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Housters 4.1 Release

Housters 4.1 is live on http://housters.com. This release will be published to the Android and iOS mobile apps in 2-3 weeks.

Release Notes:
– Property managers can now send online ACH payments to landlords through Housters
– New screen for sending mass email to tenants
– Mint transactions import has been updated to work again
– If landlord / property managers adds business bank account, tenants will only see their business name rather than their personal name
– Bank account owner settings webcam now works in IE / Edge
– When rent payment fails, emails to sender and receiver give correct information
– Security enhancements
– Various bug fixes

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Housters 4.0 Release

Housters 4.0 is live on http://housters.com, Android and iOS releases will soon be available in the app stores.

Release Notes:
– Allow property managers to add landlords and assign to properties
– Update property manager signup flow to add landlords, properties, then tenants
– Add options for quickly adding property management fees for property managers
– Make adding tenants more intuitive in regards to how lease terms, expected rent, actual rent, and unpaid rent work
– When adding tenants, provide manual and automatic options for logging old rent payments (back to lease start date)
– Show all common tenant actions (charge late fee, log rent payment, etc…) as links on the tenant summary screen
– Allow landlords / property managers to opt in for paying the rent payment transfer fees themselves, rather than the tenants paying them
– On Collect Rent screen, show when last invoice was sent to tenant
– When deleting a recurring transaction, ask if they want to delete all transactions generated by that recurring transaction
– Allow adding notes to tenant leases
– Allow tenants to set a date for recurring rent payments to end

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Housters 3.9 Release

Housters 3.9 is live on http://housters.com, Android and iOS releases will be out soon.

Release Notes:
– New Trips section allows you to log mileage.
– Collect Rent screen can now send invoices to tenants regardless of whether the landlord / property manager accepts online rent payments or not. New invoices contain amount requested, due date, payment instructions, and optional message from landlord / property manager.
– Can set up recurring invoices from Collect Rent screen, so that tenants are auto-emailed the invoice a certain number of days before rent is due.
– When creating a tenant, can create a recurring Rent Payment transaction that will log their rent automatically every day that it is due.
– Added new to-do fields: Estimated Cost, Actual Cost, and Paid Contractor.
– Sort to-do list by due date by default, and allow filtering by due date range.
– Don’t show mortgage-related sections to property managers. Now landlords and property managers can toggle this setting on or off from preferences.
– Allow landlords and property managers to send refunds back to tenants.
– Added a new Before Rent Due Date filter to the Rent Status by Tenant report.
– Can now upload photos as documents.
– When importing transactions and adding multiple lines, show totals and auto-update first line’s amount as you specify other lines’ amounts.
– Change site colors for property managers, tenants, and contractors.
– Bug fixes

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Housters 3.8 Release

Housters 3.8 is now live on http://housters.com and will soon be in the iOS and Google Play Stores! Check out the release notes below…

Release notes:
– Allow tenants to sign up for Housters and then invite their landlord or property manager
– Tenants can now set up recurring rent payments
– Allow contractors (contacts) to sign up for Housters and then invite their client landlords and property managers
– Contractors can now create to-do’s and specify which client landlord or property manager they are for
– When adding/editing a tenant or lease, specify whether we should pro-rate the rent amount for the first or last month
– Improve the rent payment set up process
– Display which transactions were generated by a recurring transaction
– Added new notes field when adding or editing a property
– Resolve issues with international dates and zip codes
– Bug fixes

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Housters 3.7 Release

Housters 3.7 is now live on http://housters.com and will soon be in the iOS and Google Play Stores! Check out the release notes below…

Website release notes:
– Allow tenants to sign up for Housters directly, then invite their landlord
– Allow contacts to sign up for Housters directly, then invite their landlord and property manager clients
– Contacts can now manage to-do lists from multiple landlords / property managers with just one Housters account
– Show alerts to tenants
– Show alerts to contacts
– Improve user verification process when setting up account for rent payments
– Resolve issues with mint imports
– Bug fixes

