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.
Invoices always gave people 30 days to pay and there was no way to change it except one invoice at a time, if you found the date box. There is now a "Payment terms" setting under Finance, Payment Settings - put in however many days you give people and every new invoice uses it. You can still change the date on a single invoice when you want to. There is one exception, and it is deliberate: a booking marked "pay in advance" is due on the day of the booking rather than a month later, so nobody is ever invited to pay after their own party. That used to work on invoices made from a single booking but not when you invoiced a whole month at once, which is the way most halls do it - so a party paid up front could fall due a fortnight after the event. Fixed. Thanks to Binfield Memorial Hall for asking.
New feature
The payments list now says who paid, and what for
Your list of payments led with the invoice number, which is no help when you are trying to remember who a payment came from without opening every row. It now starts with who paid, their organisation underneath, and what the invoice was for - the booking name where there is one, or something like "Bloom Baby and 5 more" where a month has been invoiced in one go. The invoice number is still there. Thanks to Binfield Memorial Hall for asking.
New feature
Changing a repeating booking now asks which dates you mean
Until now, editing one date of a repeating booking only ever changed that one date, with nothing on screen to say so. Moving a term of yoga to a new time meant opening every week by hand, and cancelling a term meant the same again. When you save a booking that repeats, we now ask whether you mean just that date, that date and the ones after it, or every date in the series - and each choice tells you how many other dates it would affect. Change the time and every date moves to the new time on its own day, keeping the length of the booking. If one of them cannot move because somebody else has the room at the new time, we say so plainly and leave that one where it was rather than quietly skipping it. A booking that does not repeat saves exactly as before and never sees the question. Thanks to Binfield Memorial Hall for asking.
New feature
Find every date for a class by its name
Your bookings list now has a "What is on" filter listing the names of everything you run - Bloom Baby, Fitsteps, Brownies and so on. Pick one and you get every date for it. That is a different question from filtering by hirer, and both are now there: one group can run several different classes, and a class can change hands between groups while still being the same thing to the village, so filtering by who booked it does not always give you what you want. There is also a "Group by" box above the list, so you can have the dates gathered under headings by what is on, by hirer, or by room. Thanks to Binfield Memorial Hall for asking.
New feature
See everything a group has booked, in one place
Open a hirer and there is now a Bookings tab listing every date that group has with you, past and future, with the number still to come on the tab itself. Open any one of them to change it. If a booking repeats, that booking now has an "All dates in this series" tab listing every date in the run, with the one you are looking at marked, so you can change or cancel a single week without hunting through a list of a dozen identical-looking rows. It works from any date in the series, not just the first. The main Bookings list also has a Hirer filter now, so you can narrow it to one group there too. Thanks to Binfield Memorial Hall for asking.
New feature
Invoicing a whole month at once is easier to find
If you invoice your regular hirers monthly in arrears, the Invoices screen has always been able to do it in one go, but the button was called "Bulk Generate" and there was no way to tell that was the thing you wanted. It is now called "Invoice a month of bookings", and it opens on last month rather than the month you are in the middle of, which is what invoicing in arrears means. Before it does anything it tells you in plain English what it is about to do - how many bookings, between which dates, and how many invoices that comes to - so you can check the dates are right without having to create anything first. You still get drafts, so nothing goes to a hirer until you send it. Thanks to Binfield Memorial Hall for asking.
New feature
Professional: our name comes off your pages
On the Professional plan, "Powered by Village Hall Hub" no longer appears anywhere your hirers see: not on your public calendar, your enquiry form, the invoice they open from their email, your invoice PDFs or your meeting minutes. Together with your own logo and colours, everything a hirer sees is your hall's and nobody else's.
New feature
Your calendar now looks like your website
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.
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.