Property Manager Release Version 7.4

11/12/2007

Important Notices for v7.4 Users:

These release notes are broken down into 2 sections for major and minor enhancements to the application. A third section lists all new windows and tasks that have been added where your System Administrator will need to set security in order for you to have access to them.

This is a summary of enhancements made with 7.4. Details of each enhancement are described in the appropriate sections of the Help documentation, which you can get to by clicking the links for each of these enhancements.

• Please note that for tasks that are made obsolete or have moved to a new location with this new version of Property Manager, the task will appear on the Task List, but will have a different color (olive text). If the user clicks on it, they get a message stating: "This task has moved.  Please check 'What's New in this Release', available under the Help menu, for further information."  Specific tasks that have been removed or made obsolete are noted below.

To view an interactive overview of the changes click here:  What's New Demo

Jump down to:

Major Enhancements

Minor Enhancements

New Windows/Tasks to be set in Security

Major Enhancements:

Annual Recertification Process :

There is a new tab page under Occupancy and Compliance Detail to guide the user through the Annual Recertification Process.  The process is broken down into 5 steps of a To-Do List, and works whether you have a Community Wide Recertification date or Recertifications are done on the tenant's anniversary date or an alternate date.  This tab page and the underlying tasks replaces the Annual Recertification and Scheduled Recertification tasks on the Household Detail > General Information Tab.  Annual Recertification Process

1. • The Household Detail > General > Annual Recertification and Scheduled Recertification tasks, as well as the Occupancy and Compliance Detail > General Annual Recertification task, will appear on the respective Task Lists, but will have a different color (olive text). If you click on any of these tasks, you will get a message stating: "This task has moved.  Please check 'What's New in this Release', available under the Help menu, for further information."  

   • If you print out rental coupons after completing the annual recertification process for a community, you can do that for all households at once from Community Detail > Batch Printing by Community.  You just need to make sure that your rental coupons document is included in the Batch Printing group for Community Task Print Options groups. (System Administration > Maintain Documents).

Household Income & Expenses:

Income and Expense Worksheets are now created through all wizards that create certifications.  You no longer need to go to the Income and Expense tab under Household Detail before going into a certification task.  Now you update the Income and Expenses for a certification as you are adding/changing/updating the certification.  If you make changes to income and expenses for a prior certification, you will be brought through the income and expense worksheets for all certifications subsequent to the one you are changing, making changes to those as well, if necessary.

All worksheets are associated with specific certifications by their effective date.  Individual worksheets no longer have expiration dates, but are associated directly with the certification that they were created for.  The display of the worksheets has been simplified under Household Detail > Income and Expenses.  Maintaining the worksheets is now done directly in "create certification" tasks and not on the Income and Expense Window.

Household Detail > Income & Expense

Creating Income & Expense Worksheets

Displaying Rent Information at Create Certification Step for Transactions

More rent information is available on the Create Certification step of the task wizards that are used to build new transactions.  You will be presented with the household's/unit's Actual Rent, Rent Plan and Proposed Rent.  Proposed Rent will be Actual Rent or Planned Rent depending on rent change rules for the funding program group the household is in.  If allowed by the funding program group, you can then override rent to be different than the proposed rent.  Displaying Proposed Rent and where it comes from, should give you a more informed decision on whether or not you need to override rent from what is proposed.

Creating Certifications

Rent Information

New Task for Lease Renewal:

A new task called "Lease Renewal " is available on the Household Detail > General Information Tab for conventional and commercial communities (no rules apply flag set).  The new process has three steps to start the lease renewal, create the lease and enter signed dates on the lease.  As a part of this new process, the Create Certification step for conventional and commercial communities will include a field to enter the lease end date.

Two new Document Groups have been added to facilitate this process: "Lease Renewal: Send Notice" and "Lease Renewal: Send Lease".  Where possible, we have pre-populated the "Lease Renewal: Create Lease" document group with documents in the "Annual Recertification: Annual Package" document group that have the word "lease" in the document name.

Lease Renewal Process

New Task to Update Applications

With Income and Expense Worksheets no longer maintainable on the Household Detail > Income and Expense Tab, a new task has been added to the Household Detail > General Tab.  Update Application allows you to update the household summary, select/add members, modify preliminary income and expenses.  The task will then recalculate eligibility on all existing waitlists due to the changes you just made, and provide results as Warnings.

