Release Notes

Version 10.87 - 6th December 2023

Fixed a bug due to which calendar events for due rent would not get updated as per the latest rental amount and payment period details upon changing the rent of a tenancy

Version 10.86 - 19th October 2023

Added the tax bands for tax year 2023-2024
Improved responses upon errors while emailing messages from the Mail Merge section

Version 10.85 - 20th December 2022

New legal document: Occupancy Contract for tenancies in Wales
Legal and professional cost description options are now sorted in alphabetical order

Version 10.84 - 8th June 2022

Added the tax bands for tax year 2022-2023

Version 10.83 - 22nd March 2022

Fixed a bug causing issues with generating and printing summary landlord statements (for agent portfolios only in LAM/LAMLPM)

Version 10.82 - 11th March 2022

Improved formatting and readability of detailed landlord statements (for agent portfolios only in LAM/LAMLPM)
Fix for inconsistent transaction ordering in the Income Tax report

Version 10.81 - 18th January 2022

New option to indicate agent fees as deductions due to expenses paid on behalf of the landlord (for agent portfolios only in LAM/LAMLPM)

Version 10.80 - 9th December 2021

Fixed a bug causing issues with producing Section 8 legal document

Version 10.79 - 23th November 2021

Updates to the Tenancy Agreement document
More filter options for the Agent Commissions report (for agent portfolios only in LAM/LAMLPM)

Version 10.78 - 15th July 2021

Added the tax bands for tax year 2021-2022

Version 10.77 - 29h January 2021

Bug fixed where some maintenance and repair costs may be missing from the income tax report if the due and paid dates fall in different tax years

Version 10.76 - 8th January 2021

Added the tax bands for tax year 2020-2021

Version 10.75 - 8th December 2020

Fixes to issues related to the software's communication with the Property Portfolio Software licensing services

Version 10.74 - 23rd September 2020

Fixed formatting of dates on the Target Rents report
Fixed the tenancy agreement buttons on the Tenancy Details screen to use the new NetLawman documents

Version 10.73 - 16th September 2020

Migrated the legal documents to the new and improved Net Lawman online service

Version 10.72 - 11th May 2020

Two new legal documents: Rent Increase Letter and Section 13 Notice
Bug fixed which could prevent viewing old landlord statements (for agent portfolios only in LAM/LAMLPM)

Version 10.71 - 1st April 2020

New legal documents from Net Lawman! Automatically populated with all the necessary details, always up to date with the latest changes in legislation, and easy to edit!
Security improvements

Version 10.65 - 6th January 2020

Added the tax bands for tax year 2019-2020
Minor bug fixes and optimizations

Version 10.63 - 17th June 2019

New tenancy agreement for England & Wales (for furnished and unfurnished properties) as per the June 2019 tenancy laws changes
New Section 21 Form 6A legal document as per the June 2019 tenancy laws changes

Version 10.60 - 29th May 2019

Fix for the rental period description in the landlord statement transaction feed (for agent portfolios only in LAM/LAMLPM)
Properly assign the default payment type, reference, and bank account to rental payments when using the Make All Rents Paid functionality
Properly assign the default payment type, reference, and bank account to letting agent fees when using the Make All Rents Paid (only for private portfolios in LPM/LAMLPM)
Other minor bug fixes and optimizations

Version 10.59 - 17th January 2019

Added the tax bands for tax year 2018-2019
Ability to sort the processed mail merge letters by either Tenant Name, or Property Name, or Property Address
Minor bug fixes and optimizations

Version 10.55 - 5th December 2018

Updated the Scotland Tenancy Agreement PDF templates in the Tenant Legal Documents
Added Scotland Private Residential Tenancy Statutory Terms PDF template to the Tenant Legal Documents
Added Scotland Notice to Leave PDF template to the Tenant Legal Documents
Added Scotland Section 20/2006 Act Standard Letter for Tenants (Repairing Standards) to the Tenant Legal Documents
Bug fix: the future profit and loss estimate in the Portfolio Dashboard failed when there was an ad-hoc tenant charge payment for the next upcoming month against a tenant charge itself within the next upcoming month

Version 10.54 - 15th August 2018

Fixes for the finance charges tax relief calculations in the income tax report where the portfolio ownership is not 100%
Fix for the the brought forward losses calculation in the income tax report: now the losses are on an individual basis when the portfolio ownership is not 100% (these losses used to be considered overall portfolio losses and were further apportioned in partial ownership)

Version 10.53 - 24th July 2018

Fixes and optimizations to the cash basis income tax report
Compatibility updates for the Export to Landlord Vision functionality

Version 10.51 - 4th December 2017

Bug fix: when shortening tenancies managed by letting agents, agent fees generated for payments against the rental periods which would be cut off were not being properly removed.

Version 10.50 - 13th November 2017

Many updates to the The Income Tax report in Landlords Property Manager:

cash basis version of the report. For this version, any expense and income items that allow logging of amount paid and payment date in addition to the due amount and date, the payment amount and date are used. There are things that do not offer this (i.e. other income items, monthly recurring expenses that are considered automatically paid in full on their due date, mortgage payments), use the same dates and amounts in both the cash basis and accruals basis versions. Also, in the cash basis there is no apportionment of any amounts across the tax year boundaries;
turnover calculation in order to recommend cash or accruals basis;
gradual phasing out of finance costs over the next tax 4 years;
tax reduction calculations;
prepaid/delayed income/expense adjustments when transitioning between accruals and cash basis in adjacent tax years;

Updated legal documents:

Section 21 Form 6A for England
Section 21 for Wales
Section 8 for England
Section 8 for Wales
Tenancy Agreement (furnished & unfurnished)
Rent Guarantee

Option for "PayPal" payment type when saving payments;
For agent portfolios in LAM and LLAM, added Landlord filter to the Overdue Rents Report and added landlord name to the report's lines;
Add period covered by each rent in the detailed landlord statement.

End of Support for Old Versions - 10th May 2017

End of support for all older versions of the software. Only the latest major version (v.10.xx) will be receiving support and/or updates from now on.

