Category: Development

MIDAS v4.10 Invoicing Improvements

Alternative client for invoicingWe love receiving feedback and suggestions from our customers, and one of the most popular areas that we often receive ideas and suggestions for is Invoicing.

So based on this feedback we’re introducing a host of exciting new features and improvements to the invoicing capabilities of MIDAS for v4.10!

Alternative clients for invoicing

Traditionally, when an invoice is generated in MIDAS for a client’s bookings, the invoice is for that particular client.

However, there are many cases when the person that a booking is for differs from the person who’s paying for it. Quite often for instance its desirable for invoices to instead go to a treasurer or finance department, rather than to the end-client who is actually using your facilities.

With MIDAS v4.10, you can now optionally set an alternative client to use for invoicing for all a client’s future bookings!

Greater control over invoice access

As you may be aware, an extensive range of user permissions are already available within MIDAS allowing administrators to precisely control what each user can see and do once logged in.

One of the user permissions that can be granted is “Can use invoicing?”. If this permission is granted, the user has access to all invoicing features within MIDAS (the ability to generate, create, view, modify, delete, print, and send invoices). Without the “Can use invoicing?” permission, a user has no access to any of the invoicing functions.

Restrict access to invoices
Restrict access to invoices

We’ve extended this user permission for v4.10 to include an additional “Restricted” option. Now, if a user’s “Can use invoicing?” permission is set to “Restricted”, they will still be able to generate and create invoices, but they will only be able to view, modify, delete, print or send those invoices which they themselves generated/created (i.e. they will have no access to other invoices generated/created by other users).

Of course, individual users can still be granted full invoicing access as before – allowing them access to all invoices, but this new “restricted” option will give administrators greater control over who can access which invoices.

Greater control over Booking Type Discounts

MIDAS allows you to associate percentage discounts to each of your booking types.
This facilitates charging different room rates depending upon the “type” of booking.

For instance, if you have a room which is usually charged at $100/hour, you could setup a “Non-Profit” booking type with a 50% discount so that any bookings assigned that particular booking type would only be charged at a rate of $50/hour instead of the standard $100/hour rate.

In previous versions of MIDAS, booking type discounts have only applied to room rates. Resources (equipment, consumables, staffing, etc) have not been affected by any booking type discount, and were always charged at their standard rate.

In MIDAS v4.10, administrators can now control how booking type discounts are applied; you can choose to have them only applied to your venue charges (as in previous versions of MIDAS), or only applied to your resource charges, or applied to both venue and resource charges.

Apply discounts to venues and/or resources
Apply discounts to venues and/or resources

Also, in v4.10, for the first time we’ve allowed you to enter negative numbers into the booking type discount field. Entering a negative discount will increase the venue/resource charge by the percentage amount you specify (as opposed to discounting by the specified amount)

Show invoices numbers on booking blocks/tooltips

Select which fields to shown on bookings
Select which fields to shown on bookings

Up to two booking fields can be set to show on “booking blocks” within your booking grid (with a further two booking fields set to show on associated tooltips), however it’s previously not been possible to show a booking’s invoice number on its block/tooltip.

In MIDAS v4.10, this has changed and you can now set invoice numbers to show on a booking’s “block”/tooltip, and also in the Monthly Overview too!

Want to help shape and improve future MIDAS updates? Then why not consider becoming a Beta Tester? – it’s free, there’s nothing to install, and no technical knowledge is required!

New Two-Factor Authentication

Two-Factor Security We take a very pro-active approach to the security of our customer’s MIDAS systems and data, and we always strive to provide administrators and users alike with a wealth of security features and settings within our software.

→ Read our Tips for keeping your MIDAS secure

We’re further enhancing the security options available in our web based room booking and resource scheduling software by introducing optional two-factor authentication in MIDAS v4.10.

Enable two-factor authentication in MIDAS
Enabling two-factor authentication in MIDAS

What is Two-Factor Authentication?

Traditionally, when you access a website/app/online service which requires you to “log in”, all you need to provide is your username (or email address) and a password in order to authenticate your access.

Unfortunately, many people use the same credentials (username/password) over and over again for multiple websites/apps/online services. This means that if one of those services gets “hacked” and has a data breach and user’s credentials are exposed, an attacker could potentially then access all other websites/apps/online services the user uses.

Two-factor authentication combats this, by employing a secondary means of authentication in addition to the traditional username/password combination in order to authenticate your access to the website/app/online service when you login. This means that even if your username/password were compromised, an attacker couldn’t then use these on their own to gain access to your account.

How does two-factor authentication work within MIDAS?

