Everything we have changed, and when

Fix 16 September 2026

The management accounts open on last month, because that is the month a committee discusses. But when a new budget year has just begun - a hall whose year runs September to August, looking at it in September - last month was before the budget existed, so every actual read nought and the spending you had just entered was nowhere to be seen. Go to Finance, then Management Accounts: the page now opens on the first month of the budget when last month falls before it, and changing the budget in the picker moves the month with it. Under the picker there is also a new note, Recorded but not on this sheet, which says when something you entered is not counted and why - a bill still to pay, an entry dated after the month shown, or one dated outside the budget's year - so the answer is on the page rather than in an email to us. Thanks to Duncan Brown at Whatfield Village Hall for asking.

Fix 16 September 2026

When a hirer asked for a booking through their portal, the form asked which room even at a hall with only one - a dropdown with a single answer, and a "please choose" if they skipped it. The public enquiry form already picked the room for them; the portal now does the same, and simply states the room instead of asking. Halls with two or more rooms still get the choice. Thanks to Duncan Brown at Whatfield Village Hall for spotting it.

Fix 14 September 2026

On Finance, then Spending Headings, pressing the arrow next to a heading with sub-headings did not always show them underneath it - they could appear higher up the list, or not at all. A sub-heading was being put in the list by its own order number rather than beside the heading it belongs to, and a longer list could leave a heading on one page and its sub-headings on the next. Every sub-heading now sits straight under its own heading, the list shows up to 100 headings on a page, and the arrow opens them where you expect them. Thanks to Duncan Brown at Whatfield Village Hall for reporting it.

Fix 14 September 2026

When you returned a deposit and kept some of it back - an hour's overstay, say - the bookings list went on showing the whole deposit as "Returned", and opening the booking only said "Returned to hirer". What you kept and your reason were recorded, but nowhere showed them. Now the Deposit column on the bookings list says what actually went back and what was kept, such as "£80.00 returned, £45.00 kept", and when you open the booking the Cost & deposit section shows the amount returned to the hirer, the amount kept by the hall, the reason you gave and the date it was returned. Thanks to Andrea Vaughan for asking how to check it had worked.

Fix 12 September 2026

A hall reported the key safe code "sending multiple times". It was not sending twice - it was sending once per booking, and the subject line names only the day and the hall, so four emails on one morning were four emails nobody could tell apart. The person receiving them ran three groups at the hall, one of which had two rooms booked that evening: four bookings, four identical-looking emails. Now there is one email per person per hall. It lists every booking it covers, with the time, the room and - when they are not all the same group - which group each one is for, and it carries the code once, because there is only one code. If two people are down as booking contacts they both still get their own copy, which was the reason this email sends to more than one address in the first place.

Fix 10 September 2026

We told you about the new Entertainment section and your 100 Club, and then it did not appear in the menu for anybody - including halls on Professional, who were the ones it was for. That was our mistake and it was entirely at our end: the screens went live, but the permission that decides who may open them was never created on the live system, so it answered "no" to everybody. If you looked for it and concluded you were on the wrong plan, or that you had missed a setting somewhere, you had not. Nothing you did caused it and nothing you need to do fixes it. It is there now. You will find it under Entertainment, and it is available to whoever holds the hall account and to your treasurer - deliberately not to everybody, because a registered lottery has a licensing authority behind it and the person running the draw should be the person answerable for it. Apologies for sending you looking for something that was not there.

Fix 10 September 2026

When you pencil in a regular hirer's dates and ask them to confirm from their portal, they answer one date at a time - and until now every one of those answers sent you its own email. A term's worth arrived as twenty-odd separate messages, which is twenty times the inbox and none of the information. Now the answers are gathered up and you get a single email a few minutes after they have finished, listing every date confirmed and every date cancelled, with the times and the room against each one. Nothing about the diary has changed: the moment a hirer presses the button the booking is confirmed or the date is freed, exactly as before. It is only the telling that waits, and it never waits more than half an hour. Thanks to Sarah Peacey at Binfield Memorial Hall for spelling out what twenty emails in one sitting is like.

Fix 10 September 2026

Everything somebody types on your enquiry form has always been kept - it goes onto their hirer record - but the booking page showed their name and nothing else. So an enquiry arrived, you opened it, and there was no email address, no telephone number and no sign of what they had actually written. There is now a "Who to contact" section right under the booking details with their name, organisation, email address, telephone number, address and their message, and the answers to any questions of your own are further down as before. The email address and the phone number are both clickable - the number dials on a phone or tablet - and there is a copy button on each. There is also a "Reply by email" button at the top of the page. It opens your own email program with the address filled in and a subject line naming your hall, the booking and the date, so you reply from your own address with your own signature and the conversation carries on where your hirer expects it. Nothing is sent through us. Thanks to Sarah Peacey at Binfield Memorial Hall.

Fix 10 September 2026

This one is worth reading carefully, because it will change figures you have already seen. An income budget line that was not your room hire line had no way to find out what actually came in - so it quietly reported its own budget figure in the Actual column. A hall with £12,000 of budgeted bar income read back £12,000 as taken, having recorded not a penny of it, and there was nowhere in the system to record it either. Those lines now show £0.00 until there is real money recorded against them, which means some income lines will look worse than they did last week. They are not worse; they are honest, and they were flattering you before. To get real figures back into them, add an income heading, point the budget line at it on the Budget screen, and record what comes in on the new Other Income page. Your room hire line is unaffected - it has always been priced from your actual invoices and still is.

Fix 10 September 2026

If you recorded a payment under a heading your budget did not mention, your management accounts left it out completely - while your cashflow, which has always had an "Other spending" row, went on showing it. A hall put in three payments and saw none of them, which is a fair reason to give up on the page. The management accounts now carry the same two catch-all rows the cashflow does, "Other spending (not in the budget)" and "Other income (not in the budget)", so every figure you have entered appears somewhere and the sheet adds up. They only appear when there is something in them. If you would rather see a heading on a line of its own, give it a budget line and it moves there. Thanks to Duncan Brown at Whatfield Village Hall.

Fix 8 September 2026

We put part of this right yesterday and missed the real cause, so apologies to anybody who looked again and found it no better. If a project had a long note against it, that note was printed in full on the row - which stretched the first column until the figures, the Edit button and the Delete button were all off the right-hand edge of the screen. Nothing was broken, but there was no way to reach any of it. Notes are now cut short on the row, and hovering over a project name shows the whole note without opening anything. The project name can also be turned off in the Columns panel now, like every other column. Thanks again to Sarah Peacey at Binfield Memorial Hall, who reported it twice.

Fix App 7 September 2026

A wedding booked into the hall and the committee room was showing in the app as two separate bookings with nothing to say they belonged together - which mattered more once hirers could answer a booking themselves, because letting one go lets the whole hire go. Both now say which rooms the hire takes, and a hirer letting a date go is told plainly that it covers all of them before they do it.