LandlordMax Newsletter – Cloud Edition is now available

Published: Wed, 04/18/18


After a long wait I’m very proud to announce the private pre-release of the LandlordMax Cloud Edition. I say private pre-release because at this time the Cloud Edition is only available by invitation only. New customers are of course welcome but you do need to contact us to get an invitation. We’re doing an invitation only pre-release to avoid a large influx of people all wanting to transition at the same time, potentially overloading our ability to migrate people from their previous Editions to the new Cloud Edition. Therefore please be patient as we send out invitations, and of course we'll prioritise those that request an invitation. Once most people have had the chance to migrate to the Cloud Edition we’ll release the Cloud Edition publicly to everyone. We expect to publicly release the Cloud Edition within 1-3 months.

Some of you have already started to get invitations. If you want to try the Cloud Edition right away (we offer a 30 day trial) then please contact us at [email protected] and we we will be happy to prioritise your invitation. In other words people who request to be invited right away will be pushed to the top of the list. Otherwise invites are going out on a daily basis to match the speed at which we can transition people over to the Cloud Edition.

As well people who have recently purchased the software such as the Desktop Edition then please note that we have a program in place to give you credits based on the date of purchase and so on. We will explain the details by email to our newer customers who would like to move to the Cloud Edition.

And with that in mind let me share with you the exciting new features of the Cloud Edition.

First and foremost the Cloud Edition is an online and web based system, meaning that you connect to a webpage to access the system. You do NOT need to install any software, update any software, etc., you just connect to a webpage and login. This also means that you can access the website from any computer that has internet access! In fact you can even access it from mobile devices, it's fully functional. The only reason it’s not officially supported is because it’s not specifically designed for the smaller mobile device screens. 

Another great benefit of the Cloud Edition is that we are going to release new features and functionality as they become available, we do not have to wait for major new versions to release them. This also means that you're always guaranteed to be running the most updated version of the software at all times.

Before I get into more details about the new features let me give you the following link which includes all the new features in more detail with screenshots: https://www.landlordmax.com/cloudEditionReleaseNotes 

And on that note let's begin with the short version of the major new features (again the release notes include much more): To keep the newsletter short I'll only quickly go over some of bigger features, again you can find the full details with screenshots and all at: https://www.landlordmax.com/cloudEditionReleaseNotes

It's online and web based accessible from any computer

As already mentioned several times, you can access the software from any computer with internet access by just going to the webpage https://app.LandlordMax.com and logging in. Yes it's as simple as that. You can do this from your Windows computer, your Mac computer, your Linux computer, and so on. You can do this from your iPad, your iPhone, your tablet, etc. As long as you have internet access you can connect to the system and everything is there for you with all your data updated in real time. And as previously mentioned you have no software to install, and as a result no software to update. Using the LandlordMax has never been simpler!

You have the ability to edit data directly in the tables without having to open the forms

Yes that's correct, you can just edit the entries in the table almost like a spreadsheet. To do this you just doubleclick on a row in the table and the software will immediately show you the row in edit mode, meaning that you can type in values where appropriate, select the tenant from a drop down menu when you need to select a tenant, and so on. Once you're done with your edits you can just click on the save button, or cancel if you wish to cancel your edits. This saves you from having to go back and forth in from the table view to the form view when you have to make a lot of small edits. Or for example if you're under the tenant looking at their accounting entries and notice an error, you can make the correction right then and there in the table!

You can search on all columns in all tables (search capabilities)

The header row at the top of every table has a field which you can use to search in the table. So for example if you're looking for a tenant you can just type in the name of the tenant and the table will only show entries with that tenant. You can even search for partial data such as say just "John" rather than the full "John Smith". You can search on every single column. Keep in mind that with the new Cloud Edition we've added a lot of additional columns (which you can select by right clicking anywhere in the table), so this means you can search accounting entries by tenant, building, unit, vendor, etc. You can search tenants by name, phone number, etc. In essence you can search by just about anything imaginable.

You can create your own custom reports! 

After being web based this is probably the single biggest feature in the software. You can now customise the reports as you wish. Not only that but you can create your own custom reports. For example if you want a report to only include current tenants then you can edit the report template and add the requirement that only current tenant's be included. You can select the parameters by which a report is generated. So for example you can create a report to list all accounting entries by payment type for a current tenant who worked with a specific vendor over the last 14 days. Anything is possible! 

Not only that but you can decide how the report is formatted, what columns are displayed, and so on.

The report templates are rendered using HTML, meaning that if you know HTML (how to write a webpage) you can design your own report. If you don't know how to create webpages then you can always find someone locally who can, HTML programmers are very common these days. And if you prefer we're also going to start offering services to design reports. In any case reports now use the same technologies that is used to render webpages.