Version 10.47 - 22nd February 2017

Speed optimizations to the Overdue Rents section of the Early Warning > Rents screen. The data is now collected and presented much more quickly
Speed optimizations to the Portfolio Snapshot screen
We made all connections of the software over the Internet encrypted for increased security
Bug fix: occasionally the VAT amount of letting agent fees in private portfolios would be incorrectly calculated when using the Make all rents paid functionality in the tenancy Rent Schedule screen

Version 10.44 - 24th January 2017

Removes some leftover testing code which would show a bit of system information when adding or editing entries in the Property Journal

Version 10.43 - 20th January 2017

New feature in agent portfolios allowing to mark properties as no longer managed (LAM/LAMLPM only)
More robust rounding of agent fees and VAT amounts, in order to avoid sub-penny amounts. Sub-penny amounts do not skew any calculations, but may lead to confusion when rounded just for display (LAM/LAMLPM only)
Proper handling of furnishing costs in the Income Tax report for tax year 2016 and beyond, following the removal of the 10% wear and tear allowance (LPM only)

Version 10.37 - 17th November 2016

Property deposits are now excluded from the Capital Gains Analyzer

Version 10.36 - 16th November 2016

Professional and legal costs can now be flagged as capital costs
Any capital costs (either manually indicated as such, or such that are always capital by their nature) are now not included in the Profit & Loss report
Capital professional and legal costs, and property deposits are now included in the Capital Gains Analyzer

Version 10.30 - 17th May 2016

Tax bands for tax year 2016-2017
New legal document: Section 21 Form 6A
Fixes a bug which could cause problems with portfolio password entry under Windows 10

End of Support for Old Versions - 18th March 2016

End of support for all older versions of the software (v.8.42 and below). Only the latest major version (v.10.xx) and the prior major version (v.9.xx) will be receiving support and/or updates from now on.

Version 10.29 - 14th March 2016

Fixes a bug due to which some landlord statements may fail to be created (LAM/LAMLPM only)

Version 10.28 - 9th March 2016

Fixes a bug due to which occasionally the same rent in arrears might be reported more than once in Early Warning
Synchronisation of the selection of landlord and property between the Landlord Manager and the Property Manager sections (LAM/LAMLPM only)
New feature allowing letting agents to pick and choose specific transactions to include in a landlord statement (LAM/LAMLPM only)

Version 10.23 - 16th December 2015

Fixes a bug which occasionally might cause capital costs from a property's Other Costs to be missing from the Cost History report and from the Capital Gains Analyzer

Version 10.21 - 1st December 2015

Fixes a bug due to which, under some circumstances, the software could fail to load the Portfolio Snapshot and instead produce an error which would close the application

Version 10.20 - 11th November 2015

When creating a new tenancy you can now specify if there are arrears brought forward and for what period they refer. Such options are available for both the tenant and the LHA authority.
Moving furniture between properties. When editing a piece of furniture there is now an option to select to which property that piece has been moved.
All reports and documents can now be exported to PDF.
Added the tenant's phone number and email address to the detailed rent arrears screen in the Portfolio Snapshot section, to aid in quickly contacting the tenant.
Separated the Tenant and Property columns in Tenant Charges Report, available from the Early Warning section, so that Excel exports are more comfortable to use.
Legal document for Rent Increase (Section 13) updated as per the latest version from Lawpack.
Fixed a bug preventing Excel export of reports from portfolios operating with manually created custom currencies.

Version 10.15 / 9.39 / 8.42 / 7.94 - 30th April 2015

Tax bands for year 2015-2016

Version 10.12 and 9.38 - 30th April 2015

Updated the Section 8 Notice document to the latest 2015 Lawpack version

Version 10.11 - 31st March 2015

New feature: Summary mode for landlord statements. Any past or future landlord statement can be generated both in the previously available detailed format with all individual payments and fees, or as a simplified summary of all collected payments and attributed fees per property. The mode can be switched right there in the Landlord Statements screen. (LAM/LLAM only)
Bug fix: Month based tenancies starting on 30-th of a 31-st day of month could cause problems when the end date is in February
Big fix: Rent-based agent fees were not always automatically udpating or removing themselves upon update or remove of the rent payment that generated them (LAM/LLAM only)
Bug fix: The Mortgage and Loan Analyzer report could occasionally not pick up the correct finance provider details

Version 10.06 - 29th January 2015

Bug fix: The property inventory document was not properly populating all of its fields
Bug fix: Tenancy deposit information could not be properly saved when tenancy defaults and auto-filled contact data were both used
Added a new mail merge field for tenant's date of birth
The preference that controls if and which Early Warning window or Portfolio Summary to appear on start up are now also in effect when manually switching between portfolios

Version 10.04 - 4th December 2014

Much faster database restore
The Property Utilization report now disregards sold properties
Bug fixed which could potentially halt the software when processing rolling tenancies with invalid number of extension terms
More comfortable property and tenant filtering in the Overdue Rents report
The early warning screen for Tenant Charges can now be set as your start-up screen
Double clicking on a charge in the Tenant Charges early warning tables now takes you to the specific charge entry in the Tenant Manager

Version 10 LAUNCHED - 25th November 2014

New feature Target Rents for properties and for specific rooms gives you the chance to see how your portfolio is performing by comparing the actual and desired rental amounts. Graphic overview of the below/above/on-target rents is available in the Portfolio Snapshot, and a detailed text report gives you the exact differences
New feature Supplier Manager gives a detailed analysis of spending with your suppliers
New feature Calendar - this exciting new addition now brings together all your property and tenancy related alerts in different calendar formats
New feature Defaults for New Tenancies bootstraps the creation of new tenancies by automatically setting many common details
New feature Property Journal allows you to record your communication with other parties related to a specific property
New early warning section for Upcoming and Overdue Tenant Charges, which also provides means to print a report for all tenant charges for some period, grouped and filterable by property and/or tenant
New tenancy agreement designed to cater for tenancies with specific designed rooms
New graphic report Occupancy Overview gives a quick birds-eye what your property and room occupancy looks like for a given month
Portfolio-wide Profit and Loss reports can be grouped by property
Landlord statements layout changed to portrait orientation
Additional display options for landlord statements whether or not to show agent details and landlord bank account details
Individual interest payments appear on the detailed income tax reports
New mail merge fields for tenancy duration, company numbers, tenant's previous addresses, bank account details, and more
Added the ability to set the duration of a tenancy instead of setting its end date
Added means to log non-taxable income
Plus many optimizations and fixes under the hood

