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.
Every hall can now have its own website at its own address, such as yourhall.villagehallhub.co.uk, on every plan. Go to Settings, then Your Website. Choose how it looks, add one line about the hall, a paragraph about it and a main photograph, then turn on Publish my hall's website and press Save. The page shows your rooms with their sizes and prices, your extras, your regular activities and what is coming up, all taken from your bookings, so it stays up to date without anybody editing it. Private bookings and hirers' names never appear. Visitors can check your calendar and send an enquiry without leaving your website. To add a photograph of a room, go to Rooms, press Edit on the room and add it in the Photograph box. To put a document on the website, such as your conditions of hire, go to Documents, press Edit on it and tick Show this on our website. Nothing is public until you turn it on, and turning it off takes it down straight away.
New feature
Approve or decline a request from the booking itself
When a booking request arrives by email and you press View Enquiry, the booking now has Approve (green) and Decline (red) at the top of the page, next to Generate invoice. They do exactly what the tick and cross do on the Bookings list: Approve confirms it and, if you have that switched on, emails the hirer; Decline asks why it did not go ahead and keeps your note, without emailing the hirer. They show only while a booking is an enquiry or provisional, and also appear when you open a booking from the Bookings list. If you have changed anything else on the booking, press Save changes first, as Approve and Decline act on the booking as it was last saved. Thanks to Sarah Peacey at Binfield Memorial Hall for asking.
New feature
Hirers you never invoice, such as a council letting its own building
Go to Hirers, open the hirer, press Edit, and under Type and rates tick Never invoice this hirer, then save. Their bookings still go in your diary and still take up the room, but they are marked free, so Generate invoice and Invoice a month of bookings leave them out. Ticking it also marks their bookings that have not been invoiced yet as free; anything already on an invoice they have been sent is left as it is. Unticking it changes no bookings. When you import bookings under Settings, Import your data, a booking for that hirer comes in free, and there is a new Free (not invoiced) column you can match to mark any booking free - a yes or the word free marks it. Thanks to Iain Mackenzie-May at Leith Community Centre for asking.
New feature
Totals on your invoices list, late invoices at a glance, and a spreadsheet of the list
Go to Finance, then Invoices. Above the list are five figures: Invoiced, Paid, Still owed and Overdue add up whatever the list is showing, so you see what was sent, what has come in and what is still to come side by side; filtering to one hirer or searching for a month gives you that hirer or that month; All outstanding is everything you are owed, whatever the list shows. An invoice past its due date with money still owed now says so in red under the Due date, with how many days late it is, and the new Overdue filter (the funnel above the list) shows just those. Download as spreadsheet, at the top of the page, gives the list exactly as filtered as a CSV file for Excel or Google Sheets, with what is still owed and how late each one is. The download is on the Standard and Professional plans, like the other spreadsheet downloads. Thanks to Iain Mackenzie-May at Leith Community Centre for asking.
New feature
Faults: undo "Someone is on it", and let your caretaker deal with faults
Go to Bookings, then Reported Issues. A fault marked as being dealt with by mistake now has Nobody is on it after all in its row menu, which puts it back to open; before, the only way back was to mark it resolved and reopen it. Faults can now also be seen and dealt with by whoever looks after your building, without being given the bookings: under Settings, Team Members, press Customise on the person (or make a role for them under Hall Roles) and tick See safety checks, maintenance jobs and reported faults, and Record safety checks and maintenance jobs, and deal with reported faults. They can then mark faults in hand or resolved, log new ones, and turn one into a maintenance job, but they see "A hirer" rather than the hirer's name unless they can see bookings or hirers. The tick boxes have been reworded to say what they cover; nobody's permissions have changed. Thanks to Duncan Brown at Whatfield Village Hall for asking.
