Software Release - 2023R2 - v3.23.02

Modified on Fri, 6 Oct, 2023 at 11:32 AM

Overview

This release guide documents the changes made to the iPro CRM Software during the second release of 2023

Reminder: All clients have the ability to view all software changes on their staging site (IPROSTAGE), prior to deployment on the live site.

i.e. clientdomain(com).iprostage.com

(com) is the extension of domain .co.uk, .net, .info, etc...

Deployment Process

Deployment of the updated software is by client request raising a ticket with the support desk or via an email to support@ipro-software.com.

Deployment will be scheduled within an agreed time window. If you wish to change the time which has been agreed, please contact the support desk to arrange a suitable alternative. ,

Enhancements

Property Management

A Large number of updates have been made to the property manager, introducing the ability to automatically schedule the creation of bills and tasks.

Bills and tasks can now be created based on an event or on a specific date
When set to a specific date it can be just a single date of the bill or task is a one off or it can be automatically repeated.
There are a number of options avaialble for automatically repeated bills and tasks. This includes simple options like repeating each week on a specific day to more detailed schedules like repeating on the first weekday of the month. A variety of schedules can be used based on daily, weekly, monthly and annual schedules.
When using recurring bills and tasks you can chose to continue creating them until a specific end date, or to create them on an ongoing basis, with a certain number created in advanced. When using this option the next bill or task in the sequence is creates automatically when one is closed (either by marking the bill or task as complete, or by having it included in an invoice when that is then processed into a statement).
Bills and tasks can also be created automatically with new bookings. This includes setting the data as on or a number of days after the order date, or on or a number of days before or after the check in or check out date.
A new scheduled Tasks/Bills page is available under the Property Manager menu option to allow you to review and update all the automated bills and tasks.
The cost of a bill can be based on a percentage of the Net amount to due to the owner in addition to a fix amount [6242].

Payments

In order to prevent possible duplicate payments a guest will not be allowed to make an additional payment on a booking via a pay now link if there is an outstanding pending payment on the booking that is linked to a payment provider. In cases where this has happened you will need to check with your payment provider to see if the payment has cleared. If the payment has cleared and is linked to a schedule in iPro then manually update the status of the payment in iPro to cleared. If the payment is cleared but not linked to a payment schedule (name of schedule not displayed in type column of payment history) in iPro then submit a support ticket. If the payment did not clear in your payment provider then mark this payment's status to declined [5950]
Additional checks have been implemented to deal with cases where a payment fails to process correctly, such as when iPro doesn't receive a response from a payment provider. In some cases a failed payment that would otherwise go unnoticed will now result in an urgent task appearing in the Reminders area at the top of the dashboard [6352]

Stripe [6134]

The integration with Stripe has been enhanced and now supports putting payments on hold instead of collecting theme immediately. This allows accidental payments to be cancelled without incurring payment charges.

When a guest makes a payment it will initially be processed as a payment hold rather than clearing immediately. The money will be put on hold on the customers card, but not fully paid (captured) until 24 hours later. You can either leave the payment to automatically capture after 24 hours, or click the red "Capture" button next to the payment to force it to clear immediately.
If the payment is deleted from iPro within 24 hours it will be cancelled in Stripe, so the money will be released back to the customer and no payment charges will apply. The payment will also be automatically released for any pending Stripe payments if the booking is cancelled
If the payment is either cancelled or manually captured in your Stripe account then the status in iPro will update automatically.
MOTO payments are now supported with Stripe, allowing you to take card payments over the phone and enter the card details into the back office. When doing this you have the option to either clear the transaction immediately, or place the payment on hold, with it automatically clearing 24 hours later.
Security deposits can be collected automatically. This is enabled by turning on the "Enable Release-Capture Security Deposit Task" switch on the Strip Payment Provider node in the CMS. When switched on the vale of the security deposit will be automatically placed on hold on the last card the customer used on the due date of the security deposit schedule. If no action is taken to either manually release the hold or to collect damages then the hold will be automatically released 24 hours after checkout.
To use MOTO payments you need to make sure this feature has been enabled on your Stripe account. To do this, log into you Stripe account and go to their support web site. Click on "Contact Support" and then "Chat With Support". On the chat, ask them to enable MOTO payments on your account. If they ask, say that you need access to MOTO payments via the Strip API. Once they confirm that it's been enabled you can collect payments via the back office using MOTO.
To enable the status of a payment to be updated automatically in iPro when it changed in Strip you need to configure webhooks. To do this make sure you've carried out step 5 on the Configuring Stripe guide.

