July 2010 | Got ideas? We're listening

Do you have an idea that you think would make Buildium even better? With our new Idea Exchange, you can submit your ideas, add your two cents, and vote for your favorite ones. You're even able to see which ideas we're considering and which ones we're working on.

To get to the Idea Exchange, simply select Suggest a new feature from the Help menu in the top right corner of most Buildium pages.

July 2010 | Honey, I'm home!

We are excited to introduce our new home page. We think it's a big improvement over what we had before and hope you agree.

Here are the highlights:

• Dashboard: Key metrics related to properties.
• Shortcuts: Links to common actions.
• My Upcoming Tasks: Your next five tasks due and links to your entire task list.
• Recent Activity: Events and tasks from the past five days.

We hope this new home page helps make managing your properties a bit easier. We look forward to your feedback.

Thanks to those of you who participated in the design of this new home page. We could not have done it without you!

July 2010 | A new alternative

There's a new option on the Add Recipients dialog of the Compose Email feature.

You can now easily send emails to recipients using the primary email address, alternate email address, or both.

June 2010 | Optimists and pessimists agree:
receiving payments in full is a good thing

Whether you fall into the "glass half full" or "glass half empty" camp, one thing we can all agree on is that receiving payments in full from your tenants or HOA owners is a good thing.

And now it's even better. You can already receive payments in bulk from the Outstanding Balances page. Now you can also adjust the date, payment method, check number, and more for each payment you receive in full.

So next time those rent payments or association dues roll in, go to Tenants > Outstanding Balances or HOA Owners > Outstanding Balances and get your fill.

June 2010 | Taking the pain out of listings

We recently released a raft of enhancements to our Listings features aimed at making day-to-day tasks related to listings a bit easier:

• Easily see which units are listed and which are not with our handy "Listed" and "Not Listed" tabs on the Listings page.
• Make sure your vacant units are listed; search by occupancy on the Listings or Units page.
• Get rented units off the market easily with the new "delist" action for each Listing.

Even editing listing information has gotten easier with quick access to Unit and Property information like photos and features directly from the Listing edit page. No more bouncing around between the Units, Properties, and Listings pages just to get your listing looking the way you want!

June 2010 | Your vendors are important

We've added a new feature to help you keep up-to-date contact information for your vendors readily available to your residents.

You can now add a vendor's contact information as an "Important Number" for your residents. The Important Number changes any time you change the vendor's information without having to maintain the information in two places.

Just click the new link at the top of the Properties > Important Numbers page to get started.

May 2010 | Charge management fees by unit

Buildium has added even more flexibility to how you calculate your management fees. You can now apply a flat fee by property or by unit.

Go to Admin > Settings > Management Fees if you would like to adjust how your management fees are calculated.

May 2010 | Advanced feature | Make it easier for search engines to find your company online

You have an attractive, well organized website for your prospects and customers. The next step is to make sure people find your website online.

This is called "search engine optimization" or "SEO" for short. We recently rolled out two enhancements to your Public Website settings to aid your SEO efforts.

The first is that you can now set the title tag for your website. The title tag appears in the title bar of most browsers and also gives Google and other search engines clues about the content of your website.

The second SEO-related enhancement is the ability to set up meta tags on your website home page. Meta tags are additional "clues" that some search engines use to determine the content of your website. Meta tags are also key if you want to take advantage of Google's free Webmaster Tools.

May 2010 | Just for the record

It's probably happened to you. You have a payment from a resident and the resident's name is on the check, but to record the payment in Buildium, you needed the resident's unit information or account number.

Not any more. With our recent enhancements to the Receive Payment page, now you can just enter whatever information you have – the resident's name, property, unit, partial account number...whatever – and we'll filter the resident list for you.

May 2010 | Houston, we have contact

You can now associate different contact information with each of your listings.

Set up a listing contact for each of your staff members who lists units. Or maybe you have multiple offices and want to have particular listings have their contact information. Now you can.

From the Units > Listings page, click the "Maintain listing contacts" link and get started.

April 2010 | A spring cleaning for reports

In the spirit of spring, we thought we'd dust-off our reports. That's why you'll find a fresh new format for all Buildium reports.

We've standardized headers and footers, increased the font size, added a bit of shading here and there, and generally spruced things up. Hopefully you'll find our new reports to be more readable and more pleasant to look at.

In addition to updating the format, we've made some frequently requested enhancements:

• We've added two summary tables to the Rent Roll report, one by bed/bath and one by property that aggregate occupancy and rent information.
  
