Everything we have changed, and when

New feature 9 August 2026

A hall that has been invoicing on paper for twenty years has an invoice its hirers recognise, and being handed a different one is not an improvement. Four things were missing from ours. Your administrator now appears at the top. Most halls have one person who deals with the money, and their address is rarely the hall's - so alongside the hall's name, address and charity number on the left, the top right can now carry "Administrator: your name" with their own address and email underneath. Fill it in under Finance, Payment Settings; leave it blank and the invoice looks exactly as it does today. Your bank's name is printed. We already asked for your sort code, account number and the name on the account, but not which bank it is with - which is the first thing somebody types into their banking app. There is a box for it now, and it prints above the rest of the transfer details. A monthly invoice says which month it is for. When you invoice a hirer's bookings in one go, the invoice opens with a line above the list - "This is for the bookings for the month of November 2025:" - so nobody has to read the dates to work out what they are being billed for. It is filled in for you, and if the bookings run across two months it gives the dates instead. You can change it, or clear it, on any invoice. And your hires can be one line each. If a room of yours charges more for the first hour, an invoice shows the first hour and the later hours as two lines, so the total can be checked. Some halls would rather each session appeared once, with a single fee, the way a handwritten invoice does. There is now a switch for that under Payment Settings, off unless you turn it on, so nothing changes for anybody who is happy as they are. Thanks to Digswell Village Hall for sending us one of their own invoices to work from.

Fix 7 August 2026

The "Keep this booking private" switch was only on the edit screen, not on the form you fill in when adding a booking. So a wake, a private party or anything else you did not want named on your public calendar had to be saved in the open and then hidden afterwards. The switch is now on the first step of adding a booking, next to the hirer and the room. There was a quieter side to this worth knowing about. If you have ticked "keep this hirer's bookings private" on a hirer, we tick the switch for you when you choose them - but with no switch on the add form, that had nothing to tick, so their new bookings went onto the public calendar under their real name. That is now the opposite way round: choose that hirer and the switch turns itself on in front of you, and you can still turn it off for a one-off. Any bookings already made for those hirers are worth a quick look on your public calendar. Thanks to Binfield Memorial Hall for spotting the missing switch.

New feature 7 August 2026

If your hall is a registered charity there is now somewhere to keep track of what the Charity Commission expects, alongside your fire risk assessment and your insurance. Four new categories under Compliance: your annual return, with the ten month deadline spelt out because that is the date nobody remembers; your accounts and trustees' annual report, with the income thresholds for filing and for examination said plainly rather than left as "it depends"; your governing document - your objects and schedule - which has no renewal date but does need to be to hand; and keeping the Commission's list of your trustees up to date. Each one carries a due date, a status and reminders, exactly like everything else in there, and each says what the law actually asks of you. They only appear if you have told us your hall is a registered charity. Your register of trustees already exists, by the way - that is your Committee Members list under Governance, where you can mark who is a trustee and record when their term runs out. Thanks to Binfield Memorial Hall for the idea.

Fix 7 August 2026

Only some of your committee appeared in the list of people to add to a meeting - the ones who can sign in to Village Hall Hub. Anybody on your committee without a login was missing, which for most halls is most of the committee. That was simply the wrong list: we keep team members (who can sign in) and committee members (your trustees and officers) apart on purpose, and a committee meeting should obviously offer the committee. It now does. Everybody on your Committee Members list is there to tick, whether or not they have ever logged in, and people who have since left the committee stay tickable, so editing older minutes cannot quietly drop a name from them. Thanks to Binfield Memorial Hall for reporting it.

Fix 7 August 2026

The invoices list had started scrolling sideways on a laptop screen, which meant sliding across to reach Edit and losing sight of which invoice the row belonged to on the way. Two things were taking the width. The menu down the left was wider than it needed to be, so it is narrower now, and the arrow at the top left folds it down to icons if you want the whole screen for the table. And a hirer with a long name - a management committee, a parish council - was on its own enough to push the table wider than the screen; those names now wrap onto a second line instead. What was still owed has moved to sit underneath the total rather than taking a column of its own, so the list reads down instead of across. Thanks to Binfield Memorial Hall for reporting it.

Fix 7 August 2026

The reports page started counting money on the day it arrived rather than the day it was invoiced, and the dashboard did not follow. The box on your dashboard was totalling the invoices you raised this month that happen to be settled, which is a different number and usually the wrong one: an invoice raised in July and paid in August counted as July money and never appeared in August at all. It also ignored part payments entirely, so a hirer paying half of a large invoice showed as nothing coming in. It now says Received This Month, and it means what it says - the payments that arrived this month, whichever invoice they were for, so it should agree with your bank statement and with the Received column on the reports page. Recording a payment from the Payments screen now uses the date you were paid rather than the date you typed it in, which is what the invoice screen already did; the two used to disagree about the same money. Correcting or deleting a payment now updates the invoice with it, instead of leaving it marked paid for an amount that is no longer there. The reports page also spells out, above the tables, which figures go by the invoice date and which go by the day the money moved. Thanks to Binfield Memorial Hall for not letting this one go.