Statements [6139]

A new statement layout is available called "Inline Layout". The existing statement layout is now called "Section Layout". You can choose the statement layout in Company Settings.
The new layout is simpler to read, with all the details of the rental for a booking on a single line. This includes the total paid by the guest, your commission and the amount the owner will receive.
Other sections other sections of the statement remain unchanged
The pdf version of the statement is now landscape.
Any statements processed previously in "Section Layout" will continue to be available in that form when looking at previous statements, changing the settings to the new layout will not change previous statements.
Zero value owner schedules will be created for the owner balance (and owner deposit if you pay them) when the commission on a booking is set to 100%. These bookings will then be included in the owner statements. [6291]

User Permissions [4868]

There have been a number of enhancements to the user permissions

User profiles now contain a Property Filter option that allows you to limit which properties users assigned to a particular profile have access to. The options available are as follows
- Any - User has access to all properties on the system. This is the default and matches the current behaviour
- Brand - Limit users to only be able to see properties that have ben associates with a specific brand
- Location - Limit users to only see properties that are in a specific location. This will include properties in any sublocations.
- Properties - Limit users to only see a specific list of properties
- Owner or Assigned contact - Use this options where you give owners or other property contacts access to the back office. With this option set in the profile users will be limited to seeing properties where they are the owner or an assigned contact.
Additional permissions have been added to give finer control over which options are available to users on the Property List and Availability Search pages. The "Property Actions" set of permissions includes the following options.
- View Property - controls access to the View Property button
- View Calendar - controls access to the View Calendar button
- View Information - controls access to the Property Info button
- View Map - controls access to the View Map button
- View Notes - controls access to the View Notes button
- Edit Notes - allows users to edit changes on the property notes modal
- View Rates - controls access to the View/Edit rates button and allows the user to view the rates seasons
- Edit Rates - allows users to make changes to the rates
- View Offers - controls access to the View/Edit rates button and allows the user to see the discounts
- Edit Offers - allows users to edit the discounts
Additional permissions have been added to control what a user can do on the property calendar. The new permissions in the "Calendar" section allow yo to control if a user is given the options to create a booking, owner booking, blockout or enquiry after selecting a date range on the calendar.

Email Image Token [6236]

The functionality of the {ImageURL} token has been extended to allow you to specify the size that you want the image to appear in the email. This can be done by specifying the desired width as part of the token, for example {ImageURL200} will give an image that has its width set to 200 pixels regardless of the dimensions of the source image. The image will be resized to the width specified whilst maintaining it's aspect ration. Using the {ImageURL} without a number will still work and display the image in it's origional dimensions.

API

The data returned by the Booking Confirmations API has been updated so that if the item is an email with an attachment you can now retrieve the attachment in addition to the email. The path to download the attachment is provided as a new attribute called Attachment, which will be empty if there is no attachment. The date and time the email was sent is also included in a new DateTime attribute [5945]
The data returned by the Property Search Events API now includes the GeoLocation of the property [6304]
The data returned by the Property Detail API now includes HideCalendar to show the status of the Hide availability Calendar switch [6344]

Additional Changes

When viewing the payment schedules on a booking the owner schedules will not be displayed by default. To see owner schedules tick the "View owner payment schedules" box above the schedules. This option can be removed by disabling the View Owner Payment Schedules permission [6291]
A new option to export rates has been added to the Tools menu. This allows you to export your existing rates and produces a spreadsheet in the same format as that used by the rates import feature [4395]
Google Analytics support has been upgraded to support Google Analytics 4. If you are using Google Analytics then you can update the Google Analytics tracking ID in the CMS on the Google Tracking tab on the Home node [6319]
When receiving a booking from Rentals United, if the value of the OTA fee has been supplied this will be created as an extra called "Host Fee". This is in addition to an OTS Markup extra or discount of the cost doesn't match the rates in IPro [6355]

Bugs Fixed

Unable to access contact list if there are any contacts where the contact type isn't set [6187]
Booking source not set when creating a booking with the API and specifying an existing contact ID for the guest rather than creating a new contact [6218]
Unable to export Departures and Check In/Out reports as a pdf [6221]
Alerts set to send multiple times don't stop when a booking tag from the exclude filter is added [6222]
<html>, <body> and <head> tags are being stripped out of emails by the email editor [6305]
The status of a refunded security deposit can revert to pending when changes are made to a booking [6309]
The booking list can't be filtered by property [6292]
Error when creating a new user [6301]
Mandatory Extras not assigning to channel bookings pushed to IPro via Rentals United