New feature
Choose which hirers can pay by card
For halls taking card payments. Go to Hirers, open a hirer, press Edit, and under Type and rates turn off Can pay invoices by card to leave the Pay by card button off their invoices; the invoice then asks for payment by bank transfer or cheque instead. To change several at once, tick them on the Hirers list and choose Card payment on or off from the bulk actions, and the Can pay by card filter shows who is set which way. Any one invoice can go the other way: open it, press Edit, and set Pay by card to offer it or not on this invoice only, or leave it as set for the hirer. Every hirer can still pay by card until you change it. Thanks to Duncan Brown at Whatfield Village Hall for the idea.
New feature
Card payment: a starting point for new hirers, a tick on the Hirers list, and a warning before adding a hirer twice
For halls taking card payments. Under Finance, Payment Settings, Card payments, turn off New hirers can pay by card and every hirer you add from then on starts without it; hirers you already have are not changed. When you add a hirer, Can pay invoices by card is on the Type and rates step, starting from that setting. On the Hirers list, the Pay by card column can be ticked or unticked right there, without opening the hirer. These settings are kept if you ever disconnect Stripe and connect it again. And for every hall: when you add a hirer whose name or email address is already on your list, a warning under the name says who it matches, so the same group is not added twice. You can still add them if they really are different. Thanks to Duncan Brown at Whatfield Village Hall for the ideas.
New feature
Public API: ask for only the bookings that changed
For halls whose own website or system reads bookings through the public API, under Settings, API Keys. The bookings list now takes updated_since: send the time your last sync started and you get back only bookings added or changed since then, cancellations included, which is usually nothing at all. A system that copies every booking every few minutes can now do it with one small request. A booking deleted outright is not included, so a full fetch once a night is still worth doing. The details are in the API documentation at villagehallhub.co.uk/docs/public-api.
New feature
App
Record just your own spending, from your phone
Update the app to version 1.0.5. If your hall has given you the permission to record only your own spending, open the menu and press Your spending. Press Record spending, say what you bought and how much, and photograph the receipt. The list shows only what you recorded yourself. If the entry is not there after updating, sign out and back in.
New feature
Webhooks: tell your own website the moment something changes
For halls whose own website or system works with Village Hall Hub. Go to Settings, then Webhooks, and press Add a webhook. Give the address your website developer gives you, and tick what it should hear about: bookings added, changed, cancelled or deleted, invoices raised, sent or paid, and payments recorded. We then send it a message as soon as it happens, so it no longer has to keep asking. Press Send a test to check it arrives, and Recent messages to see what was sent and whether it got there; anything that did not can be sent again. Every message is signed, and Signing secret shows what your developer needs to check it. Every plan has webhooks: Community 1 address and 500 messages a day, Standard 3 and 2,000, Professional 10 and 10,000. Messages that cannot be delivered are tried again for a few hours, and a webhook that keeps failing is turned off so you can fix it. How it works is in the API documentation at villagehallhub.co.uk/docs/public-api.
New feature
Record why an enquiry did not become a booking
Go to Bookings, find an enquiry or a provisional booking and press Decline. You are now asked why it did not go ahead: the hirer did not go ahead, the date or room was not available, not suitable for the hall, the price, or another reason. There is a box for anything you want to add, which is kept in your own notes on the booking and never shown to the hirer. Both are optional. The same question appears on the booking itself when you press Edit and change the status to Cancelled. To look back at them, use the Why it did not go ahead filter on the Bookings list, or switch on the column of the same name. It is also in the bookings file under Settings, Export your data. Declining from the phone app works as before, without the question for now. Thanks to Sarah Peacey at Binfield Memorial Hall for the idea.
New feature
Find a booking by its number
Every booking has a number, and you can now find one by it. Type the number into the search box at the top of any page, or into the Search box on the Bookings list, and the booking comes up. A short reference in front of it is fine too, so 9613, #9613 and LCC-9613 all find booking 9613, which helps if your own website gives hirers a reference built on our number. The number is shown on the booking itself under Booking number, and there is a Booking number column you can switch on from the columns button on the Bookings list. Thanks to Iain Mackenzie-May at Leith Community Centre 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.