Mobile release notes:
– List rows now have swipe to actions (iOS only)
– Redesigned property details screen
– Redesigned tenant details screen
– Contacts can now manage to-do lists from multiple landlords / property managers with just one Housters account
– Show alerts to tenants
– Show alerts to contacts
– Improve user verification process when setting up account for rent payments

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Housters 3.6 Release

Housters 3.6 is now live on http://housters.com and will soon be in the iOS and Google Play Stores! Check out the release notes below…

Website release notes:
– Improved calculation of rent schedule, which matches up with Rent History Report
– Show Rent Schedule preview when setting up tenant / lease terms
– Allow contacts to be alerted when new to-do assigned to them
– Resolve issues setting up tenants for rent payments
– Security improvements
– Performance improvements
– Bug fixes

Mobile release notes:
– We’ve completely redesigned the dashboard to show you important information about your rental properties in a beautiful, easy to use way.
– When creating a tenant, you can now see a rent schedule preview for them.
– We’ve added consistent “Next” and “Hide” buttons above the keyboard.
– Allow contacts to be alerted when new to-do assigned to them.
– Add late fee charges automatically after X number of days.
– Allow editing of a to-do’s completion date.
– Plus, we’ve fixed a bunch of bugs.

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Housters 3.5 Release

The 3.5 release of Housters is now up on http://housters.com and will make it to the Google Play Store and iOS App Store in the upcoming days.

We’re excited to announce that in this release, we have added fully integrated support for tenants making rent payments to their landlords or property managers. Simply login and go to Tenants > Collect Rent, which will walk you through the process of setting up your bank account that will receive the rent payments. Then you can invite your tenants to Housters, which will allow them to login to Housters and setup their bank account as well. After that they can begin making rent payments to you, a service that is free to you and has a small transfer fee for the tenant. The perk of getting your tenants to use our rent payment service is that it will automatically add their rent payment as a transaction for you, updating their unpaid rent.

**Website Release Notes:**

– Support for tenants making online rent payments through Housters is back with a completely new and improved user experience
– Homepage and features pages redesigned
– Prettier dashboard charts
– Performance improvements
– Handle pro-rated rent for last month of lease
– Specify late fee amount as a percentage of the unpaid rent
– New To-Do List Report
– Charts added to certain reports
– Don’t alert about mortgage info not being entered if property is fully paid for
– 3 and 4 month alert reminder options added
– Bug fixes

**Mobile Release Notes:**

– Tenants making online rent payments through Housters is back with a completely new and improved experience.
– Summary now shows your mortgage principal paid.
– The new user screen better explains what Housters does for you.
– Added 3 and 4 month alert reminder options.
– Plus various bug fixes and performance improvements.

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Housters 3.4 Release

The 3.4 release of Housters is now up on http://housters.com and will make it to the Google Play Store and iOS App Store in the upcoming days.

The major change you’ll notice is that now when you add a transaction (whether you’re in simple or double-entry accounting mode) you can input multiple transaction lines, where each line must include a type and amount and can optionally include a property and tenant. For example if you deposited 10 rent checks all at once in your bank account, you can now add one transaction and add 10 lines, specifying the individual amounts and which tenant each amount was for. This also plays in well with the new mortgage payment functionality, as you can log your mortgage payment principal, interest, and escrow amounts all within the same transaction.

Note: If you had enabled double-entry accounting mode, you could already input multiple types and amounts for one transaction, however you couldn’t input multiple properties / tenants in one transaction (now you can). Simple entry mode now has the same ability, without having to worry about whether each transaction line is a debit or credit.

See the full release notes below with all of the changes, enjoy!

**Website Release Notes:**

– Allow multiple transaction lines (types, amounts, properties, tenants) in one transaction, even in simple entry mode.
– Improved filtering, searching, and paging of mint import transactions.
– Be able to enter a date when logging payments through the tenant actions popup.
– Click on photo thumbnail to display bigger photo in popup.
– Display rent paid through date rather than rent due date.
– Improved format of reports exported to PDF.
– Save uploaded photos in correct orientation.
– Factor in late fees and adjustments into the Rent History Report.
– Bug fixes.

