This week’s updates include a new quick action menu, additional financial options when ending a lease and big changes for users of the mobile site.

Quick Action Menu

We’ve added a new button to NowRenting’s top navigation bar. It pops up a list of links to NowRenting’s most commonly-used functionality, giving you speedy access to the features you use most, from anywhere in the application.

See here for the complete list.

Add Charges when Ending a Lease

When ending a Lease, you can now add any charges, such as fees for damages or cleaning, that may need to be paid by the tenant. Any security deposit will be applied to these charges, as well as to outstanding rent or any other unpaid charges.

For more details on this feature, see here.

Mobile Enhancements

NowRenting’s visual layout has received a big update behind the scenes. Changes will be most noticeable to users who access nowrenting.com via a mobile device: Instead of a completely different (and limited) layout, you’ll be getting the same exact site as desktop users, specially upgraded to fit on your phone.

This week’s new features include integration with QuickBooks Desktop edition, the ability to merge multiple Leads and group messaging.

QuickBooks Desktop Integration

This week, we implemented support for Intuit’s QuickBooks Desktop version. We’ve had support for QuickBooks Online in place for a long time, so integrating with QuickBooks Desktop is a natural way to extend the usefulness of NowRenting’s Leases offering.

The process involves exporting and importing certain specific files, so be sure to familiarize yourself with our Connect to QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Desktop Sync help articles.

Merge Leads

If the same person contacts you by text message and then by email, you may find yourself with two different Leads that represent only one person. We’ve introduced a feature that allows you to merge those two Leads into one, letting you easily resolve such situations.

Just select the two Leads you want to combine and click the Merge Leads button.

Group Messages

Need to send the same message to more than one person? No problem! We now support group message threads.

The Start a Conversation button on the Messages screen now has a dropdown option, where you can select Send Group Message. Just click that and pick who you want to be included in the message thread.

This week’s feature additions cover a range of new functionality; from increasing Business users’ organizational capacity to widening the reach of our Listings, there’s sure to be something new for everyone!

Facebook Integration

Our Facebook integration feature is finally approved! This new syndication option adds the considerable social reach of Facebook to NowRenting’s already broad array of platforms.

As well as being able to automatically post your listings to NowRenting’s Facebook page, you can also post to them your personal Facebook page, so that your own network of friends and acquaintances will be able to view, like and share your listings. Comments on these posts will be smoothly funneled into the NowRenting messaging system.

For details on how to use this feature, see here.

Group Showings

Our showing scheduler just got more powerful! In addition to flexibly managing appointments with individual Leads, you can now include multiple Leads in a single showing invitation. Select them on the Leads page, click the Showings button and enter the details of your showing’s time and place. It’s as easy as that!

For more details on group showings, see here; instructions for scheduling individual showings can be found here.

Lead Assignment Roster

NowRenting’s new Lead Assignment Roster, available now to Business users, builds increased power and functionality onto our user management and Lead assignment features. No more clicking each new Lead to assign them to a team member; NowRenting can take care of it automatically.

Once you have your team set up with user accounts in NowRenting, incoming Leads can be automatically assigned to them in the order you specify. Just add them to the roster, click and drag to set the order, and choose how many Leads per round each should get. After that, Lead assignment will take care of itself–just another way NowRenting works to cut the busywork out of your day.

Read more about this feature here.

Other Improvements

In addition to the major feature additions mentioned above, this week we’ve added some smaller—but no less useful—capabilities as well:

On the Leads page, you can now delete multiple Leads at once. Great for managing the response to your most popular Listings!

The Listing details page now includes convenient social share buttons, so you can post your Listings to social networks with ease.

It is now possible to add a one-time charge to a Lease. If a charge doesn’t come under the heading of late fee, security deposit, or any other category we already account for, you can resolve it here without going outside of NowRenting’s system.

Renamed Plans

In order to better reflect the usage patterns we’ve been seeing in the NowRenting user base, we have decided to rename the pricing plans we offer. The new names are:

• Free: For users who are just trying out NowRenting, or who only need the Background Checks feature. Includes most of NowRenting’s powerful features.
• Professional (used to be “Solo”): For rental professionals. Includes everything from the Free plan, plus Partner Network Syndication and a Private Phone Number.
• Business (used to be “Professional”): For rental businesses. Includes everything from the Free and Professional plans, plus the Real-Time Local Lead Feed, Multiple Users and Landlord CRM.

The price of your plan has not changed: Only the name.

If you had a Solo account, it is now called Professional, with no other changes. If you had a Professional account, it is now called Business, with no other changes. The name of the Free plan hasn’t changed–but that doesn’t mean our Free plan users won’t notice some differences!

More Features for the Free Plan

Free accounts now have access to most of NowRenting’s amazing features! With a Free plan, at no cost at all, you now have access to:

• NowRenting Leads, including our Lead manager, screening and ranking tool, showings scheduler and electronic applications.
• NowRenting Leases, including our powerful custom lease templates, rent tracking, exporting to QuickBooks Online, and ACH rent collection.
• NowRenting Listings. Syndication to our partner network is not available to Free plan accounts, but Listings can still be created and shown on the NowRenting Directory and your custom website.

Listings-Only User Access Role

Many of our Business users work in teams where different members have different responsibilities. To facilitate this aspect of rental business, we’ve deepened our user permissions system.
When you create a user with Limited permissions, they’ll only have access to the features assigned to them.
The two features currently available are:

• Assigned Leads, which gives them access to only the Leads explicitly assigned to them.
• Listings, which gives them access to your Listings.

To read more about managing multiple users, see here.