Posts Tagged: invoice

A couple of invoicing improvements for v4.37

2 minute read time · Updated August 8, 2024 · First published August 8, 2024

We often make improvements to the already extensive invoicing capabilities of our room booking software. This is to accommodate a diverse range of invoicing scenarios and usage cases that our customers tell us about.

For MIDAS v4.37, we’ve made a couple of improvements based on customer feedback.

Manual quotation payments for tentative bookings can now update the booking’s type

“Tentative” bookings were first introduced in MIDAS v4.14 in 2016. Bookings of this type are automatically removed from the system if they’ve not ‘confirmed’ within a specified time frame or by a certain date/time.

In 2023, we also introduced a “quotation” feature. Used in conjunction with tentative bookings, you could generate quotations for clients when making tentative bookings for them.

If the client accepts and pays their quotation online, their ‘tentative’ bookings automatically convert to regular ‘confirmed’ bookings.

Of course, there may be instances when a client wishes to accept a quotation but pays ‘offline’ – perhaps over the phone or in person.

MIDAS can deal with ‘offline’ payments by allowing administrators to manually update quotations or invoices to reflect that a payment has been made against them.

Starting with MIDAS v4.37, if ‘manual’ payment is made for a quotation for a tentative booking, this can now update the associated bookings and make them ‘confirmed’.

Previously, this functionality was only available when an ‘online’ payment was made for a quotation.

Updating an invoice’s internal notes is now recorded in the Recent Activity Log

We appreciate that keeping an accurate audit trail is essential. The ‘Recent Activity Log’ in our software logs all user actions with date and time stamps. This useful log (which can also be downloaded) allows administrators to monitor how their booking system is being used.

Whenever an invoice’s status is updated, these actions are recorded to the audit log.

Each invoice can also have ‘internal notes‘ added to them. These notes are not visible to the recipient of the invoice, but are visible to administrators when viewing an invoice.

Until now, the action of updating internal notes for an invoice was not recorded to the ‘Recent Activity Log’ itself.

We’ve addressed this for v4.37. Whenever an administrator makes or updates the internal notes for an invoice, quotation, or credit note, this activity is noted in the recent activity log.

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Get Notified On Invoice Payments

1 minute read time · Updated April 22, 2024 · First published April 22, 2024

The powerful “Watch Notification” features of MIDAS allow users to configure automatic notifications whenever certain activity occurs within their MIDAS.

Examples uses of Watch Notifications include:

  • Staff members could be notified whenever they’re added to a booking
  • Catering staff could receive notifications whenever refreshments are added to bookings
  • A purchasing department could receive notifications when consumables are running low and need re-ordering
  • A user could be notified should an unavailable venue/time slot becomes available again

For MIDAS v4.36 we’ve added an additional Watch notification option. This provides the ability for a user to be notified whenever a payment is made against a MIDAS generated invoice.

New Invoice Payment Watch Notification
New Invoice Payment Watch Notification

Now, MIDAS can automatically update invoices in its system when payments are made against them, however this new notification option allows a user to be notified whenever such updates occur.

The “Invoice Payment” Watch notification option is available to users who have been granted invoicing permissions within their MIDAS system.

When enabled, a new Watch Notification is generated for the user whenever an invoice has been paid in full, or when a partial payment is received against an invoice.

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Two New Invoice Tools

3 minute read time · Updated July 21, 2023 · First published April 1, 2022

For MIDAS v4.30 we’ve added a couple of new “Database Tools” to our software.

The “Database Tools” in MIDAS allow administrators to perform operations on the software’s database.

For example an administrator could “merge” similar client records “merge” bookings from two or more venues into a single venue, remove inactive clients or users, and more.

The two new Database Tools we’ve added for v4.30 are…

“Unfinalize” Invoices

To understand what the “Unfinalize Invoice” tool does, we first need to understand what a “Finalized” invoice is.

In MIDAS, whenever a new invoice is generated (or manually created), it’s contents may be freely edited up until the time when the invoice is either first printed or emailed to the client.