Version 9.30 and 8.40 - 21st March 2014

Option available to export tenancies and properties to Landlord Vision for those customers who want to move to our cloud based landlord software solution
New tax bands for 2014-2015 tax year

Version 9.20 - 13th December 2013

Fixed a bug where the default LHA payment details were not correctly passed through to newly entered LHA rental payment
Extended the early warning period for expiring tenancies: it is now possible to receive a warning up to 52 weeks in advance
On the Tenant Application Form now there are fields to capture the tenant's former landlord name and the date when the tenant left their previous address

Version 9.19 - 17th September 2013

For agent portfolios (in LAM and LLAM), tenant documents now print the landlord's name but the agent's contact address
Fixed an issue with the management of landlord journal entries which could occasionally prevent editing or deleting or crash the software

Version 9.16 - 10th July 2013

Updated tenancy agreements
New mail merge fields for outstanding charges:

TENANCY_OUTSTANDING_CHARGES - the sum of the outstanding charges for specific tenancy
TENANT_OUTSTANDING_CHARGES - sum of all outstanding charges for a particular tenant across all his tenancies

Version 9.09 - 24th April 2013

Income tax report update for 2013-14 including the new income tax tables
Change to income tax report to exclude furnishing renewal costs from April 6th 2013
Many small fixes and stability improvements under the hood

The income tax report changes are also available in version 8.35 of the software

Version 9.05 - 30th January 2013

Enhancement: New mail merge fields added in Tenant Manager ==> Mail Merge module:

PROPERTY_TYPE
TENANCY_NEXT_RENT_DUE_DATE - rent due date following the current date

TENANCY_OUTSTANDING_RENT_TO_DATE - outstanding for the entire tenancy to the current date
TENANCY_OUTSTANDING_RENT_AT_NEXT_RENT_DATE - outstanding for the entire tenancy at the date of the next rent

And several tenant-only and LHA-only variations of these fields:

TENANCY_TENANT_OUTSTANDING_RENT
TENANCY_TENANT_OUTSTANDING_RENT_TO_DATE
TENANCY_TENANT_OUTSTANDING_RENT_AT_NEXT_RENT_DATE

TENANCY_LHA_OUTSTANDING_RENT
TENANCY_LHA_OUTSTANDING_RENT_TO_DATE
TENANCY_LHA_OUTSTANDING_RENT_AT_NEXT_RENT_DATE
Enhancement: A notes column has been added to Key Management display grid
Fixed a bug: when filtering grids with monthly expenses (Rates, Insurances, Service & Wages, and Other Costs) the software would crash and close;
Fixed a bug: processing a mail merge template with certain combinations of merge fields could cause the software to fail when no bank accounts were present for the active portfolio
Fixed a bug: external letting agent fees are now correctly reported with their VAT amount included on all reports (this is only for LPM, and for non-agent portfolios in LAMLPM)

Version 9 LAUNCHED - 21st November 2012

Click the link to Download the User Guide with all Version 9 Changes.

Property Manager ==> NEW Property Essentials Feature (Property Essentials Video Demo)

Adding Emergency Stops, Alarms & Codes, Refuse Bins Collections Details, Property Flags and Tenant Welcome pack enhancement
A summary of who is currently occupying the tenancy is shown in Property Manager (Main Details) tab

Property Manager ==> NEW Key Management Solution (Key Management Video Demo)

A solution for managing the whereabouts of property keys including booking-in and booking-out

Tenant Management Changes (Tenant Manager Enhancement Video Demo)

Ending Tenancy Early - Calculating Daily Rental
Change Rent Functionality Enhancement to change individual rents
Changing the payment Term Midway Through Tenancy
Capturing a Tenant Forwarding Address
Storing all emails that are sent from the mail merge solution in the Tenant Journal
Property / Room address (Tenant’s contact information i.e. Telephone and email address) added to the Tenant Manager list
New payment term added to allow for four monthly payments

Improvement for HMO / Multi-Let Properties

In portfolio Snapshot ability to see 'Room Occupancy'
Detailed new HMO Room Occupancy Report
When starting software, tenants who are assigned to properties with HMO rooms are asked to assign to HMO room

Early Warning System Changes

Ability to double click on expiring tenancies, insurances and certificates and jump straight to the relevant transaction
Room added to the expiring tenancies tab

NEW Letting Agent Fees Solution (Letting Fees Video Demo)

A new solution for tracking commissions that are paid to letting agents

Better Expense Management Solution for Tracking Expenses (Expense Management Video Demo)

The ability to enter due date and date paid for expenses
All existing expenses when version 9 is upgraded will have the ‘Due Date’ and ‘Date Paid’ set to the ‘Tax Date’.
In Preferences, we have a new section called ‘Expense Warnings’, where you can specify after how many days past the due date an expense that has not been paid is classed as overdue
In portfolio snapshot we have a section now called ‘Overdue Expenses’
In the EW system, we have a new tab called ‘Expenses’ that shows both overdue and expenses that are due

NEW Property Utilisation Report

A report that shows how well a property has been utilised

Version 8.27 - 14th May 2012 (Letting Agent Manager Only)

Fixed a bug with the 'Make All Rents Paid' functionality, when applying agent fees on a per-rent basis;
Fixed a bug with landlord statements due to which some fees might fail to be properly included in a statement that otherwise covers the period the fees are in;
Fixed an issue due to which automatically generated periodic fees ended up appearing as private fees (and they must always be public and available to include in landlord statements; only manual editing on demand should be the way to label a fee as private);
Fixed a bug with landlord statements which, under some circumstances, might lead to fees being invisible to the process that collects and aggregates the fees;

Version 8.25 - 6th April 2012

Phased out LRM Regular and LPM Regular products and all customers with such licences are automatically upgraded to solutions supporting the full functionality previously available only to customers with Professional licences
Added tax bands for 2012-2013
Added bulk upload of pictures in Property Gallery
Added bulk upload of documents in Property Documents, Tenant Documents, and Landlord Documents
Fixed a bug which could lead to inaccurate distribution of lump payments in LHA tenancies under certain circumstances
Added new mail merge fields in tenant manager
Added "4 Months" tenancy term when creating tenancies
New Agent Commissions report (LAM & LLAM only)
Added an option to exclude specific tenant charges from landlord statements (LAM & LLAM only)
Added option to choose whether to use agent or landlord details on legal documents for agent portfolios (LAM & LLAM only)
Added the issue date and fee notes on landlord statements (LAM & LLAM only)
Added an option for percentage based fees that are calculated over the entire tenancy rental amount (LAM & LLAM only)
Added period-based agent fee modes (LAM & LLAM only)
Added fee tracking at property level (LAM & LLAM only)