Update Application

Household Members - Expected Family Additions

This is change will allow the software to correctly determine the household size in order to use the correct  income limits for determine the household eligibility.  Making this change will also allow users to stop using the work around of adding a family member named "unborn".

Adding Expected Family Additions isn't it's own task, but part of certification tasks that have steps to update member information (Interim Recertification, Unscheduled Recertification, Process Application, Update Application,  AR - Update Tenant Information and References, AR - Receive Verification Forms, AR - Create Certification, and AR - Recreate Certification)

Expected Family Additions

Allow Household Moveout Accounting Activity Task for a Move-out/Move-in

The "Household Moveout Accounting Activity" task is now be available either if the household is no longer in a unit or if they moved into a new unit and still have a deposit on hand for a unit that is different than the unit they are currently occupying.  The new first tab of the wizard will reflect which unit the accounting activity is for (i.e. - the unit the household moved out of).

Household Moveout Accounting Activity

Community Cash Receipts

Changed the display of community cash receipts to follow the same format as the household accounting event history and the subsidy accounting event history.  All tasks related to community cash receipts are available on this tab.  There are now three levels of detail: Summary, Detail and Full Detail.  All related tasks are available from here.

Community Cash Receipts

Occupancy and Compliance Detail - General Information

The display of this window has been changed to make it easier to manage pending Occupancy and Compliance activity.  The tab is broken down into two windows: the To-Do List and the list of households falling into each item of the To-Do List.  As you click on each item in the To-Do List, the list of households and their details will change accordingly.  Also, the managing of Approval of Overrides is now a task from this window.

Occupancy and Compliance Detail > General Information

Manage Approvals

MINC Transmission & Project Worksheet

The menu items for working with creating and sending transmission files to MINC and working with Project Worksheets has been consolidated and simplified under Occupancy and Compliance Detail.  They are no longer Menu Items under the Industry Interface Menu, but are tasks accessed from MINC > Transmission Files and MINC > Project Worksheet.

MINC

Public Housing (PIC) Transmission

The menu items for working with creating and sending transmission files to PIC has been consolidated and simplified under Occupancy and Compliance Detail.  They are no longer Menu Items under the Public Housing Menu, but are tasks accessed from PIC.

PIC

Waitlist Lottery

There is a new wizard available on the Community Detail > Waitlist tab called "Waitlist Lottery".  Through the task, you can either manually enter the lottery numbers here, if you have already drawn a lottery outside of Property Manager, or you can click on the Draw Lottery button to have Property Manager draw the lottery numbers for you.  Lottery numbers will be shown on the Community Waitlist and Manage Vacancy tabs when present, replacing the timestamp.  They will also be shown on the Household Waitlist tab when present, where  the list of waitlist entries will expand to two rows to show the lottery number.

Waitlist Lottery

Community Detail > Waitlist

Check for Updates to Documents

A new menu item "Check for Updates to Documents" has been added under Help Menu.  On this web page you will find a list of new or updated documents that you can download and add to your library. This menu option will help keep your documents on your database up to date.

training.bostonpost.com/documents.htm

Minor Enhancements:

• Household Detail

• • General Information

  • • Initial Certification - Create Certification - With the new Create Certify step when in transaction tasks, such as this one, you will be able to select compliance overrides when necessary and when allowed.

    • Interim Recertification - For HUD Funding Programs, adding an Interim Recertification when there should be an Annual Recertification will be prevented.

    • • This will prevent you from adding an Interim Recertification that will override a transmitted Annual Recertification.

    • Swap Counted Group - New error message will appear when attempting to use the Swap Counted Group task and a waitlist entry for the current group that the household is in also exists for the household.

    • • The error will prevent you from completing the Swap Counted Group task while a pending transfer exists.  Remove the transfer, complete the swap counted group, and then put the transfer back if it is valid.

    • Transfer Household  - Create Certification - Ability to modify unit rent when completing an Interim or Unit Transfer.

    • • With the new Create Certify step when in transaction tasks, such as this one, you will be able to maintain and keep the current rent for the household and not pick up the community rent plan.  This only applies when the Agency does not control rent.

