VELUMrent, our booking solution for small and medium businesses, had couple of upgrades in the last few months. Most of those upgrades were minor upgrades like bug fixes reported by active VELUMrent users. To see what exactly has been fixed and added check VELUMrent’s change log here.

Currently we are putting all feature suggestions that we received from our customers but didn’t not have time to implement before on top of our pending features list. And in the next two weeks we’ll filter, combine and sort them all down until we create a list of features that will be available  in next upgrade. And as you can see this upgrade is going to be a major VELUMrent upgrade.

So if you have some feature suggestions and requests or some other issues with VELUMrent please let us know so we can consider and add them to the list as well so they are available in this major upgrade.

We won’t roll out all of the new features at once. Most likely they will be introduced to you over several separate system upgrades.

Second announcement we wanted to make today is that we are revitalizing this blog. Next to posts about VELUMrent news and updates we will also start writing periodical posts on how to use booking software, grow you business with it while saving money and time and much more.

We are going to cover a lot of VELUMrent’s features with these blog posts so if you are not sure if and how you should use some of those features this is going to be a great way to see how you can apply them to your business. Next to current feature we will also discuss some future futures that are coming and some features which are not coming and why.

Any comments, suggestions and criticism is always welcomed through comments below or by e-mail.

Some of our users already know that the best and the fastest way to receive VELUMrent news and updates is by following us on Twitter.

But as not everyone is a fan of Twitter we also created a Facebook Fan page for VELUMrent. We hope you will use our new Fan page not only to follow VLEUMrent news and updates but also to contact us, share information, ask questions and suggest features.

To celebrate our presence on this social media site we are giving away 10% discount coupons that can be used with all our subscription plans. To claim your discount you need to become our Fan on Facebook and then contact us to retrieve the 10% discount coupon code.

Until next time.

Today we released a big VELUMrent upgrade which includes a feature that will allow your customers and agencies to make reservations on their own through Public View. And as requested, they’ll still have to wait for you to review and confirm all pending reservation requests.

The procedure is fast and simple:

- In order for a public user to create a new reservation request he needs to click on any empty space on the Reservations calendar, enter his/hers contact details (which will be automatically stored in your Customers Address Book) and click the Create button.

- E-mail notifications are then sent to him/her and you.

- You now have to log into VELUMrent and navigate to a third tab called Notifications on your home page. There you will see all current request that have to be dealt with (there is also a red notification number in that tab if there are new notifications waiting for you).

- From here you can see all relevant reservation details and accept or deny any reservation with only one click. But if needed you can also open and edit any reservation as any other reservation in VELUMrent and then save the changes.

- There are no notifications to customers at this point once you accept or deny their reservation so don’t forget to notify them personally about your decision.

We would also like to thank everyone for their feature and other suggestions that helped shape VELUMrent in what it is today. And we would also like encourage all other VELUMrent users to comment on what they like, dislike and want to see in future upgrades so we can make VELUMrent better for you and possibly the only solution you’ll need for you business.

Today we upgraded VELUMrent to a new version and the biggest news is the implementation of  a completely free account (so no more 30 days trials and unavailable accounts if you downgrade your plan).

The Free VELUMrent plan has all the features as the paying plans and the only limitation it has is the number of properties it can show. This number is limited to three.

We also added some new features, some we already planned to include and other were Yours feature suggestions. To check them out please view our change log here.

This way we’d like to thank everyone for they feedback and encourage you evan more to let us know what you think and need so we can improve our product and help your businesses through VELUMrent.

Best regards.

All your work until now is backed up as always, so no data will be lost. And if you enter some new information during this 24 hours we can not guarantee that it won’t be lost so please backup the data on your end as well.

Thank you for understanding.

We had quite a few busy weeks this and past month developing new features for VELUMrent and preparing the site for redesign.

The site redesign should be done in one or two weeks. To be notified in time about those changes please follow us on Twitter (this is the fastest way to receive news about things that are happening with Constructive Code and VELUMrent).

So what’s new in VELUMrent version 1.1.0?

All together there are more than 10 new features and more than 11 bug fixes available in this release.

New added features will make working with new and existing reservations much faster and simpler. Now by clicking the date on every reservation will open this reservation for editing.

By clicking the empty space on the reservation grid you’ll automatically open a new reservation dialog with the dates and the unit predefined to the clicked space.
While editing or creating a new reservation we’ve also included a quick search field for customers so you can easily and quickly find the customer you’ve been looking for.

We’ve also added couple of new settings in the Settings menu so now you can choose between 10 new colors for confirmed and unconfirmed reservations or change the date format to suit your needs.

Public View has also been changed so it looks exactly the same as the the reservation grid you are using. Evan the fast switching languages are available there for customers to choose from.

To see which other features and bug fixes were included in this upgrade check our VELUMrent change log at http://www.constructivecode.com/velumrent-change-log/.

You can use this page to see all past and future changes to the application as we make them.

By now all VELUMrent user accounts should have been upgraded to this release. This and all feature upgrades are free.

Let us know how do you like the new features and what other features would you like to see in the future releases.

We’re looking forward hearing from you.

Before I start allow me to clarify what is VELUMrent.

VELUMrent is web based rental application. If you own a small or mid-sized business that rents houses, apartments, boats, cars, …, VELUMrent might be just the thing you are looking for. As VELUMrent was in public beta until yesterday it couldn’t be used for any regular business, but now when the official 1.0. release is out it is ready for everyone who is in a need or interested in such solution to try it out and use.

All features that we intended implementing in this first release are here. To see which features VELUMrent offers visit the Features page. Even better way of experiencing those features is to try them by registering for VELUMrent’s free 30 day trial. To register for this trial simple follow this link to VELUMrent’s login screen, click Register and fill out the required information. The whole process should not take more than 60 seconds.

If you are interested in VELUMren’s pricing check out the Pricing and Sign up page for more details. You’ll see that our subscription plans won’t be hard on your budget. We even included some special discounts on longer lasting subscription plans to award your trust.

We also have our first official customer that will transfer their business completely to VELUMrent by the end of this week. Hopefully you’ll be hearing more about this in one of our future blog posts.

What is next on our schedule? Well, we intend to concentrate more resources on marketing to get the whole thing going and to get some momentum. So if you are interested in posting some VELUMrent banners on your site or writing some reviews about it please let us know :). We are also continuing with development of VELUMrent and improving it even more. We have many new features we are looking forward implementing and if you have your own suggestions or requests please let us know and we will consider every one of your requests. Off course all paying accounts will receive those features for free in future VELUMrent upgrades.

That would be all for now. Don’t forget to follow our updates on Twitter or to contact us about any questions you might have.

Currently the beta version, with all features that will come in the 1.0. version, is available for public testing here:

http://www.velumrent.com/LogIn.aspx

At the moment we are polishing some features like Public desktop, Languages and UI text so they work as we originally planned. Once that is finished, sometime next week, VELUMrent will get officially released to our customers (You).

If you have any suggestions, questions or bug reports that you found during testing please let us know and we will address them all immediately.

Thank would be all for now. Next week we will have a reason to write a longer and more detailed blog post :). So stay tuned.