Changes to DEFT Creditor Barcode setup

As of 1 October 2016, DEFT levy notices are subject to a Macquarie Bank processing fee of $2.75 when paid via Post Billpay over the counter at an Australia Post outlet. REST Professional Version 15.0.06 makes provision for the processing of these levy notices without the additional fee, since the majority of levy notices processed in REST are not paid over the counter at Australia Post.

• REST users who also use fileSMART Barcoded Invoice processing are advised to upgrade to fileSMART Version 7.5.3 to ensure the amount is captured in fileSMART without the $2.75 processing fee.
• Prior to 1 October 2016, DEFT levy notices were scanned into REST and fileSMART with a barcode starting with 168 and the amount did not include a processing fee. In REST, DEFT Creditors configured with a scanned barcode starting with 168 were assigned a Biller ID starting with 168.
• As of REST V15.0.06, all new and existing Creditors configured for DEFT levy notices will be assigned a Biller ID starting with 168 as well as a Biller ID starting with 422 to ensure seamless processing of notices with and without the new levy notice included in the barcode.
• When scanned into REST during Creditor Barcode Template Setup, the $2.75 processing fee will be automatically deducted from the amount when setting up a DEFT Creditor with a barcode starting with 422. This will demonstrate that payments not made over the counter at Australia Post will not include the $2.75 processing fee.

Sales transactions

The following issues that occurred in REST Version 15.0.04 when processing sales transactions have been resolved:

• Amounts receipted for sales advertising in historical months were not included in the Advertising Receipted amount displayed on the Sale > Property tab and the Total Collected amount on the Advertising Summary by Sale report.
• In some instances, processing a receipt for a sale property configured to attract bank charges could result in a System Recovery failure.
• In some instances, processing a disbursement for a sale property when REST is configured to post Sales GST to AAGST could result in a System Recovery failure.
• In some instances, the Sales Vendor Invoice report displayed incorrect invoice and vendor details.
• In some instances, sales disbursements that were reversed and subsequently reprocessed could result in a System Recovery failure.

Changes to History Recovery at Upgrade

During the upgrade process to REST Professional Version 15.0.05, the operator will be provided with an option to run a full or partial history recovery.  

• Selecting a partial history recovery will reduce the upgrade time, but in order to ensure accurate historical reporting in REST Professional, a full history recovery will be required as soon as possible after upgrading each REST database to V15.0.05.
• After upgrade to v15.0.05, when a full history recovery has not been completed; a prompt message to perform this action will display to the last user logging out of REST Professional.
• When selected, the full history recovery will commence after the backup selection has been made and will close REST Professional upon completion.
• This prompt will continue to display to the last user logging out of REST Professional until a full History Recovery has been performed.

To run the history recovery in REST after upgrading, select Other > Utilities > History Recovery. Since a full history can be time consuming, it is recommended this is performed on the server where the REST data is located. To avoid disruptions to your workplace, it may be best to run at the end of the business day to complete overnight.  

REI Forms Live

Additional available merge fields have been added across Property Management and Sales forms in NSW, S.A, W.A, QLD, N.T, TAS and ACT.

REI Forms Live – Owner Contacts

All available forms with Owner contact fields in NSW, S.A, W.A, QLD, N.T, TAS and ACT will merge multiple owner contacts details.

REI Forms Live – S.A

An issue which prevented Owner names and contact details from merging to some Sales forms has been resolved.

REST Mobile v8

• When searching for a Sale, a summary of all records found will display.
• Selecting a record from the summary will load the full details of the Sale.
• The ability to view a summary of diary items due today + 1 day for all users configured with Portfolio Check settings in REST Professional. Diary types that can be configured to view in REST Mobile are:
  • Personal Diary
  • Linked Diary
  • Sale Diary
  • Commercial Diary

Direct Debit Comments

The issue of incorrect Direct Debit comments displaying on Tenant statements and Tenant Invoices has been resolved.

Tenant Invoice – Disburse to Creditor System Options

The System Option Enable Disburse to Creditor has been renamed to Tenant Invoice – Disburse to Creditor and relocated to the Transaction tab.

Owner Detail Report

The Owner Detail List now displays the delivery method of Income & Expenditure Reports for owners and additional owner contacts.

SMTP Changes

SMTP validation in REST Professional has been updated to allow email addresses in the format name_@domain.com.

Outstanding Disbursement Report

When generating the Outstanding Disbursements report by Creditor when the Creditor has more than 144 outstanding disbursements and the option of Print Disbursements in property order is selected a RTE 9 occurred.

