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.
Your own enquiry questions are now asked in the app
If you have written your own questions for the enquiry form - whether somebody lives in the parish, who is in charge on the day - the app was only ever asking the single yes-or-no question the form used to allow, so an enquiry from a phone arrived without the answers and you had to chase them by email. All your questions are now asked in the app, in the shape you chose, and anything you marked as needing an answer has to be answered there too.
New feature
App
Hirers can read and agree to your conditions of hire in the app
Your conditions of hire are now in the app, and a hirer who has not agreed to the current version gets asked on their bookings screen rather than having to go looking. Their agreement is recorded with the name they gave and the date, the same as from the portal. Rewrite your conditions and everybody is asked again, because agreeing to last year's is not agreeing to this year's.
New feature
App
The key safe code now shows in the app, on the booking it opens
If you send hirers a key safe code, it now appears on their booking in the app - in big figures somebody can read standing outside your hall in the dark. It follows exactly the same rules as the email: only on a confirmed booking, only inside the number of days before the hire you chose, and it stops showing once the hire is over. Change the code and every upcoming hirer sees the new one, which an email already sent cannot do.
New feature
App
Hirers can tell you how it went, or what is broken, from the app
If you have turned on hirer feedback, your hirers now get a Feedback tab in the app as well as in the portal. It works the same way: a kind word goes on your Feedback screen quietly, and something broken opens a reported issue and emails you, because a heater that will not come on cannot wait for somebody to check a screen. Whatever questions you have written for yourself get asked on the phone too.
New feature
App
Hirers can ask for a whole term of dates in one go from the app
The app used to let a hirer ask about one date at a time, which is no use to the playgroup or the yoga class who want the whole autumn term. They can now tick "this is the same slot every week or every month", choose how often and when it should stop, and the app tells them how many sessions that works out to before they send it. It arrives as one request carrying the pattern, not as thirteen bookings landing in your diary - you still check it and say yes.
New feature
App
Answer a pencilled-in booking yourself, from the app
A hirer with a date being held for them can now confirm it or let it go from their phone, instead of ringing the hall or waiting for somebody to pick up an email. Confirming does exactly what your own approval does - it takes the deposit if you ask for one and sends the confirmation - and letting a date go puts it straight back in your diary and tells you it has happened.
New feature
Publish your privacy notice where your hirers can actually read it
The Privacy Notice generator wrote you a complete notice and then left it on screen, with nowhere in the system to put it - so the only way a hirer ever saw it was if you copied it onto a website of your own. There is now a Publish button. Once you publish, it appears as a Privacy tab in your hirers' portal, and as a link on your booking enquiry form - which is the moment somebody is handing over their name and telephone number, and the moment they ought to be told what happens to it. Generating a notice still does not publish it, so you can write one, read it through and have somebody look at it first, and you can take it back down whenever you like. Thanks to Sarah Peacey at Binfield Memorial Hall for asking how hirers were supposed to find it.
New feature
Document categories are colour-coded, and can be grouped like folders
Each document category - legal, insurance, safety, policies, accounts, minutes, grants - now has its own colour on the Documents list, so the seven badges are told apart at a glance rather than by reading each one. You can also group the list by category from the "Group by" control above the table, for a folder-like view without an actual folder system to maintain.
New feature
See a history of what your hall has already sent us as feedback
Send Feedback now shows what your hall has already told us underneath the form, so a committee with more than one person using it can check whether something has already been raised before sending it again.
New feature
Sub-headings on Spending Headings collapse until you open them
Group a few headings together - Electricity and Gas under Utilities, say - and the list used to show every one of them as its own row all the time, which got long once a hall had grouped more than one heading. A parent heading now shows an arrow: click it to reveal just that heading's own children, and click again to close them. Every other heading is unaffected, and searching for a heading finds it whether or not its parent is open. Thanks to Duncan Brown at Whatfield Village Hall for asking.
New feature
Add a project without leaving to create a spending heading first
Adding a project used to mean going to Spending Headings first if the heading it needed did not already exist, then coming back to start again. The heading picker on a project now has its own "+" - type the name and it is created and selected without leaving the form. Thanks to Duncan Brown at Whatfield Village Hall for asking.
New feature
Give a project its own budget
New under Finance: Projects. A roof refurbishment or a new set of windows does not fit inside one year's budget, so a project gets a total of its own and tracks what you actually spend against it for as long as it runs, rather than resetting every financial year. Pick a spending heading you already have - group related ones under it first if you want, Electricity-and-Gas style - give it a budget, and every payment you record against that heading counts here automatically. Thanks to Duncan Brown at Whatfield Village 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.