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

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

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.

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.

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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.

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

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.

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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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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.

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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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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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:

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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If you’ve been following our recent posts, you’ll know that we’re introducing a whole host of new features for MIDAS v4.25. Many of the new and improved features in v4.25 relate to invoicing.

There’s a lot to take in, so we thought it would be useful to summarize the new and improved invoicing features of MIDAS, with links to posts with more information.

• New Tax Features
• Flexible Payment Terms
• Credit Notes
• Merge Invoices
• Apply Refunds To Invoices
• Export Invoices to 3rd party accounting packages, including QuickBooks, Sage, and Xero
• Increase cancellation charges for very short notice cancellations

In addition to the above, there’s a handful of smaller invoicing improvements worth noting too:

Update visible notes once an invoice has been finalized

Once an invoice is first printed, or emailed to the client, MIDAS considers the invoice “finalized”. The content of finalized invoices cannot then be changed. However, MIDAS does allow you to update the paid status of the invoice at any time. Additionally, you can also add internal notes at any time. Internal notes are not visible to clients on actual invoices.

From v4.25 we’re now also allowing you to modify the “visible” notes section on invoices – even after they’ve been finalized!

Consolidate multiple identical invoice items

MIDAS now consolidates identical items on invoices. For example, say you’re adding a booking across two venues (rooms), each of which requires a “CD Player” resource in it.

When invoicing for these bookings, MIDAS would previously list the two venues separately and the two resources separately.

Now, MIDAS will identify these instances and combine items accordingly. So now instead of having two lines on an invoice both for a “CD Player” and both with a quantity of 1, they’d be a single “CD Player” line with a quantity of 2.

Empty itemized Invoice Notes excluded

The visible “Notes” section on invoices can be configured to be automatically populated with the content of a booking field. For instance, you could set the “Booking Notes” to automatically appear in the “Notes” section of the client’s invoice.

If multiple bookings appear on the same invoice, it could get confusing as to which booking the invoice notes relate to. That’s why we’ve previously provided an “Itemize Notes” option. When enabled, each item on the client’s invoice with an associated note is indicated with a reference number. This appears on the invoice line it relates to, and then also in the Notes section below.

If an item had no notes associated with it however, it would still be given a reference number. This could be just as confusing if none of the bookings had notes. You’d end up with a string of meaningless numbers in the Notes section, like [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

We’ve sorted this out for v4.25! Now, only bookings with notes will be numerically referenced if the “Itemize Notes” option is enabled.

These are just a few of the new and improved features for MIDAS v4.25. Please see this post for details of other new features you’ll find in v4.25.

You can also ask questions and discuss the new features of v4.25 over on Reddit.

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The Cancellation Invoice features of MIDAS automatically generate a charge for clients if their bookings are canceled at short notice.

This charge may be in the form of a fixed amount, or as a percentage of the total cost of their booking.

These appear on an invoice which may be printed or emailed to the client, and which they may pay online.

As mentioned in a previous post, we’re improving Cancellation Invoices for v4.25. Now you’ll be able to set a specific tax rate for all your Cancellation Invoices.

Additionally, we’re adding a new option to automatically increase cancellation charges for bookings cancelled at even shorter notice.

For example, you could configure a 20% cancellation fee if a booking is cancelled less than two weeks before it’s due to take place, and increase this to 50% if cancelled less than one week before.

These are just a few of the new and improved features for MIDAS v4.25. Please see this post for details of other new features you’ll find in v4.25.

You can also ask questions and discuss the new features of v4.25 over on Reddit.

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In this post we’ll take a look at a new tool we’ve added to MIDAS allowing you to “merge” an unsent invoice into another unsent invoice.

This will allow you to combine multiple unset invoices for the same client.

Simply view the invoice you’d like to merge into another, and click the “Merge Invoice” icon.

You’ll then be shown a list of all other unsent invoices for the same client.

Select the invoice you’d like to merge into, and click “Merge Invoice”.

Items on the original invoice will then be added to the selected invoice, and totals updated accordingly.

The original invoice will then be deleted from the system, and a corresponding audit trail added to the Recent Activity log.

These are just a few of the new and improved features for MIDAS v4.25. Please see this post for details of other new features you’ll find in v4.25.

You can also ask questions and discuss the new features of v4.25 over on Reddit.

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MIDAS can export invoices to QuickBooks Online, Xero, Clear Books, and KashFlow.

In addition, you can also export Invoice Summaries to Sage Business Cloud, and QuickFile.

Exported data is tailored to each specific accounting package in CSV format, allowing for easy import.

We also provide some additional export options for applicable accounting packages. For example, to allow you to specify a ledger/account code, or to map a custom customer field in MIDAS to a customer reference field in your account package.

For more information on exporting invoices from MIDAS to 3rd party account packages, please see our KB articles:

• How to export invoices to QuickBooks
• How to export invoices to Sage
• How to export invoices to Xero
• How to export invoices to Clear Books
• How to export invoices to KashFlow
• How to export invoices to Quickfile

Plus, you can still export in previously available formats too. These include Excel, standard CSV (comma separated values), Tab-Delimited Text File, and XML formats.

We’ve improved these too, as they now also include each invoice’s Payment Terms, and therefore their Due Dates as well.

These are just a few of the new and improved features for MIDAS v4.25. Please see this post for details of other new features you’ll find in v4.25.

You can also ask questions and discuss the new features of v4.25 over on Reddit.

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