    • Undo Move In - For HUD programs, the Undo Move-in task will be available until the Move-in certification is transmitted.  For non-HUD programs, the Undo Move-in task will be available until 30 days after the move-in.

    • Terminate Assistance - You can now create termination certifications effective the last day the tenant is entitled to receive assistance.

    • • This allows you to create the household's Termination Certification using the same effective date that is reported in the electronic record that is submitted to HUD.

      • On the terminate assistance tab of the Terminate Assistance task, you will enter the last date the household is eligible for assistance

    • Modify Existing Voucher -  The owner and tenant signature dates will be set to the effective date of the certification when a Voucher change certification type transaction is created.

    • • This eliminates the extra step of having to sign the certification created from the voucher Change.

    • For Tasks that have sign certification steps, if another prior unsigned certification exists, you will not be able to complete the confirm step.  You will need to take care of the prior unsigned certification before being able to sign this one.  This will prevent household certifications from being confirmed out of order.

    • • These include tasks on the Household Detail > General and Transaction Tabs, as well as on the Occupancy and Compliance Detail > General and Annual Recertification Tabs.

  • Members

  • • New Tasks have been added to the Members tab that give you the ability to send applications and process applications for potential (unverified) members of a household.  Household Detail > Members Tab, Send Application to New Member, Process Application For New Member

  • Notes

  • • The layout of the Notes Tab under Household Detail has been changed to make it easier to view and use.

    • • All right click functionality has been changed to tasks.

      • There are new tasks to attach and detach files to Notes, which can then be opened by anybody with access to the household, by double-clicking the attachment.

  • History

  • • Hyperlinks added to the History Tab so that you can drill down to Community Detail or Unit Detail.

  • Transactions

  • • The Rebuild Selected Transaction task and Correct Selected Transaction for NXT HAP task now allow for member changes, income & expense worksheet changes, voucher changes, and overrides.

    • • With new Create Certification steps mentioned above under Major enhancements, you now have the ability to update /change information on a certification that has already been confirmed.

    • When a transaction is a Move Out certification, you can no longer use the Rebuild Selected Transaction task and Correct Selected Transaction for NXT HAP task.  In the past using these two tasks would cause problems with the HAP reconciliation/receive subsidy payment process when dealing with HUD funding programs.  Tasks for Move Outs are available on the Household Detail, General Tab.

    • The Insert Transaction task has been disabled from the Household Detail > Transaction Tab.  If any new transactions need to be created, that should be done from the appropriate task on the Household Detail > General Tab or Occupancy and Compliance Detail > Annual Recertification tab.

  • Accounting

  • • Receivable

    • • Add New Receivable - You can enter a future charge date, which allows you to set up a receivable balance for next month to show up on a tenant bill, for example.

      • Adding, Maintaining and Rebilling Scheduled Receivables for Non-Certified Schedules (schedules other than those defined by the tenant certification such as rent and utility reimbursement) has been tightened to produce more predictable behavior with the Event Types "Billing" and "Billing Correction" being created from receivable schedules, and the Event Type "Receivable Adjustment" being created from Adding, Adjusting or Correcting receivable balances (open items).

      • • Normally during the monthly billing cycle, Property Manager will create receivable balances (open items) automatically from scheduled items.  Items created from the monthly cycle are recorded in Event History with type "Billing".

        • When you add or maintain a schedule with retroactive implications, Items created are recorded in Event History with the type "Billing Correction".

        • If you need to make adjustments to the receivable balances that are exceptions to the billing schedule, these will be recorded in event history as "Receivable Adjustments".  Receivable Adjustments will be created if you use Add New Receivable to add a one time charge or Adjust Selected Receivable to change the existing amount on an open item using a different GL offset account other than the Income account.  The Correct Billing for Selected Receivable task will also create a Receivable Adjustment but will always use the Income account as the GL offset.

        • When maintaining a schedule or rebilling a household, the receivable schedule will not evaluate Receivable Adjustments.  It will only look to existing billings and billing corrections for the schedule to see if additional billing corrections are needed.

      • Reclass Negative Receivables to Unapplied Payment - A new Nightly Cycle has been added to Property Manager which will reclass negative rent receivables to unapplied payments.  Only credits created from the rent charge type, not credits created from the Utility Reimbursement or any other charge types.