  
• Reports that include resident names, such as the Delinquent Tenants and Delinquent HOA Owners reports, now give you the option of including the residents' account numbers, names, or both.
  
  
• The Unpaid Bills by Property report now gives you the option to display ending cash balances for each property.
  
  
• Many reports have new summary tables to replace the old "Grand Total" lines, giving you a quick way to see totals for the entire report.

We're confident that you're going to like the changes we've made, but since this is a significant change, we're providing access to the old "legacy" report format for a limited time.

We're planning to leave the legacy formats in place for at least a month, but how soon we remove the legacy report format after that will depend on the feedback we get. So if you have an issue with a particular report, let us know.

Of course, we'd also be happy to hear from you if you like what we've done. Try running some reports and let us know what you think.

April 2010 | Good news about the budget

We've all gotten used to hearing bad news about federal, state, and local budgets. We thought budgets deserved some good news for a change.

You can now use Buildium to track monthly budget amounts. Enter different amounts for each month or enter one amount for the entire year and we'll spread it out for you. It couldn't be easier!

Go to Accounting > Budgets and give it a try.

April 2010 | Another day another dollar older

Our Delinquent Tenants and Delinquent HOA Owners reports just got a lot more useful. We now show aged balances on these two reports, allowing you to see at a glance how far behind your residents are on their payments.

April 2010 | Be warned! Buildium helps you avoid trust accounting problems

Keeping track of cash balances to make sure you don't violate trust accounting rules can be a real challenge. Let Buildium help you by warning you when the cash balance for a given rental owner or property is in danger of falling below zero.

Go to Admin > Settings > Accounting Settings and select the type of warning you'd like to receive. Buildium will then warn you if you try to pay bills for a rental owner or property without enough available cash.

March 2010 | Get smarter...pick lists, that is

You've seen them all over Buildium — those nifty little pick lists that let you choose from a list of things like a specific account, property, or vendor. Well, some of those pick lists just got a lot smarter.

Instead of having to scroll through dozens of items, you can now start typing in the pick list (where indicated) and the list will start filtering automatically. Of course, you can still scroll through the items like you used to, but if you know what you’re looking for, try typing the name instead.

So next time you're recording a check or entering a bill, give it a shot and get smart!

February 2010 | Set it and forget it...Rental Owner Statement periods

With apologies to Ron Popeil, when it comes to rental owner statement periods, now you can set it and forget it!

Go to Admin > Settings > Statements and tell Buildium which day of the month your Rental Owner Statement period ends. But, wait, there's more! Each time you run a Rental Owner Statement, Buildium will automatically default the start and end dates.

February 2010 | You gotta keep 'em separated

Keeping track of operating versus non-operating income just got easier.

We've enhanced the Income Statement and Budget vs. Actual Report to group and sub-total operating and non-operating accounts separately. Try it out; run an Income Statement or Budget vs. Actual report today.

February 2010 | Advanced feature | Upload images and assets for your public website

Here's a new capability for those of you who have spent time customizing your public website. Until now, if you wanted to add images or other assets to include in your custom pages or style sheets, you had to host those images on your own server. Because Buildium uses SSL, this resulted in some annoying security warnings from certain browsers. Well no more.

You can now upload images or other assets to Buildium's servers and then use those images for your public website. Upload a photo to display in the body of your public website home page, upload backgrounds or other images you'd like to use in your custom website skin, upload documents that you'd like to refer to within custom pages; the sky's the limit.

Go to Admin > Settings > Public Website and click the Images and assets link. Click the Upload button to start uploading assets.

February 2010 | Give your public site an instant makeover

Did you know you can instantly change the look of your public website? In addition to our classic Buildium skins, we have a library of alternate looks you can apply to your public site with the click of a mouse. Just go to Admin > Settings > Public Website > Global settings and choose from our selection of website skins.

Over the coming months, we're going to be adding even more website skins, so stay tuned!

January 2010 | Abracadabra! Find quality vendors from ServiceMagic

You can now find qualified vendors and contractors through ServiceMagic without leaving Buildium.* Simply go to Vendors > Vendor Directory and click a category to see a list of vendors in your area from ServiceMagic's extensive database. When you find a vendor you like, call the phone number listed and ServiceMagic will connect you. Presto!

* The ServiceMagic vendor directory is not available in some areas.

January 2010 | Make a statement!