Creating Tenant Invoices from Creditor Disbursements

• The issue with an RTE5 error occurring when creating an invoice on the prompt from Creditor Disbursements for an extra wide Alpha index is now resolved
• When creating tenant invoices from a disbursement when prompted, an option to Save & Disburse or Disburse to Creditor will not be available.

Tenant Status screen

The Tenant Status screen did not apply rounding to vacating arrears in REST V15 Beta release. This issue has been resolved.

Upgrade improvements

When upgrading to Version 15 from some earlier versions of REST, history recovery was slow to process during the upgrade. This issue has now been resolved.

Quick Tenant Ledger

An issue with the calculation of due dates for tenant arrears when generating the Quick Tenant Ledger for multiple tenants has been resolved.

FileSMART Tenant Invoice

When processing Tenant Water Invoices in fileSMART Tenant Invoices in REST, some fields edited in the grid were not updated on the invoice correctly. This issue has been resolved.

Linked Disbursements

Commissions on invoices were deducted from the owner's uncleared balance when paying invoices linked to disbursements. This issue has been resolved.

System Recovery - Sales

To assist our Support team in identifying the reason for a System Recovery Failure due to Sales balance errors, enhanced logging has been added to record details of System Recovery Failures in REST Professional. A System Integrity log file will be automatically saved in the C:\Temp\WebAccess directory for the relevant day of the week.

History Recovery

A History Recovery will be run on the Transaction file for users upgrading to v15.0.04 from a previous version of v15.

REI Forms Live - ACT

REI Property Management and Sales forms are now available.

Owner Reports

• Some transactions do not display on Statement Style 10 and Statement Style 11 when previewing and printing. This issue has been resolved.

• Owner statements reprinted from the Reports menu do not display the Total for All Properties amount correctly. This amount does display correctly when reprinting statements from Owner Details.
• When previewing Clearing Statements after a historical statement has been generated, the incorrect owner names displayed. This issue has been resolved.

Direct Debit Comments

The issue of incorrect Direct Debit comments displaying on Tenant statements and Tenant Invoices has been resolved.

Tenant Invoice – Disburse to Creditor

The System Option in the Miscellaneous tab has been renamed to Enable Disburse to Creditor

Web Advertising uploads

The RPupload suburbs lists have been updated to include new suburbs.

Invoice receipting

In some instances, an Error 112 occurred when receipting. This issue has been resolved.

Print Letters/Mail Merge

The Update Tenant History option will not be available when sending a RockendSMS message to an Owner regardless of the merge type option chosen.

Changes to System Options

> Miscellaneous tab

The System Option > Miscellaneous tab has a new checkbox named Disburse to Creditor which must be selected to use this feature.

Changes to Tenant Invoice & Tenant Water Invoice screens

• After selecting the System Option > Disburse to Creditor, the following checkbox will display on the Tenant Invoice and Tenant Water Invoice screens:
• Disburse to Creditor – selecting this checkbox will load the Creditor disbursement screen when OK is selected to save the tenant invoice.
• After creating a linked Creditor Disbursement the following label and button with Tooltip will display on the Tenant Invoice and Tenant Water Invoice screens.
• A new label named Invoice attached to Disbursement will display
• View Disbursement – selecting this button will display the linked Outstanding Creditor Disbursement

Changes to Edit Outstanding Disbursement screen

After creating a Tenant Invoice or Tenant Water Invoice linked to a Creditor Disbursement, the following button with display on the Edit Outstanding disbursement screen:

• View Linked Invoice – selecting this button will display the linked Tenant Invoice

Reporting - Pay to Owner and Disburse to Creditor

Transactions for Tenant Invoices linked to a creditor disbursement will display on the following reports:

• Tenant Ledger
• Owner Ledger
• Owner Statement

Reporting - Pay to Agent and Disburse to Creditor

Transactions for Tenant Invoices linked to a creditor disbursement will display on the following reports:

• Tenant Ledger
• Internal Account- AAINTINV

Smart Search – Email address or Mobile search

After upgrading to Version 15, the new functionality is designed to search email and mobile fields throughout REST Professional.

• To search for an email address, enter a valid Email addresses in the search field e.g. name@email.com
• To search for a mobile number, enter 6 or more digits of the mobile number in the search field

Critical Business Alerts – Multiple Trust Accounts

Business Alerts have been improved to include more details to allow easy identification for business with multiple trust accounts. All alert emails will display the following related trust information:

• Database Name (License Name)
• Trust Account Name (Trust Account Name)
• Trust Account BSB
• Trust Account No

Direct User access to REST Professional Knowledgebase

• All users will now have direct access to the REST Knowledgebase without the need to enter credentials.
• An option is now available to access the REST Knowledgebase from the Help icon in the REST Toolbar.

