Tax Exempt Clients

1 minute read time · Updated January 6, 2023

The next substantial update to our popular web based room booking and resource scheduling software is just around the corner, and throughout this month, we’re outlining some of the new features and improvements you can expect to see in the upcoming v4.07 release….

Making Clients Exempt From Tax

We love feedback and suggestions from our customers, and this next feature arises from just such a suggestion (which eagle-eyed readers may have already spotted in a screenshot from our previous post!)

MIDAS already includes powerful invoicing capabilities, allowing you to set flexible room rates for each day of the week as well as different lengths (durations) of booking. In additional, you can also setup discount rates depending upon the type of booking (for example, community hires can be charged at a lower rate than commercial hire of your facilities)

These extensive invoice capabilities are further enhanced for v4.07, as we’re introducing a new per-client setting allowing individual clients to be excluded from having the standard global tax rate you’ve setup for your system (via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Invoicing) applied to their generated invoices.

Making Clients Tax Exempt — Tax Exempt Client

Tags: clients, invoicing, tax, v4.07

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New Scheduled Tasks

2 minute read time · Updated August 8, 2024

Introducing Scheduled Tasks…

In MIDAS v4.07, we’ve introduced a new “Scheduled Tasks” feature. This may be accessed MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS & Scheduled Tasks.

“Scheduled Tasks” allow the software to perform a series of automated tasks in the background without any user intervention. These automated tasks include:

Sending booking reminders to clients in advance of their upcoming bookings
Sending invoice reminders to clients in advance of the due date of their invoice, if their invoice hasn’t been paid in full
Sending invoice overdue notifications to clients who haven’t paid their invoices on time

Each “task” can be configured. For example, you can specify how many hours before a booking commences a reminder should be sent to the client, or how many days before/after an invoice is due a reminder/notification should be sent.

Reminders/Notifications are sent via email to clients who have been set to receive them. You can control which reminders/notifications each client receives by modifying the “e-mail reminders” setting of their client record. Additionally, clients themselves have the ability to “opt out” of receiving further email notifications from your MIDAS.

We’ll also be giving you the ability to customize the content of these email notifications/reminders. We’ll cover this in more depth in another blog post!

Set Email Reminders for Clients

In the meantime, if your MIDAS system in “self hosted”, in order to use the new “Scheduled Tasks” features of v4.07, you’ll first need to configure your server to execute a MIDAS component once every hour. For more information, please refer to the following knowledgebase article: Configuring your server to run Scheduled Tasks.

If your MIDAS is “cloud hosted” by us, there’s no need to do this. Scheduled Tasks will work “out of the box” for our cloud hosted customers.

Tags: scheduled tasks, v4.07

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New File Uploads and Attachments

2 minute read time · Updated July 19, 2023

The next substantial update to our popular web based room booking and resource scheduling software is just around the corner. So over the next few weeks we’ll be outlining some of the new features and improvements you can expect in the upcoming v4.07 release here on our blog.

We really do listen to and value all customer feedback here at MIDAS HQ! One of the most requested features you’ve told us you’d like to see in our software is the ability to be able to attach files/documents to your bookings. This would allow users to be able to store room layout plans, signed booking contracts, programs & itineraries, and other relevant documents to each booking.

Attach files and documents to bookings
So we’re giving you just that by adding a new “file” custom field type in v4.07! We already allow you to add your own custom text, number, list, and URL (link) fields to your booking screen. With the addition of the new “file” type you’ll also be able to add file upload fields to your booking screens.

Select File To Attach The custom “file” field will allow users to click a “Select File” button. They can then locate a file from their computer to attach to the booking.

Booking Attachment Attachments are uploaded to MIDAS and linked to for easy accessed via the booking information panel, and through the “Modify Booking” screen where they can also be removed.

Uploading of the following file types is supported: .csv, .doc, .docx, .gif, .jpeg, .jpg, .pdf, .png, .ppt, .pptx, .rar, .txt, .xls, .xlsx, .zip

Administrators can also limit the maximum size of file that can be uploaded and attached to bookings. The default is 5MB.

PLEASE NOTE: The ability to upload/attach files and documents to bookings will only be available in “self hosted” editions of MIDAS v4.07. If your MIDAS is “cloud hosted” by us, this functionality will not be available to you.

If your MIDAS is hosted by us and you’d like to be able to attach documents to bookings, you’d need to first upload your files elsewhere (i.e. your own web server), and then use a custom URL field in MIDAS to link your bookings to your uploaded files.

Alternatively, you can migrate your cloud hosted system to a self hosted edition at any time.

For more information, please see: Why aren’t file upload fields available in “cloud hosted” editions of MIDAS?

Tags: attachments, document, file, upload, v4.07

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Making card payments simpler

3 minute read time · Updated February 11, 2025

Following feedback from our customers, we are pleased to announce we are trialing a new card payment processor on our website. This will benefit those purchasing, renewing, or upgrading a MIDAS room booking & resource scheduling software using a Credit/Debit card. It will allow these customers to complete their purchase without having to go through PayPal.

PayPal Payments

Whilst PayPal is arguably the largest and most popular card payment processor on the Internet, one of the concerns some of our customers have is that in order to complete a card payment via PayPal they are forced to sign up for a PayPal account. Many do not want to do this.

PayPal advertises that customers can make card payments without also requiring a PayPal account. In some cases this is certainly true. However, it’s not true in all cases!

For example, after you’ve used PayPal for a number of “one off” card payments without a PayPal account, PayPal then insist you create an account to continue making card payments through their system:

“You will only be able to use PayPal … for up to [10] transactions before we will require you to open a PayPal account … to enable further use of the PayPal system. At that point you will be required to enter into our standard user agreement to govern the ongoing relationship with PayPal”

Additionally, the country you’re in can also affect whether PayPal will allow you to make a card payment without a PayPal account, or insist you create one first.

On a PayPal payment page, if your country is set to United Kingdom, you might see:

PayPal card payment without requiring a PayPal account

…Whereas change your location to Canada, and you’ll see:

PayPal card payment requiring a PayPal account first

…spot the difference?! Yes, the option to pay directly by card directly has been replaced with an option to create a PayPal account!

We want to make things simpler for all our customers who just want to pay by Credit/Debit card without signing up for any 3rd party accounts!

Introducing Stripe

So whilst PayPal remains a payment method option for our customers, we’ve now also integrated Stripe into our secure site.

Stripe securely handles card payments directly from our website. So unlike PayPal, you’re not transferred back and forth between a hosted payment page on another site and then back to our site. You can complete your card purchase securely and directly from our website. Plus, you won’t need to sign up for a Stripe account to make your payment either!

We will be trialing Stripe for a number of weeks, and we’d appreciate your feedback!

We’ve also updated our site’s Privacy Policy accordingly.

Tags: paypal, Stripe

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