Posts Tagged: invoice

Invoices are now searchable

The “Search” toolbar icon in MIDAS can be used to quickly locate clients and bookings, or search the included help documentation.

For MIDAS v4.40 we’ve further extended the search function to now also allow searching for invoices in your booking system.

Search in invoices
Search in invoices

When searching for invoices, MIDAS will match your entered search term against invoice numbers, clients, organizations, and invoice items. Invoice items include both your rooms (venues / bookable spaces) and resources.

So if you need to quickly locate an invoice containing a specific item, or all invoices for a particular bookable space – you now can!

The addition of a powerful new invoice search function compliments the existing features will allow you to quickly locate individual invoices….

Quickly locate an invoice

Quickly jump to recent invoices
Quickly jump to recent invoices

The main invoicing screen is accessed via the Invoicing toolbar icon.

This screen displays the most recently created invoices, finalized invoices, overdue invoices, and credit notes in your booking system. Clicking any of these will display the corresponding invoice or credit note.

Additionally, if you know the invoice number you wish to view, you can enter it in the “Jump to invoice” field and hit go, and MIDAS will instantly display the full invoice.

But that’s not all you can do from the toolbar at the top of the invoicing screen…

Filtering invoices

MIDAS allows you to filter the list of invoices by both their status and the client they are for.

Invoicing Toolbar

For instance, you can quickly see all invoices which have been paid in the past week, or all those where payment is still outstanding after a month.

The combination of the ability to “filter” invoices, quickly “jump” to invoices, and now also “search” invoices means that it’s now easier than ever to rapidly locate invoices in your MIDAS booking system.


Change the order items appear on invoices

MIDAS booking software includes powerful invoicing features. These extensive capabilities mean that you won’t need a separate accounting package to handle the finances in relation to the hire and use of your facilities. (Of course, we do also support exporting invoices from MIDAS into 3rd party accounting packages too!)

With just a couple of clicks, MIDAS can generate an invoice for a booking, or indeed a series of bookings. You can also manually create new invoices at any time.

Once an invoice has been generated or created it can then be printed or emailed to your customer from within the system.

Before an invoice is finalized (before it is printed or emailed), its contents may be freely edited.

This allows you to add or remove items on the invoice or update quantities or charges.

However, until now, there’s not been an easy way to ‘move’ items up or down on invoices to change the order in which they appear.

Why might you want to reorder items on an invoice?

If you’re retrospectively generating an invoice for all a customer’s bookings over a period of time, MIDAS will include these bookings on the invoice in chronological order.

If the client has booked multiple rooms on a number of different dates, you may prefer bookings for the same room to appear consecutively together on the invoice.

Alternatively, if you use the “Merge Invoice” tool in MIDAS to combine two or more invoices for the same client, MIDAS will simply append each invoice’s items onto the end of the first invoice. This may result in items listed on the invoice not being in a logical order.

Introducing the ability to change the order of items on invoices

Starting with MIDAS v4.39, we’ve introduced the ability for you to move items up or down on invoices prior to them being finalized.

Modifying an invoice in MIDAS v4.39
Modifying an invoice in MIDAS v4.39

On the create/modify invoice screen, to the left of each invoice item you’ll now see both a small up and down arrow.

Moving items up and down on invoices
Moving items up and down on invoices

Clicking the up arrow alongside an invoice item will move that item above the previous invoice item.

Likewise, clicking the down arrow will move that invoice item below the following item.

Clicking the “Save Invoice” button will then save the changes you’ve made to the order of invoice items, along with any other changes you’ve made to the invoice.


A couple of invoicing improvements for v4.37

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.


Get Notified On Invoice Payments

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.