Letting Agent Manager / Landlord & Letting Agent Manager - 31 January 2012

Our new Letting Agent Manager has been designed for managing small lettings businesses and includes the following functionality:

New Agent Management section for all of your company's details, including VAT
New Landlord Manager section to record landlords' details, correspondence and documents
Ability to set up commission rates, with or without VAT applied, and modify them at landlord, property and tenant levels
Produce professional statements for your landlords and keep a history of past statements
New Rental Income Assessment report
New VAT Report
New Agent Commissions report
New Landlord Fees report
New Landlord Essentials report to see all expiring tenancies, insurances, safety certificates and property tasks for either the whole portfolio or individual landlords

Our new Landlord & Letting Agent Manager has been designed for managing both your own private portfolio AND running a letting agency at the same time. It incorporates all of the functionality found in Landlords Property Manager and also the features from the new Letting Agent Manager.

Important Announcement - 01 January 2012

Ahead of the launch of our new Letting Agent Manager and Landlords & Letting Agent Manager, our existing products have altered slightly:

The 'Landlords Rent Manager Regular' has been discontinued and 'Landlords Rent Manager Professional' renamed to ‘Landlords Rent Manager’

The 'Landlords Property Manager Regular' has been discontinued and 'Landlords Property Manager Professional' renamed to ‘Landlords Property Manager’.

Please note that customers on the discontinued Regular Version 8 packages will get complimentary upgrades to the new version 8 release coming soon.

Version 8.12 - 1 November 2011.

Resolved an issue where deposit return notes were not being saving
Corrected incorrect pound sign in e-mails sent from the Mail Merge sections
Resolved date format issues when running LPM on a non-English Windows installation
Resolved the bug that caused the application to crash in certain cirsumstances when closing a print preview
Allowed the entering of future dates for expenses

Version 8.10 - 14 September 2011.

NEW functionality added for moving properties between portfolios, along with all their related details, tenants and tenancies;

This functionality is found under the menu: Portfolio Management ==> Move Properties to Another Portfolio

New feature: Added a field to record a tenant's date of birth;
Bug fix: When using forward rent filling, occasionally the Ad-hoc rent payments were not taken into account when calculating the remaining amount for the edited schedule entry

Version 8.09 - 18 July 2011.

NEW - Automatic forward filling functionality now added. If an overpayment of rent is made by the tenant, Landlords Property Manager will now assign rents to future rent schedule entries if no arrears exist. Click the link to see a demonstration of this exciting new feature: Rent Schedule - Forward Filling
BUG - Tenant receipts not showing when back filling is used
FIX - Increase width of 'Create Tenancy' screen so shows meter readings
NEW - Rent Guarantee Document included in Legal Documents Section
NEW - Property Tasks list selection screen and report detail has been improved to give greater control of what is reported
NEW - Payment method function included to capture details of how/where deposits are paid and returned.

Version 8.08 - 22 June 2011.

Fixed an issue that crept in following the 8.07 update for certain tenancies. In some cases, if there are rolling tenancies that must be extended, the software will hang while trying to extend them.

Version 8.07 - 07 June 2011.

NEW FEATURE: A new Local Housing Association(LHA) rent management feature:

Track and manage rents separately for tenants and housing associations
Track income, outstanding rents and bad debt arrears for LHAs
New LHA payment report
Improved 'rent change' feature to cater for LHA tenants
Enhanced 'Contact Management' feature so you can specify a contact as a LHA.
Click the link to see a video demo of the new LHA Rent Management functionality.

Enhanced ‘Rolling Tenancies’ feature. You can now specify the number of periods you want a tenancy to automatically roll forward.
Added room area entry for rooms, plus automated area calculation button when width and depth are available.
Updated the hide/unhide option for expiring tenancies to work at tenancy level; it worked at property level before and would hide several tenancies at once if they were for the same property.
Fixed a problem with the Income Tax reports where the losses in a particular instance were not partitioned when ownership was not 100%.
Fixed issue with the summaries calculation when the "Show all payments" flag was checked for the rent schedule.

Version 8.06 - 01 April 2011.

NEW FEATURE: Payment Method tracking for all expenses and income

New credit/debit card and bank account management modules. You can now enter information about your cards and accounts and reference them as source or destination for each expense record.

Click the link to see a video demo of the Credit/Debits Cards functionality
Click the link to see a video demo of the Bank Accounts functionality

Payment method controls added to all sections that deal with income and expenses, allowing you to track the payment methods, payment reference codes, bank accounts used, credit/debit cards used and cheque numbers for each transaction.
NEW REPORT: Account Analysis - generates a detailed overview of the credits and debits for each credit/debit card or bank account over a period of time. You can generate the report in relation to a specific property or over an entire portfolio.

Click the link to see a video demo of this new Account Analysis report

Added an option to print payment details for the Profit & Loss and the Cashflow Analysis reports
Added a portfolio-based version of the Cost History report
Fixed a problem with the Cost History report - the finance charges and mortgage costs were not being accounted for. They are now included in the report's data.
Updated the Profit & Loss and Cashflow reports to include property deposits
Fixed a bug with the Report Headers preferences page, where the text and logo were not being properly displayed
Removed the amount limit on the rent ad-hoc payment dialog box to allow overpayments in ad-hoc form if necessary
Changed the Legal and Professional costs descriptions to a nomenclature and added contact reference for them as well
Added a new column in the rent schedule that displays the outstanding amount (arrears) for each rent. Click here to see a screenshot of the new 'Outstanding Rents' column.
Added a new mail merge document - Tenant Application Form - and several new merge fields (tenant's phone, mobile and e-mail address)
Added the 2011-2012 tax bands information

Version 8.05 - 26 January 2011.