New feature 7 August 2026

If the same person runs two groups - Rainbows and Brownies, with one secretary and one email address - you do not need to invent separate names for them to be invoiced separately. Invoicing already raises one invoice per hirer, so two hirers means two invoices, however many contacts they share. What can happen is that the bookings end up under the wrong one: a booking made through your public enquiry form is matched to an existing hirer by email address, so the second group's dates can land under the first group's name and then get billed with them. You can now put that right without opening each booking. On a hirer's Bookings tab, tick the ones that belong elsewhere and choose "Move to another hirer". Anything already invoiced stays where it is, because the invoice names the hirer it was raised for. Thanks to Binfield Memorial Hall for the question.

New feature 7 August 2026

Put in a recurring booking and you get every date in the diary, including the weeks that are not actually being booked - half term, Christmas, the week the hall is being decorated. Getting rid of those meant opening each one, which is both slow and how the wrong week gets removed. There is now a Delete button on each row, both on a hirer's Bookings tab and on the "All dates in this series" tab of a repeating booking, and you can tick several and delete them together. Anything that has already been invoiced is protected: it offers Cancel instead, because deleting it would leave the invoice charging for something it can no longer name. Nothing is emailed to the hirer either way. Thanks to Binfield Memorial Hall for the suggestion.

Fix 7 August 2026

If you recorded a payment against an invoice and then pressed Save on the invoice itself, it went back to being a draft - even though the payment was there and the invoice had already been marked paid. The Status box is filled in when the page opens, so it was still holding "Draft" from before the payment, and saving wrote that straight back over the top. That is why some of your paid invoices were listed as draft and others, where you only recorded the payment and did not save, were listed as paid. An invoice with payments recorded against it now takes its status from those payments and cannot be contradicted by the box, which is locked while there are payments and says so. Any invoices already left in the wrong state have been put right for you - you do not need to go through and fix them. Thanks to Binfield Memorial Hall for spotting it and describing it so precisely.

New feature 7 August 2026

The three things somebody rings a village hall to ask were the three Hallie was worst at. She can now answer all of them. "Is the hall free on Saturday afternoon?" - she checks the actual time you ask about rather than the whole day, so an afternoon still counts as free when there is a toddler group in that morning. She uses the same clash check the booking form uses, keeps to your changeover buffer, and tells you if the hall is closed that day. "How much would that cost?" - she prices it exactly the way the invoice would, including the hirer's own rate card if they are already on your books, and she is clear that the figure is the whole cost of the hire rather than an hourly rate. And a question from your side of the desk rather than the caller's: "what have I not billed for yet?" - she lists the confirmed hires that have happened and never reached an invoice, with what they would come to. She can also tell you what your rooms are and what each one seats. Nothing she quotes holds a booking - it is the diary as it stands, and somebody still has to make the booking.

New feature 7 August 2026

Tell Hallie "I want to raise an invoice for the Rainbows" and she finds every hire of theirs that has not been billed yet, works out what each one comes to, and puts them on a card with a tick box against each line and a running total. Untick the ones you do not want - the week they cancelled, the session you have agreed not to charge for - and the total follows as you go. Ticking costs you nothing, so it is a better way to change your mind than asking her again. Press the button and it is raised as a draft under Finance, Invoices, exactly as if you had made it yourself. Nothing is sent to the hirer: you look it over and send it when you are happy. She will not invoice anything that is already on an invoice, anything free of charge, or anything that has not happened yet, and if somebody else bills one of the hires while the card is sat on your screen it is quietly left off rather than billed twice. If you are not somebody who is allowed to raise invoices, the button is not there.

Fix 7 August 2026

If you filtered the invoices down to drafts, opened one to record a payment against it and then went back to the list, the filter had gone and you had to set it again - which, working through a dozen drafts, meant setting it a dozen times. The invoices, payments and bookings lists now remember what you had them set to, including the search box and which column you sorted by. Go into a record and come back, by the breadcrumb at the top or from the menu, and the list is exactly as you left it. It is remembered for as long as you are signed in, not forever. Whenever a filter is on, it is named just above the list with a small cross beside it, so a short list is never a mystery - one click on the cross and everything is back. Thanks to Binfield Memorial Hall for pointing it out.