Happy holidays, and welcome to the December 2023 Streamline newsletter! I must apologize for missing last month. We had some staff holidays in October/November, so it didn’t make a lot of sense to put one out last time. But I’ll do my best to continue with a monthly update.
In the past two months we’ve been continuing our strong focus on delivering the best possible quality of software for helping all you independent landlords and property managers run your businesses better. Again, I will focus this mostly on software delivery, but we have a few other changes coming down the pipe.
Release v0.5.4 Deployed
This version of the software went live, just a little before the December 1st cut-off. We generally don’t like to release software right around the rent payment time (the 1st of the month), since that’s when our software is being utilized the most. But we snuck this release in, just a few days before that. The primary features of this new release are:
- Team Member Accounts – A property manager (or landlord) may have multiple people who need access to their account. Therefore, to avoid credential sharing, we are creating team member accounts. The property manager will be able to create and manage team members. Team members will have access to everything in the account other than creating more team members.
- Upcoming Lease Renewal Warnings (MB) – For properties located in Manitoba, the system will now send you an email when the rental agreement is 4 months away from expiry. This is the time when you need to start the process of renewing the contract with your tenant. You will receive this email notification one month, two weeks, one week and one day prior to expiration. This way you’re not caught off guard.
- Upcoming Lease Expiration Warnings – Similar to the feature above, these warnings will go to the landlord or property manager as notification that the rental agreement is about to expire. These will go out two weeks, one week, and one day prior to the final end date. Again, the point is to not get caught off guard and have the rental agreement expire in our system when you have really renewed with the tenant. If the rental agreement expires in our system, the monthly rent PAD payments would be cancelled.
Release v0.6 in Development
- SMS Notifications – This feature is a major development piece and will likely take a couple of months to complete. The end state of this will enable your tenants and prospects to receive notifications via SMS message regarding different events that take place on the system. Existing tenants can be notified of upcoming rent payments or the status of past payments, comments on maintenance requests, etc. Prospects can be notified to book a viewing timeslot for a unit that they’d like to rent from you. They can also be reminded of an existing booking and confirm that by clicking a link in the SMS message. Overall, this feature will help you to stay in better contact with your tenants/prospects, as well as give you notifications about what’s happening in the system as well.
Penetration Testing Phase 1 Complete
We have completed our initial round of penetration testing to ensure that the system is secure from bad actors. This is an ongoing process, and we will stay vigilant to the ongoing threats of malware and hackers that attempt to compromise systems around the world. Putting security as a primary focus on our product helps us to ensure that your data stays safe with us.
Upcoming Changes to Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy
We are currently in the process of revamping our terms and conditions and privacy policies to better fit with the future development of our product and how we’re intending on using the information that is submitted onto our system.
There won’t be anything for you to do, other than accept the new terms and conditions and privacy policy when they’re delivered. But rest assured, we strongly value the trust that you have placed in us with sharing your information with us. The updates just help clarify a few things from a legal and marketing perspective. But we’ll let you know when that’s ready. It may not be until Q1 of 2024.
Parting Thoughts
These past couple of months have been challenging from a company perspective, but we continue to press on with the vision we have of building the best possible system for you to manage your rental property business.
Most of our challenges come from the technical front. But we’ll continue to press on to delivery those features that will make the biggest impact on you.
Thank you for reading and enjoy your holiday season!
-Allan Redman (Streamline LS Founder)