New flexible support for currency formats. Most world currencies are already available in the software, but should you find that the one you need is missing, you can easily add and specify its formatting options;

Improvements to the way Overdue Rent Reports are generated. The report can now be generated not only per tenant or per property but for specific property and tenants together;
Updated Lawpack tenancy agreements for England and Wales to their latest versions;
In the Finance Manager, 'Payment Type' can now also be selected for loans (previously only available for mortgages). Custom payment types can now be created too;
Fixed a bug that occasionally could cause errors when filters are used on data grids;
More robust system requirement checks in the installers in order to prevent problems due to incompatible XP Windows and Service Pack versions;
Added a graphic padlock symbol to the status bar to quickly see whether the database connection is using encryption;
Added several default types for property purchase costs;
Enhanced the rent schedule to show the totals for bad debts. Now if you mark a rent schedule entry as having a bad debt, the total amount of bad debts is shown. It also adjusts the other totals at the bottom of the rent schedule accordingly;
Added a filter to ‘Hide Completed Tasks’ from the ‘Property Tasks’ Report.

Version 8.04 - 01 December 2010.

Added a TENANCY_ROOM tag to the Mail Merge module;
Updated the arrears section in the Portfolio Snapshot so that it regards ad-hoc payments;
Fixed an issue that prevented the Overdue Rents tenant report from running properly;
Fixed a bug that caused some dropdown boxes to disregard their default values upon adding new data;
Fixed an issue that interfered with the automatic rent back-filling when no rent management options were set in the portfolio preferences;

*** Important Announcement **

Version 8.00 - Launched on 17th November 2010.

Since March 2010 we have been busy working on the next version (8) of our software. It was officially launched on 17th November 2010. It's our biggest upgrade to date and we have delivered the functionality that has been most requested by you, our customers and by our landlord software focus group.

Please click here to see videos of the new time saving features that have been added to version 8. You can also download the release notes here giving full details of the new functionality.

Here is a quick overview of just some of the new major features (there are plenty more) that have been added:

New Portfolio Snapshot

A single powerful screen (that can be displayed on start-up) now presents all your most important information including:

Portfolio occupancy rate (occupied and empty properties)
Rent arrears (drill down functionality to make payments faster)
Pie chart showing all sources of portfolio income
Portfolio valuations and yield analysis
Monthly cash flow analysis forecast
Estimated taxable profit for the current year (using HMRC tax guidelines)

Tenant Management Enhancements

Here is a flavour of some of the new features added in this area:

Recording of more rent guarantor details
Automatic extension of rolling tenancies
Even faster and automatic maintenance of rents across your whole portfolio
Rent analysis (drill down functionality)
Enhancement to allow automatic change of rents during a tenancy
Flexibility to allow a rent due date that is different to the start date of the tenancy
Automatic back filling of rents
Advanced tenant journal for recording all tenant communications
Tenant check-in/check-out Lists
Supplier notification to automatically notify utility suppliers when a tenant leaves or moves into a property (you'll really love this feature :-))

Integrated Mail Merge Tool

We’ve now developed our own integrated mail merge tool which allows you to create your own bespoke letters (including ASTs) and store them in the software as templates.

This unique tool requires no integration with any third party software and will allow you to send letters to any number of tenants at the touch of a button!

Other Enhancements

Lots more features including:

New reports
More configuration options to let you control what you need/want to see
etc...

Oh and once version 8 has been released, there are lots of features planned for this version as well, which all version 8 customers will get for free :-)!

Version 7.84 - 8 April 2010

Improved program installers for all PPS applications. Customization of the database server communication port and the master database password is now possible. Having the chance to use custom values for these items may help in cases of conflict with existing SQL server instances, or when very strict system password policies are enforced.
Fixed a small technical issue that prevented the Income Tax reports from running under some conditions - an error message would appear preventing the reports from running.
Fixed an issue with the Finance Manager where a fully paid loan or mortgage could enter an endless loop demanding it was closed.
The new tax tables for 2010-2011 are incorporated in LPM Professional.
Additional minor fixes and enhancements under the hood.

Version 7.82 - 16 February 2010

All versions of the Profit and Loss report have the colours swapped - red for expenses, black for income
Added an option to print notes in the tenant charge invoices
Added a flag if a property is being sold, so that such properties may be filtered out according to preference
All columns on all grids can now be sorted and filtered
Optimized the Property Documents and Tenant Documents modules to retrieve the actual document data only when explicitly requested in order to save bandwidth in a network access scenario
Added support for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows machines for the CD installers
Improved handling upon importing documents in Tenant Documents and Property Documents. If reading of the file fails, the import operation will fail altogether (file operation failures were being silently ignored before)
Fixed a bug due to which updates would not be automatically found at the start if the program is connected to a remote database that has already been accessed by an updated version of the application (though updates were still accessible and downloaded from the Auto Update dialog by request)

Version 7.79 - 05 January 2010

Added major new ‘Tenant Charges’ functionality in the 'Tenant Manager' module.

A number of users have requested this functionality. You can now generate additional charges and raise invoices/receipts for tenants. Such charges can include, late rent payment fees, property damage charges, tenancy renewal fees etc.

Added an option for printing notes that have been assigned to costs in the detailed income tax reports.

The portfolio level detailed income tax report now supports grouping of the income/expenses by property, sub-totalling for each property in addition to the sub-section totals.

Fixed an issue with the Portfolio Balance, Profit and Loss, and Cost History reports where of two or more identical costs only one was printed.

Fixed an issue with the Portfolio Balance and Profit and Loss reports where incomes were apportioned in rare circumstances although they were not supposed to be.

Secondary tenants are now displayed in the Property Detail report.

Improved the legal documents export to MS Word function.

