What’s New in REST Professional Version 14.5

Overview

REST Professional version 14.5 delivers even greater functionality to help you automate mundane manual tasks, build your business, grow profits, and deliver the best service experience to your customers.

Additional Owner Contacts

The upgrade to version 14.5 of REST Professional includes an enhancement to existing Additional Address details. The Additional Owner Contacts feature is aimed at improving communication and service levels to property owners by providing the ability to store more detailed information for multiple owner contacts. 

Enhanced Tenant Water Invoicing in REST

REST version 14.5 delivers improvements to streamline the process of creating tenant water invoices.

• Identify and record which Properties and Tenants are liable for water charges

• Create one tenant water invoice which can record two separate water charges

• Auto populate invoice descriptions with date ranges for faster invoice processing

• Access improved Tenant Water Invoice screens & produce clear informative invoices for your tenants

Tenant Water Invoices with fileSMART and REST V14.5 Integration

REST Professional version 14.5 and fileSMART Version 7.0.2 introduces an enhancement to existing invoicing workflow functionality that will allow bulk processing of tenant water invoices using fileSMART barcode processing with REST. Tenant water invoices can now be processed and sent with the water bill attached.

Portfolio Check Enhancements

Portfolio Check can now be launched by selecting the new icon located in the REST Professional. In addition, this feature allows REST users to view the Portfolio of other users when running Portfolio Check by selecting configured users from a drop down list. 

Critical Business Alerts

A new option to nominate a REST user as Principal/Director is available in User Details. When checked, this option enables the Business Alerts tab.

• A Principal/Director can be configured to receive a Business Alert via email when a Bank Reconciliation and System Backup has not been performed for a set number of days.

• The alert will be triggered when the first user logs into REST for the day and if an SMTP Server is successfully configured.

• This feature is available for Property Management and Sales Databases.    

Property Details Enhancements

• After upgrading to REST v14.5 the Reminders tab will display details of Property Reminders only

• The Financial tab will display a new Bond field allowing Property Bond amounts to be entered and included in your web advertising uploads

• The Other tab has been renamed to Information and will display the following property details:

  • Water Usage details

  • Sub-metering details

  • Quantity Smoke Alarm field

  • Smoke Alarm and Water Efficient details previously displayed on the Reminders tab

  • Other - Pool details

  • Other - Pets Allowed

  • Other - Comments

SMTP server authentication

REST Professional version 14.5 introduces SMTP server authentication to allow bulk emails to be sent through internet email clients like Gmail. Additional SMTP server details can be configured in System Options and the default port when no additional authentication is configured will be set to Port 25. This feature supports 2-step authentication and a log file with authentication activities and errors will be stored in the REST log file utility. Previously configured POP3 Username and Password details will be retained during the upgrade to version v14.5, however the POP3 Server name will not be retained.

REST Mobile v7.0

REST Mobile version 7.0 has added new functionality which improves information access while out of the office: 

• View additional Tenant Status information

• View Additional Owner Contact details

• Experience improved performance and reliability

Other changes

Smoke Alarm Inspection Report

The Smoke Alarm Inspection report now displays the quantity of smoke alarms as entered in Property Details > Information.

System Recovery Failure Enhancements

To assist our Support team in identifying the reason for a System Recovery Failure, 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.

Change of Ownership Reports

The reports generated during a Change of Ownership will now display details of Tenant Invoice Credit balances transferred.

Vacating Tenant List

The Vacating Tenant List report layout has been enhanced to display Overpaid Arrears and Credit on up to 9 rental columns.

Tenant Bond Details

The following changes related to Tenant Bond Details have been implemented:

• When a bond amount for an existing tenant is changed, a prompt will now display to update the Bond amount on the Property.

• The Bond Required amount is now available as a field to upload to web advertising portals

Enhanced RockendSMS Online – Bulk Messaging

A new preview screen has been added to review the message with merge fields populated before sending.