      • • This process allows you to automatically reclass any negative rent receivable balances from your Accounts Receivable account to the liability account assigned to Unapplied Payment.

        • This also re-characterizes the Negative Rent open item into an Unapplied Payment open item, which will then be picked up in the apply credit process at month end and be applied against next month's rent when it is billed.

        • • When the process runs, it uses the Event Type "Apply Credits" and the note on the event will be "Auto-Reclass".

        • This new batch process can be scheduled to run nightly or monthly or not at all (default).

        • If you wish to implement this new batch process, you will need to contact Bostonpost Support to turn it on for you.

    • Subsidy

    • • Apply Credits - items that have been included on a HAP Request or have a status of "HAP Eligible" will not appear in the Apply Credits task.

      • A new task is available to adjust the proration amount when the Subsidy Source is an outside voucher.  The task is only available for events that come from Move-In or Move-Out certifications.  You will highlight the Move-In or Move-Out event in Subsidy Event History and use this task to adjust the proration amount for the outside voucher.  The GL Offset or Income Account that is used will be the GL Account assigned to the Excess Income Account in the outside voucher.  Correct Prorated Billing for Voucher MI/MO

    • Deposits

    • • The "Maintain Selected Deposit" task will only be available when the start date of the schedule is on or after the community go-live date for Property Manager.  If it is before this date, you need to use the "Maintain Conversion Beginning Balances" from the Household Detail > Accounting > Summary Tab.

      • You are now allowed to have more than one schedule per deposit balance type, but only one can be active.  In the case you are trying to add a new schedule, and there is an existing active schedule for the same charge type (and household and unit), you should maintain that schedule rather than add another one.  You will get the message "There is already an existing schedule for this charge type.  Maintain the existing deposit schedule."  If the old schedule has billed out completely, it is inactive.  Being able to add an additional schedule, allows you to increase the amount of a security deposit without having to maintain an old deposit schedule, especially if it was added during the conversion of the community to Property Manager. Add New Deposit

      • In the Household Moveout Accounting Activity task, the effective date for Apply Credits and Refund Credits will default to the highest due date when there is a due date after the current date; otherwise it will default to today's date.

• Community Detail

• • General

  • • Program Group Summary and the Voucher Summary data windows on the Community Detail > General Tab now have drill down added to show details on Unit Counts. Double clicking a unit count will bring up Unit Details based on the information being drill down from.

  • Program Info

  • • The check box to "Allow Skip Steps" in the Annual Recertification process is now available on the Property Manager > Community Detail > Program Info Tab, and is set for each funding program in a community.  In prior versions, this check box was located under Property Manager > System Administration > Maintain Lookup Tables - Business Constants as "Allow user to Skip Steps During Recertification Process". Program Info Tab

    • Enter the number of days before the Annual Recertification date that the first notice is due, the second notice is due, and the third notice is due.  You also have the ability to enter the number of days to start showing notices on the Occupancy & Compliance/ Annual Recertification tabs before they are due. Program Info Tab

    • The Income Layers data window on the Community Detail > Program Info Tab now have drill down added to show details on Unit Counts. Double clicking a unit count will bring up Unit Details based on the information being drill down from.

    • A New Security Deposit Method has been added to the Community Detail > Program Info Tab - "Greater of Minimum Fixed Amount or Total Tenant Portion but not greater than Maximum Fixed Amount".  This allows you to cap the amount of the security deposit that is going to be charged to a tenant.

    • Recertification Date - A new recertification method is now available on the Community Detail > Program Info Tab: "Alternate Date for Tenant".  When Alternate Date for Tenant is selected, the you will have the opportunity to enter an alternate recert date when doing a move-in or initial certification for a household.

    • • You cannot set the households next recert date to be greater than one year  from the household's Move in certification's effective date or Initial certification's effective date.

      • This Alternate Date for Tenant is not available as a choice on the Program Info Tab for USDA program groups.

  • Contract

  • • The Income Layers data window on the Community Detail > Contract Tab now have drill down added to show details on Unit Counts. Double clicking a unit count will bring up Unit Details based on the information being drill down from.

    • PHA and Conventional Contracts now have a place on the Community Detail > Contract Tab to enter the number of units. For PHA, this field will be used for compliance.

