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.
The calendar on your own site used to sit in a frame, which meant it never quite matched your fonts and colours and Google could not read a word of it. It is now drawn properly into your page: it takes on your website's own styling, and what is on at your hall can show up in search results, which is worth having if people look for hall hire in your area. Your visitors can filter by room and move between months without the page reloading, and it works perfectly well for anybody whose browser blocks scripts.
New feature
A WordPress plugin for your website
If your website is WordPress, there is now nothing to copy and paste. Download our plugin from Settings, "Embed on Your Website", install it, and paste in one code. Then edit any page and add a block, the same way you add a paragraph or a picture. There are three: your booking calendar, a What's On list of the next few things coming up which suits a front page or a sidebar, and your booking enquiry form. If your site is built with Elementor or Divi they are in those panels too. Whoever looks after your website will know what to do with it, and the plugin keeps itself up to date from then on. Included from the Standard plan.
New feature
The enquiry form now asks for an address
Your booking enquiry form now has Address and Postcode boxes. Neither is compulsory, so nobody is stopped from enquiring, but when somebody fills them in the address is saved against them as a hirer and appears on their invoices, and it comes through on the email telling you about the enquiry along with their phone number. Thanks to Binfield Memorial Hall for asking.
New feature
Reports now follow your own financial year
Reports assumed every hall runs April to March and said so on the page. Plenty of halls have a year ending on 31 December or some other date, so there is now a box on the Reports page saying when your year ends. Set it once and your reports open on your own year, with buttons for "This year so far", "Whole year" and "Last year". Nothing changes if your year does end in March. Thanks to Binfield Memorial Hall for asking.
New feature
Your public pages, and what version you are on
Your dashboard now shows the two web addresses that belong to you: your public calendar, and your booking enquiry form. Both have a Copy button and a "Have a look" link, so you can send them to somebody or put them on your village website without hunting for them. They were only listed on the "Embed on Your Website" page before, which is no help if you have no website to embed anything into. There is also a new What's New page under Contact, showing which version you are on and everything we have changed, and the version now sits at the bottom of every screen. Thanks to Binfield Memorial Hall for asking.
New feature
See your bookings on a calendar
Bookings has a new button, "See them on a calendar", which lays the month out so you can see at a glance whether the hall is free next Saturday. Click any booking to open it. You can show one room at a time, and bookings are coloured by their type of hire, falling back to the colour of the room. You can now change a type of hire's colour after you have created it, using the pencil beside the "Type of hire" box on a booking - before, you were stuck with whatever you picked the first time. Thanks to Binfield Memorial Hall for asking.
New feature
A straight answer about backups
Our security page used to say your records were "backed up automatically" and left it there, which is not much use to a trustee being asked what happens if something goes wrong. It now says exactly what we do: the whole database is backed up every week, overnight on a Sunday, and kept off the server so it can be restored. It also says the thing worth knowing, which is that your data is yours - you can export your bookings, invoices and compliance records whenever you like and keep a copy with your minutes.
New feature
VAT, for the halls that are registered
New under Finance: VAT. Most halls are not registered for VAT and nothing changes for you at all - leave it switched off and your invoices carry on exactly as they are. If your hall does have a VAT number, you can now enter it along with the date you registered, say whether the prices on your rate cards already include VAT or have it added on top, and we work out the VAT on every new invoice for you. There is a plain English explanation on the page of the one thing halls most often get wrong: hiring out a room is normally exempt from VAT rather than charged at 20%, unless your hall has opted to tax its building. Your invoices then print as proper VAT invoices, showing your VAT number, the tax point, and the rate and amount before VAT on every line, so your hirers can reclaim it and your accountant has what they need. You can set a different rate on a single room, and on any invoice line, so exempt hall hire and standard-rated bar takings can sit on the same invoice. Your Reports and dashboard count income before VAT, because the VAT you collect was never your hall's money, and they say so on the page. Invoices you raised before you registered are left exactly as they were, with no VAT and no VAT number on them.
New feature
Keep a booking private on your public calendar
Some groups would rather the village did not see what they are doing. Tick "Keep this booking private" and your public calendar still shows the time as taken, so nobody tries to book over it, but it reads "Private booking" instead of naming the event. Everything else on the calendar carries on showing its name as usual. If a group always wants this, tick it once on the hirer instead and their bookings start that way. You always see the real name inside your own admin. Thanks to Binfield Memorial Hall for asking.
New feature
Bring your data across from another system
New under Settings: Import your data. If you are moving from another booking system, or keep things in a spreadsheet, you can bring across your rate cards, rooms, room prices, hirers, bookings and invoices instead of typing them in again. Your file can have any columns, named anything at all, because you match them up to ours on screen. Every import has an Undo button, and if a few rows will not go in you can download just those, correct them in Excel, and import that smaller file.
New feature
Put your enquiry form on your own website
The booking enquiry form can now be embedded on your village hall website, just like the calendar. Visitors enquire without leaving your site, and the form picks up your brand colour from Settings, Branding. Find the copy-and-paste snippets under Settings, Embed on Your Website.
New feature
Calendars now show finish times
Bookings on your public calendar and the calendar embedded on your own website now read "10:00-13:00 Yoga Class" instead of just the start time, so visitors can see exactly when the hall is free. Thanks to a suggestion from one of our venues.
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.