Posts Tagged: v4.30

Review of the year: 2022

As we wave goodbye to 2022, we thought we’d take a few moments out to reflect on our year here at MIDAS HQ.

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.

Send PDF versions of invoices as email attachments
Send PDF versions of invoices as email attachments

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.

NEW: Set Rates based upon the time of day a booking starts
NEW: Set Rates based upon the time of day a booking starts

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.

The Floorplan / Map Editor in MIDAS
The Floorplan / Map Editor in MIDAS

Read more in this blog post.

Other new features in MIDAS during 2022

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.


MIDAS v4.30 Out Now!

We’re excited to announce that the latest update to our MIDAS room booking and resource scheduling software is now available.

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:

How To Get MIDAS v4.30…

New Customers:

You can try MIDAS v4.30 for yourself with no obligation to purchase!

We offer both a functional online public demo, as well as the opportunity for you to try MIDAS free for 30 days.

If you’ve decided that MIDAS is the right solution for your scheduling needs, then you can securely purchase online here.

“Self Hosted” Customers:

Self-Hosted customers with active Support Subscriptions will shortly be able to update to v4.30. It only takes a couple of clicks – simply log in to your MIDAS system and go to MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Update.

If no update is available, please check back again in a few days time, as we are staggering updates for self-hosted customers over the next few weeks.

“Cloud Hosted” Customers:

Cloud-Hosted customers don’t need to do anything! – All our active Cloud-Hosted MIDAS customers have already been automatically updated to this latest version of MIDAS.


Limit the number of bookings a user can make for any given period
Limit the number of bookings a user can make for any given period

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.


Two New Invoice Tools

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.