The Housters 6.3 release is now live on http://www.housters.com. This release is PACKED with improvements that we hope you’ll love. The one that we’re most excited about is that going forward in 2020, Housters is going give 10% of its profits to charity. This year we have chosen the Hands & Feet Project as our donation recipient, which cares for orphans in Haiti. We really feel good about this, and we hope you feel that your money is going to a great cause.
We have also added a new Billing Discounts screen that allows users to perform certain actions (e.g. rating Housters in the app store) in order to get one-time discounts on their billing. Who doesn’t love saving money?? Speaking of money, we also now display the Housters pricing based on the user’s locale and current exchange rates, so our international users will no longer have to see US Dollars everywhere.
For Property Managers, we have simplified the Landlord rent collector setting and do a better job of explaining the flow of payments and invoices, and which Transaction Types should be used when adding Landlord payments.
We have also vastly improved the intuitive of Transaction Types overall, explaining what exactly each one does and giving examples of real world Transactions that would use each Type. When you add a Transaction and don’t set something correctly, e.g. using the Rent Payment Type but not specifying a Tenant, we’ll show a warning so you know that something is wrong.
Full release notes below:
- Start giving 10% of profits to charity!
- Added a new Billing Discounts screen that provides various opportunities to earn discounts on your Housters billing, e.g. by rating us in the App Store or requesting your first background check.
- For users outside of the USA… We now detect your country, look up current exchange rates, and show the pricing for Housters translated into your currency and at an equivalent rate. When you sign up for Housters, we lock in the exchange rate at that time and bill you at that rate going forward (so that your monthly amount stays the same.)
- For users outside of the USA… Because we now detect your country, we also can detect your date and currency formats automatically when you sign up.
- For Property Managers… When adding a Landlord, it now asks who collects rent from Tenants, the Property Manager or the Landlord. It then explains the impact of that setting, of which direction payments flow (who owes who) and what Transaction Type (Property Management Fees Received or Payment to Landlord) should be leveraged to update the amounts paid on Landlord Invoices.
- For Property Managers… They can now create custom Transaction Types that update the amounts paid on Property Management Payments to and from Landlords, rather than being forced to use the Property Management Fees Received and Payment to Landlord Transaction Types.
- For Property Managers… The Landlord who receives deposits from Tenants setting has been removed, as we weren’t doing anything with it.
- The Add/Edit Transaction form is now more intuitive in explaining what the set Transaction Type does. It gives an example of a transaction scenario that would use the specified Type. Also, if something isn’t set right then it will show a warning, e.g. when setting the Type to Rent Payment but not specifying a Tenant.
- Transaction Types are now more intuitive in explaining what exactly they do, e.g. how the Rent Payment type updates the amounts paid on rent invoices.
- The Is Excluded from Operating Costs setting on Expense Transaction Types has been inverted to an Is Operating Cost setting.
- The Show Balance on Dashboard Transaction Type setting now applies to not just Types in the Assets category but also Types in the Liabilities category. This means that credit card account balances can now be displayed on the Dashboard.
- Various Trips improvements… The USA deduction rates have been updated for 2020. Also, if outside of the USA it will no longer pre-populate the USA deduction rates so you can input your country’s rate. Lastly, adding a new trip will display it at the top of the list (before it was incorrectly showing at the bottom of the list.)
- You can now add notes to the main Dashboard. Previously, you could only add them to a Property, Tenant, or Landlord dashboard.
- Notification preferences have been improved to be more descriptive.
- The Unsubscribe link in emails now goes to the Notifications screen so that users can turn off alerts and get off the mailing list all at once.
- Emails now display images, before some email clients were blocking them.
- Transaction List > Select all checkbox changed to a button and fixed to be able to delete multiple transactions at once.
- Mint Import > Various fixes and improvements.
- Various bug fixes.