You already know how easy it is to generate and distribute your resident statements. Now we've brought that same ease and convenience to rental owner statements.

You can now generate and distribute rental owner statements from the Mailings area, allowing you to EZ Mail or email rental owner statements with just a few clicks of your mouse.

That's right, no more going to Reports, running rental owner statements, stuffing envelopes, or composing individual emails to your rental owners. Just go to Documents & Forms > Mailings, click "Rental Owner Statement," select some mailing options, and off they go.

January 2010 | Happy 2010! It's 1099-MISC time

Last year we rolled out the ability to generate 1099-MISC forms, eFile them with the IRS, and print and mail them to recipients. We also offered the option to print 1099-MISC forms in bulk and ship them directly to you if you'd rather mail them out yourself.

This year you can do all of this and more.* To celebrate the New Year, we've added a few new features to make filling 1099s even easier in 2010.

• Streamlined process for identifying eligible vendors and rental owners
• Made it easier to update missing mailing addresses and tax IDs
• Added the ability to manually adjust reporting dollar amounts

The Federal deadline for sending 1099-MISC to your rental owners and vendors is January 31, so don't delay! For more general information about 1099-MISC and other "information forms" from the IRS, please visit IRS.gov.

* Additional fees apply

December 2009 | Mailing gifts

Santa isn't the only one bringing gifts this month...Buildium has some gifts of our own!

We've just released a whole sleigh-full of enhancements to the way you create form letters and generate mailings. Highlights include:

• Find recipients fast. Choose recipients the same way you do for emails.
• Decide who gets a copy. Now you can send one letter per unit or one letter per resident.
• Gain control over your form letters. Delete default form letters that you don't use.

We’ve also added the concept of a mailing "sender." Now, instead of using the same logo, return address and signature for all of your letters, you can set up different senders and choose the one you want for each mailing.

Set up individual senders for each user or create a different sender for each office. The possibilities are endless.

You also have more control over how your letters look. Don't want a logo because you're using pre-printed letterhead Don't need a return address because you're going to email the letter? Simply create two new layouts without those elements.

Happy holidays from your friends at Buildium. We wish you and your family a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year!

November 2009 | Check, please!

Looking for a check but don't remember when you wrote it? Have the check number, but no other details?

Well, things just got a little easier. With Buildium's new check number search you can quickly find checks in any bank account.

November 2009 | Empower your residents

With our new Resident Website Settings page, you can decide what information to show your residents online.

Decide whether to show residents a full history of their charges and payments, whether to allow residents to submit requests online, and more.

Get started by going to Admin > Settings > Resident Websites. You can also set up different options for each property.

November 2009 | Chart a course for easy account changes, matey

Avast, me hearties! Making changes to ye chart of accounts is now as easy as falling off the plank.

With Buildium's new ability to delete accounts and reassign transactions, you can keep your chart of accounts shipshape.

So, if you've been wanting to make changes to ye chart of accounts but were worried you'd scuttle the ship, fear not. Our new features make it easy to keep track of ye doubloons however you like.

November 2009 | Posting to craigslist just got even easier

Back in August we added a feature that generates HTML rental listings that you can manually copy to craigslist. That feature just got even better.

Now, instead of copying your listings, post them directly to craigslist with one click.*

* One-click posting may not work in some geographic areas. In these limited cases, you can still copy listings manually.

October 2009 | Accrue fewer mouse clicks

If you use the accrual method of accounting, you've become accustomed to a familiar pattern when you search for financial transactions or run financial reports. Step one, change the accounting method from "Cash" to "Accrual." Step two, repeat step one.

Well, no more. Now you can set your default accounting method once and for all by going to Admin > Settings > Accounting Settings.

So stop accruing all those extra mouse clicks and set your default accounting method today.

October 2009 | Hide unused bank accounts and vendors

Over time, it's likely that you'll have old bank accounts and vendors that you don't use anymore. But how do you keep those old accounts and vendors from cluttering up your lists?

The answer is, make them inactive. Just open the detail page for the bank account or vendor you want to hide, set the status to "Inactive," and click Save. Now that bank account or vendor will no longer appear in dropdown lists.

If you need to start using an inactive bank account or vendor again, simply search for the inactive record and set it back to "Active."

October 2009 | Wash, dry, and deposit

We know that many of you deposit other items like cash from coin-op washers and dryers with the checks you receive from your residents. In the past, you had to record these items in Buildium separately.

