissions paid and unpaid, and amounts due.
7/20/2006 – In addition to the SMTP email server option, you can now specify MAPI type email clients (ie. Outlook and Outlook Express), or Lotus Notes as email sending options.
7/14/2006 – Added a checkbox option to Show Available Dates along with more sort options in the Bookings form (Useful for locating available dates among multiple properties).
7/12/2006 – Added new Template placeholders (see Help doc). Added a zoom button to Template definitions. Added Property Amenities and an Amenity Types form. Added Backup/Restore functions to the file menu. Added Property Agreement Note. Added sort option to Bookings grid. Modified the Cash Discount to allow either a Cash Discount or a Noncash Fee. The Days/Timeline Unit in the Bookings grid is now remembered between sessions.
7/6/2006 – Added Weekend Rates capability to the Daily Rental Rates calculation. Added a new Commissions Report which also shows the paid status of each commission.
7/3/2006 – Added Commissions tracking to bookings. Changed Rental Rates to include specifying the year, and added the ability to copy rental rates from one property to another.
6/24/2006 – Added an option to allow users to automatically log on rather than having to enter their user ID and password. Default is automatic logon. Also, added user-defined color coding for properties.
6/18/2006 – Added the ability to define and select an unlimited number of rental fees for properties and individual bookings. These fees can also have the tax calculations specified for each. Also, added a Payment Receipts template.
2/19/2006 – Added the Export to Quicken and QuickBooks feature. Note: Quicken and QuickBooks are trademarks of Intuit, Inc.

Planned New Features for Vacation RentPro

Additional reports are continually being considered and added.
We are always considering suggestions from existing customers. Thank you for your input.