    • The maintenance of Income Layers is now done through a new task "Maintain Income Layers" on the Contract tab. In previous versions of Property Manager, Income Layers were maintainable directly from the Contract Tab.  Now it's a securable task, and the user that last updated the layer, and the timestamp from when it was updated are displayed in the wizard.

  • Rent

  • • The Rent Plan data window on the Community Detail > Rent Tab now have drill down added to show details on Unit Counts. Double clicking a unit count will bring up Unit Details based on the information being drill down from.

    • A new Prorate Rent Method has been added to the Community Detail > Rent Tab - Move-In Only/Actual Days. This method will prorate rent on a move-in only, with no proration done on move out.

  • Notes

  • • The layout of the Notes Tab under Community Detail has been changed to make it easier to view and use.

    • • All right click functionality has been changed to tasks.

      • There are tasks to attach and detach files to Notes, which can be opened by double-clicking the attachment.

  • Building

  • • The Unit Class data window on the Community Detail > Building Tab now have drill down added to show details on Unit Counts. Double clicking a unit count will bring up Unit Details based on the information being drill down from.

• Unit Detail

• • The Unit Finder now allows the user to search for a unit by building number, apartment number or unit id.

• Accounting Detail

• • General

  • • Add New Receivables - You can enter a future charge date, which allows you to set up a receivable balances for next month to show up on tenant bills, for example.

  • Payments

  • • For "Subsidy - Non-HAP" payment batches, you now have the ability to receive a zero dollar batch to record the monthly payment even if it nets to zero for 2 (or more) different households

    • For Subsidy - HAP Request batches, the Adjust Posted Payment task is not available.  If the most recent Subsidy - HAP Request processed payment batch needs to be reversed because it is incorrect and needs to be redone, contact Bostonpost Support and they reverse the payment batch for you so that you can reprocess it correctly.

  • General Ledger

  • • Hyperlinks added from the General Ledger to Household General Information by Household ID or to Household Event History by Event ID when the Batch Contents are displayed in Detail.

• Occupancy and Compliance Detail

• • General

  • • The Occupancy and Compliance Detail > General Tab view has been updated.  The tab is broken down into two windows: the To-Do List and the list of households falling into each item of the To-Do List.  As you click on each item in the To-Do List, the details on the right will change.

    • A new task has been added to the General Tab to allow you to sign multiple unsigned certifications at once.  Sign Multiple Certifications

  • Annual Recertification

  • • New column added to Members Section of the Questionnaire for "Student Y/N"  Annual Recertification Tab

  • TRACS

  • • Reconcile Selected HAP Request

    • • You are allowed to reconcile a HAP Request that it is not the most recent for the contract, however on the Certifications step of the task, the certs are not editable and cannot be added or deleted from the HAP Request.  This will prevent problems with subsequent HAP Requests and receiving payments against those requests.

      • While going through the HAP Reconciliation process, there is a check box on the tabs to "Reconcile using TRACS Unit Nbr."  This should help to make reconciling easier when the HUD apartment numbers are different than the apartment numbers used in Property Manager.

      • Changed wording on Start Reconciliation Step from "Revised HUD Total" to "Approved HUD Total".

      • On the Misc. Adjustments, Special Claims, Regular Subsidy and Subsidy Adjustments steps of the Recon, the Status descriptions have been changed to better describe the action being taken. Paid in Full is now Approved for Payment, Paid $1 More is now Approved $1 More and Paid $1 Less is now Approved for $1 Less.

      • Subsidy Adjustments - Added a check box to show "Potential Rounding Differences" on the Subsidy Adjustments step, which will helpful if your CA rounds differently than how Property Manager does for a Gross Rent Change, for example.

      • HAP Request Reconciliation Report - included with the household's name will be the Household ID, Apartment Number and the TRACS Unit Number.  Having the TRACS Unit Number on the report will be especially helpful when the unit number and the TRACS ID number are different when comparing it to the CA/HUD's approved HAP Request.

• Accounts Payable Detail

• • Receive AP Invoice - Contract Labor (No P.O. Required)

  • • From Accounts Payable Detail > Receive Invoice you are able define the contract and then receive an invoice against it when you select Contract Labor (No P.O. Required) from the Invoice Type drop down list.

