Made with care for the volunteers who keep Britain's halls running.
Product updates
Everything we have changed, and when
Most of what is on this page started as an email from a village hall. We write these in the same words we send our
halls, so you can see for yourself how often this thing actually moves.
Sub-headings on Spending Headings collapse until you open them
Group a few headings together - Electricity and Gas under Utilities, say - and the list used to show every one of them as its own row all the time, which got long once a hall had grouped more than one heading. A parent heading now shows an arrow: click it to reveal just that heading's own children, and click again to close them. Every other heading is unaffected, and searching for a heading finds it whether or not its parent is open. Thanks to Duncan Brown at Whatfield Village Hall for asking.
New feature
Add a project without leaving to create a spending heading first
Adding a project used to mean going to Spending Headings first if the heading it needed did not already exist, then coming back to start again. The heading picker on a project now has its own "+" - type the name and it is created and selected without leaving the form. Thanks to Duncan Brown at Whatfield Village Hall for asking.
Fix
Enquiry emails now include the email address
A new booking enquiry emailed you the phone number and the address, but not the one detail you actually need to reply: the hirer's email address. Replying meant going to find the hirer first. It is on the email now, alongside the rest. Thanks to Sarah Peacey at Binfield Memorial Hall for reporting it.
Fix
Generating an invoice from the bookings list can now hold the date too
Opening a booking first and generating its invoice from there let you take a holding amount to secure the date, with the balance due closer to the day. Doing the same thing from the three dots on the bookings list skipped straight to raising the whole invoice, due on the day of the booking, with no way to add a holding amount at all - an older copy of the button that had never been brought up to date. Both now offer the same amount-to-hold-the-date and balance-due-by fields. Thanks to Sarah Peacey at Binfield Memorial Hall for reporting it.
Fix
A recurring booking on certain days no longer gets stuck when you turn repeating off
Set a booking to repeat on certain days each week, tick some days, then decide it should not repeat after all and turn "This booking repeats" back off - and the day picker stayed on screen, still asking which days, for a booking that no longer repeated at all. There was no way past it. It now disappears the moment you turn repeating off, the same as every other repeat setting. Thanks to Duncan Brown at Whatfield Village Hall for reporting it.
New feature
Give a project its own budget
New under Finance: Projects. A roof refurbishment or a new set of windows does not fit inside one year's budget, so a project gets a total of its own and tracks what you actually spend against it for as long as it runs, rather than resetting every financial year. Pick a spending heading you already have - group related ones under it first if you want, Electricity-and-Gas style - give it a budget, and every payment you record against that heading counts here automatically. Thanks to Duncan Brown at Whatfield Village Hall for asking.
New feature
Your only room is chosen for you on the enquiry form too
A hall with just one room now has it picked automatically on the public enquiry form, the same way the booking form already does. It still shows and can be changed - handy if you ever add a second room - but a hall with one hall no longer makes every enquirer choose between an option and itself. Thanks to Duncan Brown at Whatfield Village Hall for asking.
New feature
Group your spending headings together
Under Spending Headings, a heading can now sit under another one - Electricity and Gas under Utilities, say - instead of every heading being its own flat row. Set it on the heading itself; nothing changes for a heading left alone. A budget line set on the parent still counts everything spent against it and its children together, so grouping headings up does not throw your budget out. Thanks to Duncan Brown at Whatfield Village Hall for asking.
New feature
See a heading's children on your Cashflow, and fewer months on a small screen
If you group spending headings together - Electricity and Gas under Utilities, say - your Cashflow page now shows a "sub-headings" pill next to the parent. Click the arrow next to it and it opens to show how that total splits between them, for any month that has finished. And if twelve columns are too many for your screen, tick "Fewer months" above the table and it narrows down to just the months still ahead. Thanks to Duncan Brown at Whatfield Village Hall for asking.
Fix
Email address joins What You Must Be Told
A hall had an enquiry arrive with no email address on it at all, and no way to get back in touch with whoever sent it. Email address has always been required on an enquiry, and still is for every hall by default - this just means it now sits in the same "What You Must Be Told" list under Booking Settings as phone number, organisation, address and postcode, so you can see it is required and, if you ever genuinely want it optional, untick it yourself. Nothing changes unless you go and change it.
New feature
Bring your spending in from a spreadsheet
If you keep your spending in Excel or are moving from another system, you can now bring it in rather than typing it up one payment at a time. Under Settings, Import Your Data, there is a new Spending step alongside your rooms, hirers and bookings. Match your own columns to ours on screen - date, description, amount, heading, who was paid, whether it has been paid and when - and the file does the rest. A heading in your file is matched to one you already have; anything that does not match is brought in with no heading rather than a new one being invented behind your back, so your list of headings stays the one you set up. Like every import, there is an Undo button if something needs putting right. This is on the Professional plan, alongside the rest of your accounts. Thanks to Eric at Gwernymynydd Village Centre for asking.
New feature
Keep the receipt or invoice against a payment
Spending now has somewhere to put proof of a payment - the supplier's invoice, a photo of the receipt, or both. Open a payment, open Receipts and Invoices, and add a PDF or a photograph up to 2MB. A new upload joins what is already there rather than replacing it, so the invoice that arrives after you have already recorded the payment does not push out the receipt you added first. A paperclip on the Spending list shows how many are attached to each payment, and opening it gives you a link to download whichever one you need. Nothing is required - leave it empty and nothing changes. Thanks to Duncan Brown at Whatfield Village Hall for asking.
Most of this came from a village hall asking
If your hall needs something this does not do yet, say so. That is how nearly everything above got built.