If you’ve been a valued customer of ours for a while now, you’ll know that we typically release significant “feature rich” new updates to our room booking software at least three times a year. This isn’t a new thing either – we’ve been adding exciting new features to our software ever since 2006!

2022 has seen some great new additions to our software for our customers to benefit from.

Here’s a brief recap of some of the major new features, in case you missed any of our previous posts and announcements during the year…

Send invoices as PDF attachments

In December with MIDAS v4.32, there’s now the option to send invoices directly to your clients as PDF attachments, rather than “inline” within the body of an email.

Read more in this blog post.

Set room rates based upon the time of day

Also, for v4.32 in December 2022, you can now set charging rates based upon a booking’s start time. This new addition now makes it easier than ever to charge different rates for daytime and evening bookings.

Read more in this blog post.

Visual booking from a floor plan or map

In September 2022, for MIDAS v4.31 we introduced a new “Floor Plan” feature. This allowed you to upload a map of your facilities to allow users to be able to visually book by simply clicking on a space on the map.

Read more in this blog post.

Other new features in MIDAS during 2022

• New: Review previously sent internal messages
• New: Option to prompt for detailed client entry when adding bookings for new clients
• New: Option to export invoices to Zoho Invoice
• New: Email compatibility mode setting for improved rendering of invoices on older email clients
• New: Option to auto-approve booking requests based upon their booking type
• New: “Unfinalize” Invoices tool
• New: Remove Obsolete Invoices tool
• New: Maximum bookings allowed per user per calendar month/year options
• New: Bulk “Remove Unsent Invoices” tool
• New: Options to include more information with resources on invoices

Onwards to 2023…

Whilst we may have been developing MIDAS for over 16 years now, as you can see from all of the above (and from our changelog too), our commitment to making our software even better is unwaning.

This will of course continue during 2023, with lots more exciting new features in the pipeline.

Remember too, that many of the new and improved features you see added to our software come as a direct result of feedback and suggestions from our worldwide customer base.

So if you’ve got an idea for something that could potentially make MIDAS work better for your organization, please don’t hesitate to let us know.

Finally, we’ve like to end this post by wish you a very healthy, peaceful, and prosperous New Year from all of us at MIDAS HQ.

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Many of the new and improved features we add to our software come as a direct result of customer feedback, so please read on to find out what’s new in this feature-rich update, and how you can obtain it…

Highlights of MIDAS v4.30 include:

• New: Review previously sent internal messages
• New: Option to prompt for detailed client entry when adding bookings for new clients
• New: Option to export invoices to Zoho Invoice
• New: Email compatibility mode setting for improved rendering of invoices on older email clients
• New: Option to auto-approve booking requests based upon their booking type
• New: “Unfinalize” Invoices tool
• New: Remove Obsolete Invoices tool
• New: Maximum bookings allowed per user per calendar month/year options
• New: “Default Time Interval” option of 60 minutes to only allow booking to the nearest hour
• Improved: A third field can now be set to show on taller booking blocks (when the venue height setting is at least 40 pixels)
• Improved: Expiration of tentative bookings is now recorded in the Recent Activity Log
• Improved: A date range can now be specified when exporting invoices
• Improved: Resource Popularity report can now be filtered by resource category
• Improved: Manually creating a new invoice defaults to the globally defined tax rate
• Optimization: Code optimization
• Optimization: Database query optimization
• Fixed: Cumulative roll-up of various fixes for issues discovered since v4.29

How To Get MIDAS v4.30…

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For MIDAS v4.30 we’ve improved the range of options available for the “Maximum bookings allowed” setting.

This is a per-user setting enabling administrators to restrict the number of bookings individual users can make for a given period.

This setting itself isn’t new – it was first introduced in v4.11. However, this setting initially only allowed an administrator to set a maximum number of bookings each user could add to any individual date.

For v4.15, the setting was expanded to include an alternative “Per Week” option. This allowed restrictions to be placed on the maximum number of bookings a user could add to any given week.

With MIDAS v4.30, we’ve now added a further two options to this setting – Month and Year.

These new additional options give administrators even greater control over bookings. Users can now be limited to a maximum number of bookings for any date, week, calendar month, or calendar year.

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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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By default, all booking “requests” must then be approved by a venue’s administrator (manager) before becoming a “confirmed” booking.

Back in MIDAS v4.27, we introduced an option to allow booking requests received from certain email addresses/domains to be “Auto-Approved“.

“Auto-Approved” booking requests do not require a manager’s authorization. As soon as the request is received, it’s automatically approved by MIDAS – just as if the user had made a regular “confirmed” booking.

For v4.30 we’ve extended the “Auto-Approve” options for booking requests. You can now alternatively have requests automatically approved based upon the “type” of booking request that has been made.

With this option enabled, booking requests that have had a matching booking type selected at time of requesting will be automatically approved.

All other booking requests will still require a venue manager’s approved as before.

So for example, you could configure this option so that all “internal” booking requests are automatically approved, where as all others require approval.

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In MIDAS v4.30 we’ve introduced a new “Send invoices in compatibility” setting.

In this post, we’ll look at why such an option was needed…

Now, back in MIDAS v4.26 we made some changes to improve the way that invoices were rendered.

This involved updating some of the HTML code that MIDAS uses to display invoices to user newer standards.

Prior to v4.26, invoices were laid out using HTML “tables”. Using tables allowed data to be set out in columns and rows. This allowed a dedicated “row” for each item on an invoice, and dedicated columns for its description, quantity, rate, etc.