Version 7.77 - 05 November 2009

Changed the default backup directory for the software
Improved the legal documents export to MS Word function
Improved tenancy manager to include automated link to MyDeposits
Income Tax Report - improved report to cater for bad debt apportionment over multiple tax years when both ad-hoc payments and irregular payments are used

Version 7.76 - 12 October 2009

Keep those suggestions coming! Here are the details of our latest update:

User request - It is now possible to configure the list of tenants, mortgages and properties so they become default settings. You can now control which tenants, mortgages etc. you want to see.
User request - A number of enhancements to the Finance Manager including bulk deletion of all payments or of a certain date range only.
User request - A setting was added to enable users to control when rents should be classed as overdue.
User request - Overdue Rents screen enhanced to also display the number of days rents are overdue.
User request - Page numbers were added to the reports where necessary.
User request - You can now print your own company logo details on the legal documents.
Problem fixed - The tenancy agreement was hiding portions of the text when exported to MS Word.
Fixed a bug with the synchronization between the Tenant Manager and Property Manager when no data was present on one of them.
Fixed a bug in the Report Manager where the selected property was not always properly displayed.
Fixed a bug with the Rental Income report which, in rare situations, was collecting data from several portfolios instead of only using the current one.
Plus other minor tweaks and enhancements

Version 7.75 - 07 September 2009

As always, we continue to listen to your suggestions for new features and functionality. Here is what is new in this latest update:

A number of new legal documents provided by Lawpack have been added to Landlords Property Manager Professional. All previously included legal documents have also been reviewed and improved by Lawpack. New legal documents added include:

New Section 8 Notice
New Section 21 Notice
Rent Increase Letter
Routine Visit Letter
Rent Demand Letter
Tenancy Deposit Protection Form
Bank Standing Order Mandate Form
Plus more....

Click here to see the video of these changes

Four new reports added for each of the Early Warning sections: Insurances, Safety Certificates, Expiring Tenancies, and Finances.
The Overdue Rents report now supports grouping and aggregating the information per property and per tenant.
Quick jumping from the Overdue Rents screen to the corresponding tenancy and rent schedule record with a simple double-click.
Mass payment delete option now available for the payment schedule in Finance Manager
The Property Manager and Tenant Manager stay in sync with each other - when switching between the two windows, the selected property remains the same.
The deposit amount can now be changed when editing existing tenancies.
The connection settings for the local database server are now always displayed in the Preferences dialog box under Windows Vista and Windows 7.
Many tweaks and improvements under the hood to make LPM more robust and stable.

Version 7.73 - 07 July 2009

We added a new report in the Report Manager section - the Rental Income Report. It allows landlords to quickly see what the rental income from a single property or across the entire portfolio is. The report can be generated for an arbitrary timeframe with optional detailed display of the seprate payments.
The Property Tasks report received a facelift and has additional options for the way it is aggregated.
We alleviated the very strict timeouts when accessing the database and now the software can safely work on less powerful servers and/or with extremely large databases.

Version 7.72 - 15th June 2009

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

Multi-user networkable version of the software now available.

All existing version 7.xx users are entitled to a free upgrade to this latest version. For more information contact us.

We have now also teamed up with Lawpack to provide all our legal documents.

Click the above links to learn more.

Version 7.64 - 13 May 2009

Fixed an issue where tenancies with irregular rent payment could not be extended past their original end date
Interest rates in the Finance Manager can now go below 1%
Fixed an issue with the Early Warning section for overdue rents where ad-hoc payments occasionally were not properly accounted for
Added a reference to the room a tenant is occupying in the Tenant Manager section
The invoices and receipts print a Room column only if there are payments related to a particular room
The tax band information for 2009-2010 is embedded
A number of minor fixes and optimisations

Version 7.62 - 11 February 2009

Restore Database Bug - Fixed a problem with occasional software locking after database restore.
Non-UK Windows Regional Settings - Fixed a problem where a false prompt that a new version is available was appearing when the Windows Regional Settings were different from English (UK). It is still recommended to set the Windows Regional Settings to English (UK) when using the software.
Outlook Contacts Import Multiple Contact Lists - Now the software supports fetching contacts from multiple contact lists and trims any secondary data if it is too large to fit into the database.
Outlook Contacts Import Usability Improvement - All the contacts are deselected by default. There's a button to select all contacts as well as another button to deselect all contacts.
Contacts Alt-Tab Bug - it was not possible to copy & paste the contact details from another program into the Contact Details form because after each Alt-Tab switching the screen reverted to the currently selected contact.
Ad-hoc Payments - Changed the logic about the ad-hoc payments to allow payments to be made after the tenancy end date.
RLA LPM to LPM Data Migration Feature - If you have upgraded from RLA LPM to LPM now you can import your RLA LPM data into the LPM software. Please see File -> Import Data from RLA Landlords Property Manager. The LPM software creates a new portfolio for the data from the RLA software and sets the new portfolio as default.
Early Warning System - Changed the Expiring Tenancies, Expiring Insurances, Expiring Safety Certificates and Finance tabs to show events which have already expired until they are explicitly hidden by the user (previously, it was showing only events which were due to expire in the future).
Tenancy Overlapping - Now the software allows a tenant to have tenancy agreements for several properties for the same period. Secondary tenants may also be freely assigned to different tenancies regardless of the tenancy terms.
Mortgage Closure Date - You can now specify a mortgage closure date different than the current date.
Tenancy Agreement Addendum - The tenancy agreement now includes an addendum page (please see the last page of the tenancy agreements). You can use the addendum to specify additional terms. You can fill in the addendum either from within the software (please see the 'Tenancy Agreement Addendum' memo box on the Create/Edit Tenancy form) or manually after printing the tenancy agreement.
Printing Room Details on Tenant Related Documents - When a tenancy is for a particular room within a property, the room is printed as part of the address on the relevant documents.
Database Backup Reminder Setting - Added a preference setting to control the frequency of the database backup reminder message which appears upon exit.
Restore Database Folder - The Restore Database function now loads the backup folder specified in Preferences by default (previously, this function defaulted to the installation folder of the software).
Printing All Tenants on the Tenancy Agreement - The names of all tenants, both primary and secondary, now print on the tenancy agreement.
Create/Edit Tenancy Form Remains Open - The Create/Edit Tenancy form now does not close automatically upon saving the tenancy details. This allows you to update the details on all the Tenancy tabs before closing the form.
Pre-fill Contact Details on the Tenancy Deposit Tab - Added an option to populate the contact details on the Tenancy Deposit tab with data from the contact list.
Drop-down Menu Forms Switched to Add Mode - All drop-down boxes which have edit forms (those which open with the ellipsis button "...") now default to Add mode to make sure that any existing entries will not be accidentally overwritten.
Blank Portfolio - You can create a blank portfolio and then add any properties and tenants/tenancies later. To create a blank portfolio, please go to Portfolio Management -> Edit Portfolio -> Add (button).