Now you can combine those items with resident payments into a single bank deposit. On the Deposit page, simply click the Add other deposit items link and then specify a property, account, memo, and amount for your additional deposit items.

We'll add these items to your deposit slip alongside any payments you check off from the undeposited payments list.

September 2009 | Reports reporting for duty, sir!

We are happy to report that your report headers are now under your command.

Go to Admin > Settings > Reports to customize up to five lines of text to appear in your report headers.

August 2009 | Who's in charge here?

We've recently made some improvements to take the work out of calculating, entering and updating resident charges.

In additional to calculating resident charges from meter readings, you can now use the Bulk Charges page to calculate charges from one or more user-defined allocations. This works great when you want to allocate a common expense, like a water bill, among the units in one of your properties. What’s more, you can enter the charges once or make them recurring.

With the new Bulk Charges page, entering charges like special assessments or CAM charges just got a whole lot easier.

Another improvement is being able to update or delete recurring charges for all of the units in a given property with the new Update Recurring Charges page. This is perfect for when you need to update recurring charges across the board for one of your properties, perhaps because one of your associations has increased it fees.

With these new time-saving features, you’ll be back in charge of your resident charges.

August 2009 | Make sure everyone pays their fair share

Keeping track of shared expenses just got a little easier with a new tab added to each property record.

The tab is called Common Expense Allocation for rental properties and Common Interest Allocation for HOA properties. With this tab, you can assign an allocation percentage to each unit in a property and then use this percentage when you're adding or updating bulk charges (see related announcement above).

Create allocations for association fees, special assessments, CAM charges, or any other shared expense you can think of and start dividing up expenses with ease!

August 2009 | Share your listings with the world

We know that many of you use craigslist to advertise your rental listings. That's why we're really excited to announce this latest feature.

You can now easily export your Buildium listings to craigslist. We provide you with html code that allows you to instantly create an attractive, professional-looking listing in the body of your craigslist post.

What's more, all the information in your Buildium listing—including descriptions, features, and photographs—are formatted to appear in your craigslist post.

And if you use a site other than craigslist to advertise your listings, you can use our generic listing export for your listings, too.*

What are you waiting for? Try posting to craigslist from Buildium today!

* Generic listing export only works with sites that accept html

July 2009 | A new way to record resident payments

We know that recording payments from tenants and HOA owners is time consuming for many of you. That's why we've introduced a quick way to record payments when the amount you receive equals the amount due.

Now when you go to Tenants > Outstanding Balances or HOA Owners > Outstanding Balances, you will see a button called Pay in full by check. When you want to record a payment equal to the amount due, just check off one or more outstanding balances and then click this button. It's that simple.

July 2009 | Stay on top of your Buildium Account

We've made a bunch of improvements to the way you view and update your account information in Buildium.

Instead of having to go to different places to see your account information and billing history everything is in one place. Just go to Admin > Buildium Account. There you can:

• See your next scheduled subscription charge
• View a full history of charges and payments
• Download an invoice for any month
• Maintain your account contact information
• Change your payment method
• View your current subscription and upgrade as your business grows

July 2009 | Homeowners are now HOA Owners

Over the last year or so, we've noticed some confusion about the terms we use to describe different types of property owners.

Causing the most confusion has been the term "homeowners," which we used to describe a property owner within an HOA or condo association.

In an effort to clear up any confusion, we now call these people HOA Owners. You will notice this change throughout Buildium, anywhere the word "homeowner" used to appear.

July 2009 | Keeping tabs on your vendors

For many of you, keeping track of vendors, work orders, and bills is a big part of your job. That's why we have recently added a new tab dedicated to vendors.

Use this new vendors tab to access your vendors, work orders, and bills.

And as a bonus, vendors and work orders no longer appear under the Accounting tab, which makes room for additional accounting features in the future. Stay tuned!

July 2009 | Giving your addresses room to grow

In addition to better handling international addresses (see below) address blocks in Buildium now have room for three lines of address information.

No longer do you need to cram apartment numbers, "care of" information, etc., into one line.

July 2009 | Addresses from Afganistan to Zimbabwe

Managing properties in Manitoba? Renting apartments in Reykjavik? Tracking association dues in Trinidad and Tobego? Then we've got some good news for you!

Buildium has improved the way we handle street addresses. Now, when you select the country for a given address, the entry fields change to better allow for addresses outside the United States and Canada.

In addition, you can set your default country by going to Admin > Settings > Regional Settings.

Take a minute to make your country selection today.