As part of designing the reports you can now also decide what columns and fields are displayed for your reports. The report templates will replace report tokens with their actual value, the exact same as mail merge. So for example if you put ${tenant.city} then this will put the tenant's city in place of the ${tenant.city} token. If it's an accounting entry you can similarly write ${accountingEntry.description} to have the description displayed in the report. The sky is the limit!

Keep in mind that this also includes the printouts, that is the printouts for invoices, receipts, workorders, and the tenant printout. In other words if you want your invoices to be customized to your own preferences you can do so by editing the invoices system template. All printouts can be customized by you. 

Upgraded default report design

As part of upgrading the report engine we also took advantage to update the report designs. The first thing you'll notice is that values are no longer truncated (with the ...), instead they're wrapped to the next line. So if a description takes more space then is available it will wrap onto the next line and take 2 or more lines. And of course you're more than welcome to re-design them yourself if you prefer a different design. You can edit the reports under the Templates menu (specifically the Report Templates).

Many new reports and completely re-designed Profit & Loss report

As part of this release we added several new reports such as the reports for a payment type, grouped by payment type, etc. We've added a full Tenant Statement which includes both what has been paid and was is still owed all in one report. There have been several enhancements.

The biggest though is the Profit & Loss reports. We've combined the Cashflow and Profit & Loss reports into the Profit & Loss reports. These now include the totals of each category on a per month (or year depending on the specifics) as well as totals for each category. Basically it becomes a full grid with totals by category and dates making it much more informative. I do recommend going to the Release Notes link to view a very simple sample of the new Profit & Loss report.

Significant performance improvements

In addition to several significant performance improvements, we're also able to take advantage of the fact that we have very high performance servers running the software, which means that we can guarantee that actions that can be slower on budget PC's will now run very fast on ALL computers. In other words one of the reasons we didn't offer the enhanced Profit & Loss report before was that we knew some people ran the software on very budget PC's which would result in terrible performance for that report. Now that the reports are generated on very high end servers we can offer these more demanding reports that just weren't feasible before, and guarantee extremely fast processing times. 

But getting back to overall performance, you'll find things like accepting suggested entries is now instantaneous, even if you accept hundreds at a time. Processing suggested entries no longer has a progress bar because it's no longer needed, it's that fast!! As I said there have been several significant performance improvements, which will be especially noticeable to people with budget computers.

Built-in word processor

The software now includes a built-in word processor. This allows you to create your own documents directly in the software without requiring to use a third party word processor. You can also edit reports after they have been generated, for example if you want to add a little note. Just keep in mind that the reports are generated into a word processor so if you edit amounts after the report has been generated then the totals will not be re-calculated. The post report editing is the result of requests to be able to add notes, comments, etc. to reports.

Greatly improved Automations

We've completely re-designed the Automations. There are now two Automations, one which will run the same report for all your tenants and one which will run the same report for all your landlords. The Automations are also smart enough to pick up any custom report you create as long as they are for a tenant or for a landlord. This greatly increases your own workflow in that you can run the same reports for all your tenants or landlords in one step. So for example if you want to generate a tenant statement for all your tenants then you can just select the Automation for tenants, then select the tenant statement report, and run it for all your tenants. In one step you've created all your tenant statements. If you're a property manager you can run the Profit & Loss for a landlord report for all your clients in one step in the same way. The Automations can greatly improve your efficiencies!

Many more features and benefits

These are just the bigger features, we added a lot of additional smaller features. For example now instead of the tabbed panels we have what are called SubPanels. The benefit of this is that you can view multiple tables at the same time. So for example under the tenant you can view the lease table at the same time as you view the Accounting Entries table. They can both appear on the same screen at the same time.

Another change is that units has been moved under buildings as a SubPanel of buildings for multi-unit buildings. We found that this was more obvious as units are a subset of buildings rather than their own section. And of course under the Units you still get all the same SubPanels (tabbed panels). 

One last feature I'll quickly point out is NSF entries. We found that having to enter in NSF for the Amount Paid wasn't ideal and as such we've now added a new NSF checkbox in the accounting entry form. We found that this is much easier to understand and use. Additionally you can filter (search) the table to only show NSF entries. The report templates also use the NSF checkbox to present them differently and exclude them from the totals. 

There are many additional features but listing them here would be quite extensive, especially considering that I didn't even include all the major new features above!

30 day free trial

Everyone is invited to try the Cloud Edition for 30 days before deciding whether or not they want to migrate to the Cloud Edition. That being said do remember that the Cloud Edition is currently available by invite only, so if you haven't already received your invite and you would like to try now rather then wait until your invitation arrives then please just email us at [email protected] and we will be happy to prioritise your invitation. 

I look forward to seeing you on the new Cloud Edition.

Regards,
Stephane Grenier
Founder
LandlordMax Software Inc.
https://www.LandlordMax.com