Without two-factor authentication enabled in MIDAS v4.10, users simply login using their email address and chosen password. (A wealth of other customizable security features however are already built-in to MIDAS help prevent “brute force” attacks)

However, with the new optional two-factor authentication feature enabled in v4.10, users enter their email address and password as normal, but then MIDAS then emails the user a security code and presents a web page for this code to the entered. Once the user enters the code they’ve received in an email, the two-step login process will be complete and they will be successfully logged into MIDAS.

Two-factor login authentication for MIDAS
Entering a one-time code to complete your login

This ensures that in order to gain access and login to MIDAS, a user needs to know their MIDAS credentials and also have access to their own email account to retrieve a special security code upon each login.

As such, for two-factor authentication to be an effective security tool, users should ensure that they use a unique password for their MIDAS account (i.e. one which isn’t the same as the password they use to login to their own email account!)

For more information on the existing security settings and features available within MIDAS, please see the Manage Security Settings section of the help documentation.

Want to help shape and improve future MIDAS updates? Then why not consider becoming a Beta Tester? – it’s free, there’s nothing to install, and no technical knowledge is required!

Booking Alternatives

Over the past couple of blog posts, we’ve been looking at some of the new features coming in our next update to MIDAS, v4.09, including high resolution SVG graphics, and the ability to assign multiple email addresses to each client.

However, the features we’re perhaps most excited about, revolve around those instances where you encounter an “Unavailable” on the Booking Availability screen because the venue/times you’ve specified would conflict with an existing booking.

We’ve made two significant improvements in this area for v4.09 – firstly, an icon will appear alongside any instance of “Unavailable” which you can hover your mouse over to see full details of the existing booking which conflicts with the one you’re trying to make, in the Booking Information Panel.

But wait – that’s not all! MIDAS v4.09 is also capable of offering you booking “alternatives” in the event of a conflicting booking!

MIDAS can offer alternative bookings in the event that the desired dates, times, and room aren't available
Booking Alternatives

MIDAS can offer you alternative times for the booking you’re trying to add (i.e. earlier or later than you’d originally specified), as well as alternative venues at the times you’re trying to book. Selecting one of the offered alternative times/venues can be done with a single click from the Booking Availability screen, so there’s no more having to go back and “Change Booking” to try a different time/venue yourself, MIDAS will offer such alternatives for you!

What’s more, we’re giving you lots of control over the “Booking Alternatives” feature…

Booking Availability Settings
Booking Availability Settings

For instance, you can control whether MIDAS should offer earlier times, later times, alternate venues, or any combination of the three.

Furthermore, when offering earlier/later alternative times, you can enforce a “spacing” (or “buffer”) between the conflicting booking and the proposed alternative.

Where MIDAS is set to offer alternative venues, you can specify for each of your venues which other venues should be offered as suitable alternatives:

Setting up alternate venues in MIDAS
Set up alternate venues for each venue in MIDAS

Watch a short 3 minute video tutorial on the new Booking Alternatives feature:

Booking Alternatives Tutorial

Add Multiple Email Addresses For Clients

Multiple Email Addresses For ClientsThe next release of our web based room booking and resource scheduling software, MIDAS is just around the corner, and we’re giving you a “sneak peek” at some of the new and improved features coming with this next update!

Today we’re excited to tell you about an improvement coming to client records within MIDAS. Until now, it’s only been possible to associate a single email address with each client record. This has meant that booking confirmations and reminders as well as invoices can only be sent to the single email address on record for the client in question.

From MIDAS v4.09, you’ll now be able to specify multiple email addresses for each client record, and accordingly, email correspondence (such as booking confirmation/reminder notifications, and invoices, etc) can be automatically sent to multiple email addresses.

Why might this be useful?

Well, we’ve had a number of requests from customers for such capability when it comes to client email addresses. For example, some customers have clients where the email contact for the booking itself differs from the email contact for invoicing. This new improvement to email addresses in MIDAS v4.09 will allow you to assign both the booking contact’s email address and the invoice contact’s email address to the same client record, so that all email correspondence from your MIDAS will go to both!

Similarly, if you have a booking for an external organization, for which there is more than one contact person, you could create a generic client for the organization, and add all their contact email addresses to it, thus ensuring that correspondence is distributed to them all.

Important information for Cloud-Hosted users

  • Cloud-Hosted customers who have their MIDAS system configured to send email via the built-in “Sendmail” option will be limited to sending email to a maximum of two email addresses per client record.
  • Cloud-Hosted customers who have their MIDAS system configured to send email via the external “SMTP” option will be limited to sending email to a maximum of five email addresses per client record.
  • To avoid these limits, and be able to assign as many email addresses to an individual client record as you’d like, please consider switching to a self-hosted edition. These limits on the number of email recipients are not applied to self-hosted editions.