Version 7.49 - 19 December 2008

MS Outlook Inport - Bug fixed. if the contact details in MS outlook where there were extremely long notes associated with a customer.
Country Default - Bug Fixed. This bug had crept in as of version 7.44 where new customers default country was set to 'Faroe Islands' instead of the UK.
Cost History Report - Bug Fixed - Grand totals value would not match individual totals due to technical issue in some extreme cases.

Version 7.45 - 30 November 2008

Equity & Yield Report - Bug fixed. In some rare instances a sold property was being printed in the active properties list.
Forgotten Password - The forgotten password email address has been changed to our support email address.

Version 7.44 - 13 November 2008

Income Tax Reports - As part of the enhancement made in version 7.35, the finance costs were being printed on multiple tax years, though they were not included in any calculations. Fixed so that such costs now only print for the relevant tax year.
Registration/Licensing Screen - Audio/video tutorial added to the registration/licensing screen to show customers exactly how to licence the software.

Version 7.42 - 06 November 2008

Edit Portfolio Screen - fix makes the "Add" button on this dialog's menu open up the Portfolio Wizard, in order to guide the user through a valid portfolio creation process.
Fixes to some report queries – changes were necessary to some of the report queries due to the migration to .NET Framework 2.0.

Version 7.41 - 31 October 2008

Report Manager - fixed a bug affecting the reports in the Report Manager section. The following error message sometimes appeared when attempting to run some of the reports:

"There is no row at position ..."

Version 7.40 - 29 October 2008

Tenancy Agreement - Payment Terms

Changed the Tenancy Agreement to cater for the different payment terms - Irregular Payment, Weekly, Two Weekly, Four Weekly, Monthly, 3 Months, 6 Months and Annually. This change concerns the following agreement sections: Rent, Payable and The Tenant's Covenants.

Also removed the note to landlords on the last page of the agreement which prompted the landlords to manually update the Rent and Payable sections if the payment term was not monthly.

Profit & Loss Report - Missing Costs

The following costs in some cases were missing on the Profit & Loss report as a result of the migration to .NET Framework 2.0:

- Other Costs -> Professional & Legal
- Services, Wages & Travel -> Travel Costs
- Rents, Rates & Insurance -> Rent Payments

Portfolio Forgotten Password - Software not Registered

Some registered users of the software could not retrieve their portfolio password online due to the following message displayed in error:

=============================================
The version of the software is not yet registered.
The software must be registered before the portfolio password can be sent to you.
=============================================

This has now been resolved.

Cost History Report - Incorrect General Income Expenditure Value

In some cases the 'General Income Expenditure' value in the summary section of the Cost History report was incorrect. This has now been fixed.

Rent Schedule - Ad-hoc Payments Leading to Incorrect Total Amount Outstanding To Date

Adding ad-hoc payments in the Rent Schedule section was causing wrong 'Total Amount Due' and 'Total Amount Outstanding To Date'.

Version 7.38 - 06 October 2008

Fixed a bug that affected the insertion or alteration of the following data:

Finance Charge Type
Insurance Type
Property Type
Purchase Cost Type
Rate Type
Room Type
Selling Fee Type
Travel Type
Contact Title
Cost Type
Certificate Type
Tenancy Utility Type
Property Utility Type
Tenant Identity Type
Tenant Other Information Type

Any attempt to insert a new value resulted in the following error:

"The field <Field Name> cannot contain a Null value because the Required property for this field is set to True. Enter value in this field."

Any attempt to update an existing value was ignored.

Version 7.37 - 03 October 2008

Changed LPM executable file to improve compatibility with Vista 64-bit machines.

Version 7.36 - 02 October 2008

A revised list of foreign currencies added to Portfolio Management.

Version 7.35 - 29 September 2008

Outstanding Rent Amounts displayed on Rent Schedule screen - the layout of the Rent Schedule screen has been improved to allow the following additional tenant information to be displayed for ease of reference: Total Amount Due, Total Amount Paid To Date, Total Amount Outstanding To Date, Total Amount Outstanding Altogether.

Finance Manager expanded - a new tab called Finance Costs has been added to record all finance-related expenditures. This information is automatically added to the Income Tax Summary report and appears on the Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet reports.

A more powerful Equity & Yield Analyser - the Equity & Yield Analyser can now be set to user either the purchase price or valuation price of a property.

Tenant Welcome Pack expanded - utility readings can now be logged and printed on the Tenant Welcome Pack when a new tenancy agreement is created. The furnishings status of the property is also printed on the pack.

Tenant Manager Reports enhanced - an Overdue Rents report has been included among the tenant reports.

Increased customisation - the Preferences section has been enhanced by adding the facility to control the View All Costs function from one location, instead of setting defaults for each independent cost reporting section.

New and Improved Help File - among the many improvements we have made to the Help and Support available within the software, there is now a complete DSS Payments tutorial which teaches you how to manage your rent schedules in the most efficient manner.

Version 7.20 - 04 July 2008

Fixed a bug affecting the calculation of bad debt amounts under certain circumstances

Version 7.19 - 01 July 2008

Updated the 2007-2008 tax bands
The Property Documents and Tenant Documents tabs can now import Excel 2007 (XLSX) and Word 2007 (DOCX) file formats

Version 7.18 - 05 June 2008

Fixed a problem caused by registering using the licence serial number
Fixed a problem in which the Portfolio Wizard didn't recognise certain email address formats
Fixed a potential problem with out of date software licences

Version 7.16 - 12 May 2008

Extended licence key filter to include .txt extensions, which improves compatibility with web-based browsers

Version 7.15 - 08 May 2008

Fixed potential problems caused by typographical errors in database names

Version 7.14 - 25 April 2008

Improved the update function by adding version number field to the licence data

Version 7.13 - 23 April 2008

Fixed problems with auto-update function

Version 7.12 - 22 April 2008

Enhancement to Registration allowing users to switch from annual renewal to rental payment model

Fixed problem with downloading and registering licence keys

Version 7.10 - 16 April 2008

As part of the new 2008, version 7 release, the software packages known as Landlord's Property & Tax Manager and Property Portfolio Manager have been rebranded as Landlord's Property Manager Professional and Landlord's Property Manager Regular, respectively.

