Over the next few posts, we’re excited to give you a first look at some of the new features and improvements in this forthcoming update.

First up – Custom Resource Categories!

“Resources” are additional items/services you can add to your bookings. Until now, resources have been split into three distinct categories; “Equipment”, “Staffing”, and “Consumables”.

The differences between each of these three categories are outlined below:

Equipment:

Resources categorized as “Equipment” are those which are charged per booking, irrespective of the length of a booking. For example, a Flip Chart may be added to this section, as its charge would be the same for 30 minutes or 2 hours. The “Quantity Available” allows you to define how many flip charts are available site-wide at any one time. So, if you own 5 flip charts, set the “Quantity Available” to 5. MIDAS will then not allow more than 5 flip charts to be in-use at the same time.

Consumables

Resources categorized as “Consumables” are those which would only be used one-time, and cannot be reused. For example, paper for a flip chart could be classed as a consumable. The “Quantity Available” figure is very fluid in this category. For example, you may have bulk purchased 100 flip chart paper pads. You would therefore set the “Quantity Available” to 100. However, unlike the other categories, whenever consumables are added to a booking, the remaining “Quantity Available” of that resource decreases by the amount added. So once all 100 flip chart pads have been used, they will no longer be able to be added to any further bookings. That is, until your stocks are replenished, and the “Quantity Available” updated accordingly. Consumables, like Equipment, are charged per booking.

Staffing

Staffing is a section to list human resources you have available to clients. These are charged per hour when added to bookings. For example, you may have 3 AV Technician’s on staff, with an hourly rate of $40. Adding these details to the Staffing section of resources allows your staff to be allocated to bookings with the client charged accordingly.

Following requests from a number of our users, for MIDAS v4.17, we’re adding more flexibility. You can now add your own custom resource categories to compliment the three default categories:

This will be beneficial to organizations with large numbers of resources. Resources can now be broken down into smaller groups.

Each custom resource category you add can be named, and resources assigned to it accordingly. You can also specify how resources assigned to the category should behave in terms of billing and remaining quantities. Items in custom categories can behave as either Equipment, Consumables, or Staffing for these purposes.

When adding resources to bookings, additional tabs will be shown on the Add Resources dialog for each of your custom categories:

We believe this new feature offers even more flexibility in managing your resources along with your venues in MIDAS!

You can become more familiar with how “Resources” work within MIDAS in our short video tutorial:

How To Setup Resources & Add Them To Bookings

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• Receive notifications when consumables are low!
• Receive notifications when specific resources are added to bookings!
• Graphical Invoice Statistics on your clients, organizations and booking types!
• Statistics can now be printed!
• “Apply Discounts Silently” option to apply discounts, but “hide” reference to them on invoices
• Ability to be notified if another user modifies/deletes bookings you created
• Setting to have “Watches” and internal messages from other users automatically forwarded to your email address
• Setting to suppress the “My Messages” popup upon login
• Change what information is displayed on dates in the Monthly Overview

You can read more about these exciting new features in our previous blog entry, and we’ve also produced a 10 minute video tutorial guiding you through exactly what’s new in MIDAS v3.14…

If you’re an existing MIDAS user with a current Annual Support Subscription, you can upgrade to v3.14 right now! Simply login to your MIDAS, click the “MIDAS Admin Options” icon and select “Manage MIDAS -> Update”. If your Annual Support Subscription has recently expired, don’t worry – you can quickly renew your subscription. …and if we host MIDAS for you, then you’ve already been updated to v3.14!

If you’re new to MIDAS, why not read more about the features of MIDAS and check out the online demo.

To get MIDAS working for YOUR company/organization, grab yourself a copy of MIDAS v3.14 now!

The post MIDAS v3.14 is here! appeared first on MIDAS - Room Booking System | Blog.

The biggest area that’s been updated in this release is the “My Messages” module.
Starting with version 3.14 you’ll be able to:

Receive notifications when consumables are low

The person(s) responsible for purchasing consumables can be informed when they need to re-order!

Receive notifications when specific resources are added to bookings

For example, catering staff can be automatically notified when refreshments are required!

Greater control over watch “triggers”

The addition of AND/OR logic allows greater control over what triggers your watch notification. For instance you can set up a watch to notify you when either a new booking is added to a particular room OR a new booking of a particular type is added. Alternatively, you can set up the watch to notify you when a new booking is added to a particular room AND is a particular type, and so forth

Automatically forward notifications and messages to your email

You can have watch notifications and internal messages from other users automatically forwarded to your email address. This means that you don’t need to log in to MIDAS to check for new messages!

Suppress notifications window when you log in

You can disable the “My Messages” pop-up which displays after you login whenever you have messages, reminders, or watches.

Also, in v3.14 we’ve extended the “Statistics” module to now include a section for “Invoice Statistics“. In this section you’ll be able to select a date range, and MIDAS will show you statistics of all invoices sent during that period. You’ll be able to see how much has been invoiced, how much has been paid, and how much is still outstanding! …and you can breakdown these statistics by client, organization, or booking type!

You can now also Print Statistics to your printer via the main print icon!

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