Once an invoice has been either printed or emailed to the client, MIDAS assumes that the invoice has been “Finalized”. It then protects the contents of the invoice from further editing (other than updating its status/paid amount).

This is done to ensure that the invoice that has been printed/emailed matches the invoice stored in the system.

Without this protection, it would be possible for an invoice to be printed/emailed and sent to the client, and then for a user to change the items, quantitates, or charges on it. If this were to be allowed, the invoice the client received would then be different to the invoice held in the system.

So to prevent this, MIDAS “Finalizes” (locks) invoices once they are first printed/emailed.

Now, there may be some rare circumstances where you need to modify the contents of an existing invoice instead of issuing a new invoice or a credit note.

To that end, we’ve now included an “Unfinalize Invoice” tool.

We don’t encourage the regular use of this tool, for the reasons outlined above. But in exceptional circumstances, this will allow an administrator to remove the “Invoice Date” from a previously “Finalized” invoice. Once the invoice date has been removed, MIDAS will allow the invoice’s contents to be fully editable again.

Remove Obsolete Invoices

Similar to the “Remove Obsolete Bookings” tool (which allows removal of ancient bookings from the system), the “Remove Obsolete Invoices” tool does something very similar, but for invoices.

By default, MIDAS retains invoices indefinitely. Many organization’s financial reporting procedures require that they keep records for a number of years.

But if you’ve been using MIDAS for many years, do you really need to retain invoices that were paid over a decade ago!? Probably not! – That’s where the “Remove Obsolete Invoices” tool comes in.

You can select a point in the past of between 6 months – 10 years. Invoices which were paid in full before this point in time will then be deleted from the database.

For example, selecting the “5 years ago” option would remove all invoices that were paid in full at any time before today’s date 5 years ago.

Removing obsolete invoices – and indeed bookings – using these tools are a great way of keeping your database running efficiently.

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How To Reset Invoice Counters

2 minute read time · Updated February 10, 2025 · First published July 7, 2021

We’re giving administrators the ability to reset invoice counters in MIDAS v4.28.

Previously, invoice counters could only be reset through the optional MIDAS API.

What are invoice counters?

Each time a new invoice is generated or created in MIDAS, it is assigned a unique incremental number. This is prefixed with an editable string of characters.

So for instance, if the invoice prefix was set to be “MIDAS”, then the first invoice added in MIDAS would be numbered “MIDAS0001“. The second invoice would be automatically assigned “MIDAS0002“, the third “MIDAS0003” and so forth.

Separate counters and prefixes exist for both deposit and cancellation invoices too, as well as for credit notes.

Whilst their prefixes can be changed at any time, the numeric “counters” themselves are internal and couldn’t – until v4.28 – be easily changed.

That meant that if your invoice counter was up to 0123 and you wanted to change prefixes from “MIDAS” to “TEST”, the next invoice to be generated would be “TEST0124”.

Why might I need to reset an invoice counter?

Some of our customers commented that it would be useful to be able to “reset” invoice counters back to 0001.

This is particularly useful for users who first wish to test the invoicing capabilities of MIDAS by creating some example invoices. Then once they’re comfortable with the invoicing features of MIDAS, start using them for “real” invoices.

Until now, the only way to reset an invoice counter was via the optional MIDAS API.

For MIDAS v4.28, we’re providing the means to reset an invoice counter without requiring the API.

Administrators can reset an invoice counter at any time via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Database → Database Tools → Reset Invoice Counter.

The Reset Invoice Counter screen looks like this:

Reset Invoice Counters in MIDAS
Reset Invoice Counters in MIDAS

The screen displays the current counter for regular, deposit, and cancellation invoices, as well as for credit notes.

To reset any of these counters back to 0001, simply click/tap the corresponding “Reset” button.

To prevent the chance of this resulting in duplicate invoice numbers in MIDAS, counters may only be reset if no other invoices/credit notes with same prefix exist in the database.

Therefore, before resetting a counter it’s recommended that you either remove all existing invoices with the current prefix, or change the prefix to something else.

Invoice/Credit Note prefixes may be modified via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Invoicing.

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