Legal Documents - we know you've wanted the software to do more to manage legal documents. We've added the capability to import your own documents and hold them against a tenant, and we've re-organised the existing documents (Inventory List and Tenancy Agreement) and added the following templates: Tenancy Extension, Tenancy Deposit Receipt and Section 21 notice.

Store and manage your own documents - you can now upload your own documents and store them against a property or a tenant. Do you have an existing file of paperwork that you want to transfer into the software? Scan or copy the document and import it using the new file import function.

Global Invoices and Receipts - we've had a lot of feedback about this feature, so we've now provided the capability to generate invoices and receipts across an entire portfolio.

Tenant Reports Tab - we've collected the tenant reports into one central location. These include the Tenant Welcome Pack, Tenant History and Tenant Payment History. You can also upload and store your own documents relating to tenants within the software itself, helping you keep organised.

Bespoke Documents - you can now request your own bespoke legal documents.

Support Manager - a new module which gives you one click access to support resources from within the software. It's a central point from which you can access all support functions and contact details, including direct access to web-based support and our online Help Desk.

Preferences Menu - we've collected the basic configuration controls into one place, allowing you to quickly and easily set up your own default backup location, import your own customised report headers, configure rent due notifications and set up your Early Warning System.

Version 6.23

Fixed a bug affecting the calculation of bad debt amounts under certain circumstances

Version 6.22 - 23 January 2008

Added the Set Vista Permissions configuration tool which automatically adjusts Vista permissions settings

Fixed a problem with the update manager in which updates were not being installed under Vista

Fixed a problem in which overdue rents that had been paid were still being displayed as overdue in the Early Warning System

Version 6.21 - 10 January 2008

Income Tax report enhanced

Version 6.20 - 09 January 2008

Fixed a problem with the apportionment of a rent payment that is split over different tax and calendar years at the same time

Version 6.19 - 08 January 2008

Fixed a bug in the Report Manager module in which the Mortgage Broker Summary failed to display if the report was longer than 1 page

Version 6.18 - 02 January 2008

Changed the date format on the Mortgage Broker Summary report so that the Early Redemption Date is displayed in 'dd.mm.yyyy' format

Changed the Early Warning System so that records with a bad debt flag are removed from the EWS reminder page

Version 6. 17 - 22 November 2007

Fixed a bug preventing Help File dialogue boxes from opening over an active window

Repaired Home Track postcode checker link

Version 6. 15 - 01 November 2007

Fixed a bug causing the Equity and Yield Analyser report to return an error when run in spreadsheet view

Fixed a bug causing all overdue rents to be displayed in the Early Warning System regardless of the notice period set under the Rent Management section

Version 6.14 - 19 October 2007

Fixed a bug with the Portfolio Wizard that was preventing start and end dates of tenancies from being recorded

Version 6.13 - 15 October 2007

Photography Image Library - you can now upload images from your digital camera or mobile phone and assign these images to properties, entering descriptive notes for each image

Enhanced Finance Management - new Finance Manager tabs re-organise many existing functions and these new features make the Finance Manager easier to use, more intuitive and more powerful. These new features include a facility to manually close a mortgage, block deletion of payment schedule entries, ad hoc mortgage payments, a loan equity off-set function

Enhanced Overdue Rent reporting - A new report has been added that allows you to now see overdue rents by tenant, property or date

Improvements to Early Warning System - The early warning system now handles mortgages and loans that are due to expire! You can now be reminded when you are coming out of your ‘early redemption’ periods

Off-plan purchases and deposits - new functionality has been added to Property Manager to permit the handling of off-plan purchases and the creation of records of deposits paid

Tenancy Deposit scheme - you will all be aware of the new tenancy deposit rules that came into effect earlier this year! New functionality has been added to cater for this

Other Changes - other new features include an Automatic Password Reminder function: this can be used if you forget the password that has been assigned to your portfolio.
A Search Facility: you can now search for expenditures across your entire portfolio by ‘date’ or ‘amount’. A new Property Task report to help keep a track of your property tasks.
New income tax bands for 2007-2008

Version 6.07 - 08 May 2007

Technical changes to add compatibility with Windows Vista

Version 6.06 - 03 May 2007

Amendment to the terms of the Tenancy Agreement document

Version 6.04 - 01 May 2007

New Tenancy Agreement to coincide with the introduction of the Tenancy Deposit Scheme

Version 6.03 - 31 March 2007

New Tenancy Creation Wizard - you can now set-up a portfolio with a property, tenant and mortgage/loan in less than 2 minutes! Our new wizard functionality takes you through step-by-step, helping to set-up your portfolio in no time!

Enhanced Finance Manager - you now have better management of your property finances (mortgages/loans). You can now keep a better track of your open/closed mortgages, redemption penalties, off-plan build properties and much more

More Flexible Tenant Management - we have now allowed more flexible payments from your tenants. This includes one-off rent payments or special discounted payments. We have also changed the screen layout to differentiate between expired and active tenancies

Sales Price Analysis - Want to know what properties close to your portfolio have been selling for?We have now integrated the software with the Hometrack Online Sales Reporting System.Just one click and you’ll be provided with a comprehensive list of exactly what properties have sold for in the past few years!

Cash Flow Analysis - want to see how much cash your property or portfolio is giving you? One touch of a button and you can see your cash flow per property or for your entire portfolio!

Inventory Management - no more disputes when it comes to giving your tenant their deposits back! Our new and comprehensive ‘inventory management’ report allows you to do a complete ‘check-in’ and ‘check-out’ when the tenant enters and leaves the property

Mortgage Broker Summary - the mortgage broker summary report solves some major problems faced by active property investors by providing, at the touch of a button, all the essential information that your new lender will require. It is also perfect for sending to your mortgage broker for a review to see if you are still getting the best finance rates

Portfolio Income Assessment - this report shows you the total amount of rental income your property in generating you on a month-by-month basis, and shows you how this income is split by property

Valuation Analyser - the valuation analyser is a tool that allows to graphically see your debt to equity ratio

Enhanced Backup and Recovery - we’ve made some changes to the backup and restore tool to make it easier and faster to make backups. We have also included a backup reminder function