REI Forms Live

Property Management and Sales forms are now available for the ACT

Performance Improvements for large Databases

• Improvements were made to the load time of the Tenant Tax Invoice Ledger on large databases
• Improvements were made to the load and processing time of Agency Fees on large databases.
• Improvements were made to the performance of creating ABA files and processing Owner Payments.)

Owner Reports

• In some instances, generating Owner reports sorted by Property resulted in the sort order being automatically set to Property in Print Letters / Mail Merge when merging with Owners. This issue has been resolved.
• Clearing Statements and Income & Expenditure Reports sorted by Manager or Property resulted in no records to process. This issue has been resolved.

Global Changes

An error that occurred when moving a portfolio for Advertising Contacts in Global Changes has been resolved.

Sub-meter grid

An issue with archived tenants displaying in the sub-metering grid has been resolved.

FSCD Screen

When selected items are processed in fileSMART Creditor Disbursements, the grid will now remain open and display remaining unselected items.

Web Advertising uploads

Web Advertising uploads will no longer experience an error when the user does not have write permissions to the REST directory.

Change to processing fees from a Tenant Invoice with linked Disbursements

When paying a tenant invoice linked to a linked disbursement and sufficient funds are available, any fees related the transaction will be deducted from the owner balance at the time of creating the receipt. Previously, these fees were created as outstanding disbursements. .

RockendSMS messages saved to Office 2010 document management

RockendSMS messages filed to Document Management when running Office 2010 experienced compatibility issues. This issue has been resolved and RockendSMS messages will be filed to Document Management successfully when using older versions of Office.

Changes to Direct Debit

• In some instances, tenant invoices and statements displayed the direct debit comment when the tenant was not set up to debit invoices by direct debit. This issue has been resolved.
• When reloading the invoice, the Disable Debit checkbox is active and can be checked. This issue has been resolved.

Changes to Tenant Water Invoice

When deleting a Tenant Water Invoice, no prompt displayed in REST Version 14.5. This has been resolved and the user will be prompted to confirm the deletion before proceeding.

Changes to Property Maintenance Disbursements

The due date for new Property Maintenance disbursements will now be set to blank when the Property Maintenance Job is created. When the disbursement is created upon completion of the work, the due date will automatically be set to the REST date.

Changes to Master files

A prompt will now display if the tilde symbol (~) is used at the beginning of the name field when creating and saving a master file e.g. Owner or Tenant. The prompt will also display if a tilde is used at the beginning of Address Line 1 in Property Details. The user will be asked to remove the symbol before proceeding.

Changes to Property Details screen

In REST Version 14.5 the Property Details screen did not display the date and time a property was created on the Notes tab. This issue has been resolved.)

Vacating Tenants overpaid calculation

In some instances, overpaid amounts for vacating tenants were rounded in REST Version 14.5. This issue has been resolved.

I & E Report GST Summary

In REST Version 14.5, generating Monthly Income & Expenditure Reports for some owners could result in the GST Summary printing without a report header. This issue has been resolved.

Changes to Upgrade requirements

To upgrade to REST Version 15 the database will need to be on Version 11 or later. When upgrading from a version of REST earlier than Version 11 a prompt will display to advise the user to contact Rockend.

Other Manager changes

Removing and overwriting descriptions for Other Manager Types in System Options could result in incorrect manager initials displaying on the property, Property Details report and User Details screen. This issue has been resolved.

Changes to FSTI screen

In some instances updating the Due Date for Water Invoices in the fileSMART Tenant Invoicing grid did not process the invoice with the updated date. This issue has been resolved.

Sales - System Recovery Failure Enhancements

A System Recovery failure caused by processing a Sales Transfer to an Investment Account with a payment method of Bank Instruction of Cheque has been resolved.

Sales disbursement cancellation

When cancelling an EFT Payment for a Sales Disbursement without reversing bank charges, the fees were reversed as part of the cancellation. This issue has been resolved.

Web Advertising

The Realestate.co.nz suburbs lists have been updated to include new suburbs.

Mail Merge changes

• In some instances an error occurred with REST shutting down when creating a single Mail Merge document and selecting not to add the document to Document Management. Changes have been implemented to allow the user to continue working after this issue occurs.
• An error that occurred when creating a single Mail Merge document for a record in use on another workstation has been resolved. The merge will be allowed to continue and the user will be advised that changes made to the record on another workstation will not be included in the merge. .

System Option changes

The System Option Reset transaction index located in the Miscellaneous tab has been removed as this functionality has been built into REST Professional.