  • Receive AP Invoice - No P.O. Required

  • • When adding Accounts for a vendor invoice, whether an invoice will be purchased by a management company or a community is more defined.  The account will be for a "Purchased By" entity such as management company or by a Community.

  • Invoice Detail

  • • Community Drop allows user to view AP Invoices for only the selected community or all authorized communities

    • The AP Invoice export to BP Financials has been enhanced to allow more invoices to be exported at one time.

    • For exported invoices a column has been added to show which system the invoices were exported to (BP Financials, Quickbooks, No Export).

• Work Order Detail

• • Add Purchase Order/Maintain Purchase Order/View Work List

  • • A Material Close Date has been added to Material Line Items. The close date is the received or delivered date. This facilitates the listing of material line items in the work list when viewed by a date range.

    • If your vendors send bills to individual communities, you can now setup a community to be a choice in the Purchased by list, and assign a billing address.  See System Administration > Accounting Setup > Export Information below for more information.    By choosing the management company as the Purchaser, it is assumed the management company will receive the invoice from the vendor for one or more communities.

    • • When a Community is selected as the purchaser, the line items will be limited to that community. When the purchaser is set to a Management Company or a Maintenance Company, the line items can be any community.

    • When printing Purchase Orders, you can now set the default number of copies to print.  So that if you print two copies, clicking the print icon once will produce two printed copies.

    • • See System Administration > Maintain Lookup Tables - Business Constants Table below to see where this setting is made.

• Business Detail

• • Find Business / General Information

  • • For customers that use Bostonpost Financials, a flag has been added to Business Details to specify a vendor as a 1099 Vendor.  When the flag is set to be a 1099 vendor, any invoices received against the vendor will be loaded to Bostonpost Financials as to be included on that vendor's 1099 for the year.

    • • To set the flag, navigate to Business Detail > Find Business and select the 1099 Check Box to set a vendor as receiving a 1099.

• Maintenance Company Detail

• • No Changes with version 7.4

• System Administration Detail

• • Maintain Documents - New Merge Fields

  • • Data for Late Notices - subsidy program, subsidy, tenant rent, lease start & end dates, date of oldest receivable and last day of the current month.

    • Merge Fields for Waitlist Review, Data for Late Notices, Merge Fields for Letters & Merge Fields for Verification Forms - head_name.

    • Data for Late Notices - today_plus_3 and today_plus_6

    • Merge Fields for Letters - contract_admin_name, contract_admin_address3

    • Merge Fields for Letters - recert_month

  • Maintain Lookup Tables

  • • Business Constants Table

    • • Set the default number of copies to print when printing Purchase Orders under Work Order Detail.  This will allow you to print 2 copies, for example, with only clicking the Print button once.

    • Voucher Table

    • • The Sort Order for each voucher in the voucher table can be removed in order for the list to sorted alphabetically.

  • Accounting Setup

  • • Export Information Setup

    • • Two new tasks have been added to the Export Information Tab to make the selected Community Export Entity a Purchaser and one to disable the selected community as a Purchaser.

      • • When a community is set as a purchaser, they will be selectable when creating Work Orders under Maintenance Company Detail.  The tasks are Authorize Purchasing and Disable Purchasing.

• Reports

• • Notice of Balance Due & Rent Bill Report

  • • A parameter has been added to these reports to select whether the check should be payable to (CheckPayableTo) the Community or the Management Office.

  • New Report - Home Annual Recertification Report

  • • This annual certification report is specific to HOME-Assisted Rental Projects.

• Conversion Detail

• • Households

  • • New Task "Add Contract Subsidy Opening Balance". This task is only available during Conversion and it gives you the ability to add an OARQ opening balance that is included on the reference HAP and included in the first HAP payment for the new community in Property Manager.

• Reminders

• • Bostonpost Notices

  • • The Bostonpost Notices window will open when you first log in if there is a new message from Bostonpost Support.  We have added functionality to this window to include hyperlinks on any Web Site URL is include in the message.  Clicking on these hyperlinks will open up the referenced web site in your web browser.

New Windows/Tasks for Security

IMPORTANT:

Following are new tasks for which your System Administrator must set security before they will be available in the Tasks list.  This is set in System Administration > Define Access Tab.

Previous Release Notes for v7.3

Previous Release Notes for v7.2