Category: Development

Per-Client Default Booking Types

2 minute read time · Updated January 6, 2023 · First published November 7, 2016

“Booking Types” are a way for you to color-code your bookings in MIDAS based on their “type”. For example, you may have both internal and external users of your facilities, and so by assigning a different color to each of booking allows you to be able to visually differentiate between the two types of bookings in the booking grid.

Additionally, you can also setup discounted room rates based upon the booking type assigned to each booking. Using the above example, you may want to charge external users of your facilities “full price”, but offer a discount to internal users.

Normally, when adding new bookings on the “Add Bookings” screen, you’d have to select the client that the booking is for, and also separately select the booking type. However, wouldn’t it save time if when you selected a client, the appropriate booking type was automatically pre-selected for you? Of course it would!

That’s why with MIDAS v4.14, you’ll be able to set a default booking type for each of your clients. When a user then selects the client on their Add Bookings screen, the associated default booking type will be pre-selected accordingly. (The user may then manually change the booking type for that booking if desired)

You can read more about some of the other exciting improvements coming in v4.14 here!

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Set multiple closed date ranges for each venue

2 minute read time · Updated January 6, 2023 · First published October 27, 2016

The latest exciting update to our web based room booking and resource scheduling software MIDAS is just around the corner, are we’re really excited to be introducing you to some of the notable new features and improvements you can except in v4.14 right here on our blog…

Now, the ability to “close” individual venues to bookings over a custom date range has long been a staple of MIDAS.

This has allowed users to, for instance, close a particular venue over a holiday period or when a venue is out of action due to a period of scheduled maintenance or refurbishment, etc.

The limitation of this feature has until now been that only one “closed from” and “closed until” date range could be defined for each venue at any given time.

Based upon feedback from our customers – notably including those in educational sectors – in v4.14 we’re improving the ability to close venues between dates, by now allowing multiple “closed” date ranges to be defined for each of your venues:

Specify multiple closed dates for venues
“Closed” date ranges for each of your venues may be specified in MIDAS v4.14 via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage Venues → [select venue] → Hours → Closed Between

From this screen, simply select a date from the calendar as the “Closed From” date, and a second date as the “Closed Until” date. Clicking the small “+” icon in the lower right corner will then allow you to specify additional “Closed From” and “Closed Until” dates.

Dates that fall within these “Closed Between” date ranges will be unavailable to regular users for booking. (Administrative users however who have been specifically granted the special “Can book outside operating hours” permission can still book even when your venue(s) are closed to regular bookings)

Taking the example of a school/college/university – This improvement for v4.14 will now allow staff to enter dates for all the holiday periods throughout their academic year and beyond!

You can read more about some of the other exciting improvements coming in v4.14 here!

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Improved Invoice Auditing

2 minute read time · Updated January 6, 2023 · First published October 24, 2016

Over the past few months we’ve been busy working on the next update to MIDAS, v4.14, and this upcoming release contains a wealth of new and improved features, which we’re really excited to introduce you to here on our blog…

We’ve made a couple of notable improvements around invoice “auditing” in v4.14 to help make it easier for you to keep tabs on your invoices. These new improvements will allow administrators with access to the invoicing capabilities of MIDAS to:

View the complete history log for each invoice

Whilst MIDAS keeps a log of all actions and activity relating to each invoice, in previous versions of MIDAS, only the most recent action on an invoice has been displayed on screen.

However, when viewing an invoice in v4.14, you’ll be able to click the latest invoice status line at the top of an invoice to open the complete history log for that particular invoice:

Store internal notes and comments with each invoice

Store internal notes & comments with each invoice

The ability to add visible “notes” to an invoice, which are then included on the finalized printed or emailed invoice sent to a client have been around in MIDAS for a while now.

However, we’ve also received a number of requests from customers who’d like to have the ability to additionally add “internal notes” to invoices as well (notes which don’t appear on invoices themselves and which are therefore hidden from clients), so that they can better keep tabs on each invoice.

To that end, in v4.14 we’ve added a “Comments” icon to the Invoice toolbar that’s shown whenever you view an invoice. Clicking this icon will allow you to view or edit internal notes/comments for the selected invoice:

Store internal notes and comments with each invoice

As these notes/comments are “internal”, they are only visible to those MIDAS users able to access the invoice. Internal notes/comments are never included on an actual printed/emailed invoice and therefore are not disclosed to the end client an invoice is for.

Continue reading about some of the other exciting improvements coming in v4.14 here!

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New features for hotels and overnight accommodation businesses

2 minute read time · Updated February 14, 2025 · First published October 19, 2016

MIDAS isn’t just for booking meeting rooms you know! Our software has successfully been used to manage activities for all kinds of venues and facilities. These include libraries, bowling alleys, vehicle rentals, recording studios, radio stations, golf courses, hire companies, flight simulators, airports, hotels.. and so much more!

To better accommodate those businesses that book facilities “by the night” – like hotels, guest houses, B&B’s, hostels, and camping & caravan sites – we’re introducing an exciting enhancement to v4.14. This will allow the ability to book by a number of nights stay.

MIDAS already allows you to control the type of time selector each user sees on their Add/Modify Bookings screen. These can be different for each user if required.

By default, these are simple start/finish time selectors. However, they can be changed to a start time + duration, or a drop-down list of predefined time periods.

Book By Nights

For MIDAS v4.14, there’s now an alternative option of booking by a number of “Nights”:

Tentative Booking Types

For users with this option enabled, they can simply select a check in date and a number of nights stay. MIDAS will then do the rest!

Tentative Booking Types

Administrators can predefine your check in and check out times, as well as the maximum number of nights stay permitted.

Tentative Booking Types

For example, let’s assume that your hotel’s check in time is 2pm and check out time is 11am. A user would then select their check in date and the number of nights stay. The result being a continuous booking starting at 2pm on the check-in date and running until 11am on the check-out date.

Furthermore, if you’ve enabled the Public Booking Request features of MIDAS, administrators can also enable the ability for the public to request by number of nights also!

We believe these enhancements further increase the flexibility of our scheduling software. It makes MIDAS even more flexible for hotels, guest houses, B&B’s, hostels, camping & caravan sites… and more!

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