Articles

Acumatica 2021 R1 Highlight – New Widgets to Dashboards

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Acumatica has now released its first of two bi-annual releases. One of the new usability enhancements in 2021 R1 are new visual tiles to dashboards. The additional tiles are meant to increase the sharing of important business intelligence across an organization.   The new tiles offer a better way of visualizing departmental activities and performance but also to launch into other important daily activities. Acumatica refers to these as “Link Tiles” (see figure 1). Link tiles are intended to help visualize data and provide direct links to important activities and reports right from the dashboard. Another type of link tiles that have been added to dashboards are “meter tiles” (see figure 2). These tiles provide easy to read visuals on gauging how departments are meeting specific deadlines, goals, quotas, etc. Not only can you use an absolute value for setting conditions for the meter tiles you can also use inquiry fields or percent values (see figure 3). In 2021 R1 with the information contained in the meter tiles, you can share it across an organization by simply copying the dashboard tile (See figure 4). The next step is to navigate to another dashboard and simply paste it to other dashboards with one click —i.e., another employee dashboard, management dashboard, executive dashboard etc. (See Figure 5)

Voyager 7S Tax and Insurance Function

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If you were not aware Yardi has a native tax and insurance module available for Voyager 7S Commercial Suite. Voyager Tax and Insurance automates the process of tracking and reporting tax parcels and insurance policies. The module provides the flexibility to customize tax and insurance procedures according to an organization’s unique business process. Functions include the ability to track, edit and set payment parameters for tax bills based on county and local assessments. Yardi keeps track of insurance information for both company and vendor on details such as who the insurers are, coverage such as insurance premiums, claims, expiration dates, and deductibles. Tax and Insurance also has direct integration with Voyager 7S financials.

Rent Deferral Feature in Voyager

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The property management sector has felt the collateral effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic as people are unable to pay rents due to lay-offs or furloughs, and vacancy levels continue to increase as businesses close their doors. The increased demand in rent deferments have created a whole new level of complexity particularly for large multi-family managers. Yardi quickly recognized this and developed rent deferral technology in Voyager. Introduced in April, Yardi’s rent deferral functionality allows management companies to track rent deferment payment plans and recovery of back rent. Rent deferment can be setup in Voyager or in Yardi’s Rent Café resident portal. In Voyager you can now enter comments into the lines providing explanation for the deferment in payment, the amount and time, then set a start and end date. The system will automatically disburse the total over the deferment period and automatically create lease charges monthly that reflects the deferred rent and recovery changes. As a part of the deferral feature Yardi has included a listing report and repayment progress report. In Rent Café the process offers more convenience and fewer steps by affording residents to upload and complete form documents online and provide an electronic signature for agreement all inside the portal as opposed to having to provide documents and signatures via email.

The Death of Adobe Flash and the Threats Its Ghost Poses

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Adobe Flash Player’s death knell has tolled for four long years. In 2017, Adobe announced its End of Life (EOL) plans to terminate the multimedia software after 2020. January 12, 2021, has come and gone, taking Flash with it. However, its ghost still lingers and can cause problems if not uninstalled immediately. The Flash Player has become notorious for its easily hackable architecture that has allowed ne’er-do-wells to inject malware into Flash user’s computers. It has been so infamous that Apple’s late co-founder, Steve Jobs, drafted a letter in 2010 criticizing its poor performance, the massive power draw on devices, and inadequate security. With Adobe stopping support, it is only that more likely for hackers to exploit the media player. Adobe urges that users uninstall the software immediately to evade such attempts. Luckily, this long-anticipated end has been planned for and will likely not heavily impact web browser usage as sites switched to new, more reliable software or even create their own “flash players,” as New Grounds did. Newgrounds, a web-based video game and video animation site, has built all of its content almost entirely on Flash Player for the past 20 years. Anticipating the EOL of Flash spurred them to create their own “Newgrounds Player” to continue to support their over 80,000 games and 150,000 animations.

Acumatica 2021 R1

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Acumatica is scheduled to release the first of two biannual product releases toward the end of February. In 2021 R1 Acumatica continues to focus its pursuit on adding features to improve overall usability. Some of the new features in 2021 R1 include: • Mobile image recognition for business card via CRM • Enhanced side panels with ordering and visibility • New Generic Inquiry features include easy navigation to external URLs and send targeted customer communications through filtered GI results Acumatica is having its virtual launch event for 2021 R1 on February 18th. This event will highlight the new features coming in the 2021 R1 release. Register for the Acumatica Launch Event!

Yardi Adds Listings Service to its Commercial Platform

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Yardi recently acquired 42Floors.com, a commercial real estate listing service. 42Floors is the latest addition to Yardi’s comprehensive commercial property research and marketing platform, Commercial Edge. The 42Floors website is a search engine that provides over 300,000 commercial listings nationwide. Yardi has redesigned and upgraded the website to integrate with Yardi’s existing commercial suite of products. 42Floors conveniently makes it easy to save searches and put commercial industry professional in direct contact with brokers.