Since v4.26, MIDAS has instead used a more modern CSS “grid” layout. This allowed invoices to better adapt to fit different screen widths.

However, whilst all the browsers we support also support CSS “grid” layouts, sadly not all email clients do!

To our surprise, some editions of Outlook and Gmail don’t support CSS grid layouts. Instead, they actually modify any emails they receive so that when they are displayed any CSS grid layout information is “stripped” from them!

There is really no logic to this, or indeed consistancy!

For instance, Gmail’s “desktop” webmail strips out CSS grid information, but their “mobile” webmail doesnt!

Another example if Outlook; if you view an email using the Windows Outlook client, the CSS grid information is removed. If you view the same email using the MacOS Outlook client, the CSS grid information is retained!

Other popular email clients, including Thunderbrid and Apple Mail support CSS grid layouts without issue.

You can find a current list of which email clients support (or otherwise) CSS grid layouts here.

The result is that if you view an emailed invoice from MIDAS, how that invoice is presented depends very much on the recipient’s email client.

To illustrate, take a look at the following invoice….

Above is the exact same invoice viewed by two different mail clients. The first (and correctly displayed) uses Thunderbird to view the invoice. The second views the same invoice via outlook.com.

As you can see, because outlook.com strips out any CSS grid information from the HTML email, the result is that the email doesn’t display as intended. Rather than Description, Quantity, Rate, Tax, and Amount all being in separate columns, Outlook’s removal of the important CSS grid information causes these items to be displayed on separate rows instead!

We are at a loss to explain why certain email clients decide to “strip” out and remove CSS grid layouts, especially when CSS Grid Layouts are an official W3C specification, and supported by all modern browsers.

However, to work around this issue, we’ve now introduced a “Send invoices in compatibility” option. You’ll find this setting via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Email → Advanced.

With this option enabled, MIDAS will revert to using HTML “tables”, rather than a CSS grid layout for invoices emailed through the system.

So if you have clients who aren’t able to view invoices you send them correctly, then enabling this setting should help.

We hope going forward that popular email clients – including Outlook and Gmail – will review their stance on not supporting modern layout standards – such as CSS grid. There’s really no reason not to support CSS grid. This is especially true for web-based email clients, where the client’s own browser support’s CSS grid, but the email client forcibly removes this information from emails.

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We already support exporting invoices to several popular invoicing platforms, including:

• QuickBooks Online
• Sage Business Cloud
• Xero
• Clear Books
• KashFlow
• QuickFile

For MIDAS v4.30, we’ve now added Zoho Invoice to this list.

Zoho Invoice is free cloud-based invoicing software that helps you craft professional invoices, send payment reminders, keep track of expenses, log your work hours, and get paid faster.

To export invoices to Zoho Invoice, users with sufficient permission can simply go to MIDAS Admin Options → Import / Export → Export → Invoices.

Select the “CSV File (Zoho Invoice)” option and click the “Export” button.

MIDAS will generate a CSV file of your invoices that you can download and then import directly into Zoho Invoice.

For more information, please see our KB article: How to exporting invoices to Zoho Invoice.

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First, a little background to the issue…

The “Client / Organization” Field

On the standard “Add Booking” screen in MIDAS, a “Client / Organization” field is shown, allowing you to specify the client who you’re adding a booking for.

By typing into this field, a list of matching existing clients are shown which can be selected accordingly.

If no match is found with an existing client, then depending upon the permissions assigned to the account from which the booking is being added, the user will be able to manually type in the name of a new client/organization directly into the “Client / Organization” field.

When the booking is added, for quickness MIDAS will then automatically create a client record in the database for the newly entered client.

Of course, if the user wishes to create a new client record and provide more details other than just the client’s name and their organization, they can click the “+” button to the right of the “Client / Organization” field. They will then be able to enter extended information about the new client.

Making Client Fields “Required”

MIDAS also allows you to not only create and add additional custom client fields to the database, but you can also flag client fields as “Required”.

A “Required” field must have a valid entry (i.e. it can’t be left blank) in order to add/modify a client.

Now, because MIDAS allows a user to quickly create a new client directly from the “Client / Organization” field on the “Add Booking” screen, an extended client record entry dialog isn’t shown (unless the user specifically clicks the adjacent “+” icon).

This allowed clients to be added to the system with any client fields marked as “Required” to be blank.

We’ve addressed this for v4.30 with the addition of a new optional setting.

On the Manage MIDAS → Bookings screen, administrators can enable a new “Prompt for detailed client information when adding bookings for new clients” option.

Once enabled, whenever a user clicks the “Check Availability & Book” button on the Add Bookings screen, if the booking is for a brand new client, MIDAS will open the extended client details dialog. The user must complete the client record (including any required fields) before they’ll be able to add the booking(s) to the system.

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A user’s internal messages are shown to them when they next login. They may also optionally choose to have them sent as an email as well. This allows users to receive messages from other users even when they’re not logged into their booking system.

For MIDAS v4.30, we’re providing a way for you to see, review, and delete (“expire”) messages you’ve recently sent to other users in your booking system.

The new “Active Sent Items” panel shows all internal messages you’ve recently sent to other users that have yet to expire. You can view each message, or immediately expire (remove) it.

There’ll also be an indication of each message’s “Status”, to help you identify whether the recipient has received/viewed your message.

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