Everything we have changed, and when

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.

New feature 7 August 2026

Some halls run their own website, or their own server, and would rather the booking diary appeared there than only here. There is now a way to do that. Village Hall Hub has an API - a door in the side of the system that a website or a program can knock on and be handed your bookings, so your own pages can show what is on without anybody copying dates across by hand. To start with it can be asked three things: what is in the diary, the details of one booking, and when a particular room is free. The free-time answer is worked out exactly the way the booking form works it out, including your changeover buffer and the days you have marked the hall closed, so it will not offer somebody a slot that the form would then refuse. Access is by a key you make yourself, under Settings, API keys. Making one takes a moment: name it so you know later what it was for, tick what it is allowed to do, and choose whether it should stop working on its own after a few months. The key is shown once, when you make it, and never again - so copy it there and then, and hand it to whoever looks after your website rather than sending it round the committee. If a key is ever shared by mistake, or the person who had it moves on, one button stops it working. Only an owner or an admin can make a key, because a key is used by a machine and misuse of one is much harder to notice than misuse of a login. A key only ever opens the one hall it was made for, and can only do the things you ticked. Bookings you have marked private stay private: the time is shown, so nothing gets double-booked, but the name of the event is given out as "Private booking" and never leaves the building. Hirers' names are only included if the key was specifically given permission to see them, so a key made purely to publish a diary cannot come back with a list of who booked. Every request is written down. This is the first part of something larger, and it is deliberately read-only for now - nothing reachable through it can change your bookings, your invoices or your money. Thanks to Dorridge Hall for making the case for it, and for being blunt about why systems that keep their API to themselves are frustrating to live with.

New feature 6 August 2026

The monthly table on the reports page could tell you what you invoiced and what you received, and neither of those is the question asked at a committee meeting: how much did we take in September. If you bill a whole term of weekly hires on one invoice, or invoice in arrears, September's hires can sit entirely in July's or December's billing, and nothing on the page told you otherwise. There is now a Booked column at the front of the monthly breakdown - the value of the confirmed bookings that took place in that month, whenever they happened to be billed. Where a booking has been invoiced it counts what you actually charged, so last spring is counted at last spring's prices rather than today's, and bookings not yet invoiced are priced from your rate card. Free bookings and cancellations are left out, and a hall registered for VAT sees the figure before VAT, the same as every other income figure on that page. It is in the Income Summary export too. Thanks to Binfield Memorial Hall for asking.

New feature 6 August 2026

Hallie was good at your hall's own information - who has how many bookings, when a group is next in - and vaguer about the system she lives in. Asked whether committee members are emailed when you set up a meeting, she said she did not know. She now has proper answers to that sort of question: what gets sent out on its own and what only goes when you press a button, the difference between team members and committee members, who receives a hirer's invoices, and where your own details live. She has also been told not to answer questions about Village Hall Hub from general knowledge about booking systems - if she does not have the answer she will say so, rather than telling you what a system like this usually does. For the record on that first question: no, nothing is sent to your committee when you add a meeting.

New feature 6 August 2026

There was nowhere to do this. If you married, or your email address changed, or you simply wanted a new password, there was no screen for it - which somebody found by asking Hallie where it was. Settings now has My Details at the top: your name, your email address and your password, all in one place. It is your own login, separate from your hall's name and address. Changing your password asks for the current one first, so somebody walking past your open laptop cannot change it for you.