**Mobile Release Notes:**

– Track applicants in the app, and easily switch them to being a full tenant!
– Transactions can now have multiple lines. So if you deposit multiple checks, you can really easily track who paid their rent!
– Quickly compose text messages to your tenants reminding them to pay their rent, or notifying them they are overdue.
– Properties and transaction types can now be sorted. [iOS Only]
– “Tenant Actions” (the easiest way to mark rent paid, add a late fee, and more) now lets you specify a date for the action.
– “Rent Due” is now “Rent Paid Through”, to make it easier to understand.
– From a property or tenant’s transactions list, you can quickly “Add Mortgage Payment” or “Add Rent Payment”.
– Some bug fixes.

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Housters 3.3 Release

The 3.3 release of Housters is now up on http://housters.com and will make it to the Google Play Store and iOS App Store in the upcoming days.

The biggest new feature in this release is the ability to define the mortgage terms for your properties. It’s important to know how much of your mortgage payments are going into principal vs. going into interest, as principal builds up equity while interest obviously does not. Previously, it was up to you to use an amortization table and log in Housters how much each month went to principal and interest. However, now you can edit your property and set your mortgage terms, such as purchase price, down payment amount, length of mortgage, first payment date, and pmi/escrow amounts. Housters then uses that information to calculate how much principal, interest, pmi, and escrow amounts go into each monthly payment. While editing the property you can also enable Housters to auto-generate these transactions for you each month. Alternatively, if you want to manually add the transactions, Housters will input the correct principal, interest, pmi, and escrow amount values for you.

Another cool feature is the ability to generate late fee charges for your tenants. When adding a tenant or lease, you can say for example that rent is due on the 1st, a $25 late fee charge should be generated 5 days after, and a $75 late fee charge should be generated 10 days after. If the tenant owes rent 5 and 10 days after the 1st of the month, Housters will generate late fee charge tenant adjustments, increasing their expected and unpaid rent amounts. This means that it’s up to you to make sure you log their paid rent promptly so that it doesn’t incorrectly generate late fee charges.

The last new feature I’ll point out is the new Rent History Report. This should be useful ammo when confronting a tenant or going to court, as it shows for each rent period how much rent was due, when it was due, how much was paid, and when it was paid. As with all reports, this is only available on housters.com, not the mobile apps.

See the full release notes below with all of the changes, enjoy!

**Website Release Notes:**

– Set mortgage terms for a property so that Housters can calculate principal / interest amounts for you
– Enable auto-generated monthly mortgage payment transactions for a property, split by principal, interest, pmi, and escrow amounts
– When adding mortgage payment transactions manually, split by principal, interest, pmi, and escrow amounts
– Define per tenant lease the late fees to be charged after rent is due
– New Rent History Report showing detailed rent roll
– Filter the Rent Status Report to only show tenants with unpaid rent
– Print transaction details from transaction list
– Define a custom sort order for the property list
– Define a custom sort order for the transaction type list
– Show vacancies and the vacancy rate on the property summary
– Improve navigation to Applicants section
– New dismissable help tips
– Unsubscribe link in all mailing list emails
– Resolve time zone issues
– Bug fixes

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Housters 3.2 Release

The 3.2 release of Housters is now up on http://housters.com and will make it to the Google Play Store and iOS App Store in the upcoming days.

We have spent a lot on a new feature called “Subusers”, which allows you to invite other people to use Housters and interact with you. Previously you could already invite tenants to Housters, which would allow them to pay their rent and submit service/repair requests. You could also invite assign to-do list tasks to contacts and then invite them to Housters to view and update those tasks. Now you can also invite other landlords or property managers and pick which properties they can manage. They will have full rights to view, update, and delete the data for these properties, just like you can. We’ve also created a new Subusers screen where you can view the list of everyone you’ve invited to Housters and revoke access.

**Release Notes:**

– Ability to invite other landlords or property managers to use Housters and have access to your data
– Manage list of subusers (landlords, property managers, tenants, and contacts)
– Can now choose whether you’re a landlord or property manager
– Specify multiple days of the month that rent is due
– Enter negative amounts for transactions
– Customize which email addresses alerts should be sent to
– Bug fixes