Book-It 4.0 membership and event booking software was released in March 2006 after several months of testing by long standing beta team customers. The new release was a major upgrade to the previous Book-It 3.0 software bringing with it the following features which are described in more detail below

Major Enhancements

Windows Vista and Office 2007 Compatibility

Book-It has now been enhanced to support the latest Microsoft operating system and office system i.e. Windows Vista and Office 2007. The software, its installation systems and help and support systems have all been enhanced to work in these new environments.

Facility and Resource Booking

The new facility and resource booking features have been widely requested by both existing and new customers. They extend Book-It's booking capabilities beyond events so that members and contacts can now book a variety of other items as well. This development has been designed in a generic fashion so that rather than have us tell you what you can book, we let you choose what items are bookable. You might, for example, book rooms or halls, courts, pitches, holiday chalets, equipment, staff and so on. We allow you to choose what your resources are, whether they are bookable by the hour, day or even week. The new resource availability screen lets you see at a glance which resources are available or not on a particular day, month or even year and booking and payment collection is just as easy as it is with Book-It event booking and booking and payment history is stored in a very similar fashion.

HTML Emailing

What emails have the most impact on you these days - ones that come with paragraph after paragraph of plain text or ones that carry colour, different font sizes and styles, tables, graphics and so on? HTML email has been around to provide these features for quite some time, however, many user's email systems in the past have been unable to read these emails properly. With the release of Book-It 4.0, however, the majority of your email recipient's email systems should now be able to read HTML email and therefore we have extended our email facilities so that any of your emails from Book-It can be sent in HTML format therefore having a much stronger impact on your members, contacts, enquirers and suppliers. HTML emails not only look good and create a much more professional image but they also get your message across much clearer through the use of colour, graphics, tables and other tools you are all too familiar with already if you are using Word, for example, as your default Word Processor. You can even use Word to create your HTML emails using a tool you are already familiar with or you can choose to run any popular HTML editor such as Microsoft Frontpage, Dreamweaver and so on. What's more, if any of your contacts still cannot read HTML format emails, you can create a plain text version of every HTML email and mark the contacts record to indicate that they should receive the plain text rather than HTML version of emails sent out.

Email Attachments

Have you even wanted to send an email attachment to your email recipients? Perhaps an event brochure in Word or PDF format for example? Well now you can do this straight from Book-It. You can now attach an unlimited number of file attachments to any email you set up in the system.

SMS Text Messaging

Communicating rapidly with contacts can have many advantages. For example, imagine that you have 50 people booked on an event and something goes wrong the day before the event and you have to cancel it at the last minute. You could write to everybody booked but you cannot guarantee that they will receive your letter on time. You could email everyone that has an email address - this helps a lot but people still might not check their email so you might end up telephoning everyone instead. That will be particularly time consuming and you may not even reach everyone. With Book-It 4.0 you can now also SMS people in a very similar way to the way that you could previously email them. With most people possessing mobile phones these days SMS can provide almost instant contact with people, wherever they are and whatever they are doing in order to get across urgent messages. It also takes a large administration burden off you so that you only have to ring people who have not responded to your SMS. SMS messages can be sent to individuals or they can be sent to target recipients in exactly the same way as letters and emails making it possible, for example, to SMS everyone on a 'reserve list' if an event place becomes free, to SMS everyone who has expressed an interest in a particular type of activity if you are struggling to fill event places at the last minute and so on.

Merchandising

Many organisations have requirements to manage the sale of merchandise items to their members and contacts. Book-It's new merchandising features can help with the recording of purchase requests for promotional materials such as mugs, T-Shirts etc as well as for printed materials such as information sheets, brochures and so on. You can setup an unlimited number of merchandise items and discontinue items once they are no longer available. You can record payment details on all purchases where applicable, put orders on hold where they are out of stock and quickly produce despatch lists and print labels.

Major Filtering System Enhancements

The Book-It filter system has changed very little since Book-It 1.0. In Book-It 4.0, however, it has been given a major overhaul as follows

Increased Filter Size

Filters can now be set up that are up to 50 lines in size or a maximum of 1500 characters (from our previous limit of 12-15 lines and 210 characters).

Filters No Longer Reset Automatically

In previous versions of Book-It, if you left a screen that had a filter set to visit another screen and then came back again, the filter would be reset to its default setting automatically. Now the filter that you last used on the screen you are visiting will automatically be restored for you.

Brackets In Filters

You can now use brackets in filters so that instead of entering a filter such as

Status = “Paid Up” and
Member Type = “ABC”
Or
Status = “Paid Up” and
Member Type = “DEF”

You can simply enter the following

Status = “Paid Up” and
(
Member Type = “ABC”
Or
Status = “Paid Up”
)

This should considerably simplify complex filter entry.

Permanent Filter Saving

Complex filters can now be saved on the network and then restored by a user at a future date rather than having to be remembered and rekeyed. This will considerably reduce admin for frequent mailings for example where a complex filter has to be entered before each mailing. Saved filters can also be shared between network users.

Record Tagging

A number of customers are very excited about our new tagging system. The tagging system has been introduced to complement our filter system. It is now possible not only to tag individual records in a database but also to tag all of those that meet a specific filter. Once you have built up a list of tagged records you can untag a selection that match a new filter condition. You can also tag all members / contacts that attended a specific event. You can then mail, email, SMS, report etc all tagged records in the same way you can with filter selections currently. Using this new technology you could therefore

- select all contacts that attended a specific type of event in the last 2 years
- add to this list anyway that has a particular word in their job title or company name
- add to this list anyone who has identified interest in several of your specific product categories
- and finally remove from the list anyone whose contact preferences prohibit contact of this nature
- having now tagged the above simply email or mail the contacts as usual

Expansion Of User Defined Fields Area

The user defined fields area has been dramatically expanded. 11 tick boxes, 3 date fields, 3 numeric fields, 3 notes fields and 9 drop down user programmable fields (a powerful aid to data validation!) have been added at the member or contact level. In addition, a further 20 tick boxes, 3 date fields, 3 numeric fields, 3 notes fields and 9 drop down user programmable fields have been added at the membership or company level making a total of 88 user defined fields on the member / contact screen alone. As with all user defined fields these fields can all be given a name of your choosing, will appear as input fields once named and can be used throughout for filtering purposes.

New Reports

Several new reports have been added to the system these include

Supplier Insurance Cover

It is now possible to record the date that an event supplier's insurance cover expires in the supplier screen. Once entered you can then run the Supplier Insurance Cover report to quickly identify which suppliers are involved in events that take place after their insurance cover expires so that you can contact the supplier to obtain a copy of a new insurance certificate that covers the future events that they are involved in thereby ensuring that your members and contacts are fully covered.

Member Payment Summary

The member payment summary report totals the number of payments received for each of your members or contacts. The report is available in three formats, one which list total payments (or spend) by member name, one that list by company name and then a third which list in order of total spend (which is very useful for quickly identifying your highest spenders).

Member Address List By Company

This new report lists companies followed by their addresses. Unlike the member contact list reports it does not also list the contact names or other contact details such as telephone numbers, email addresses etc.

Payment Summary By Source Of Contact

This new report calculates member / contact payment totals by source of contact. For each source of contact a single figure is displayed which details the total amounts of payments received from members / contacts who came from that source followed by a percentage to indicate the percentage that this is of total payments received. This report should help to isolate what sources your greatest revenues are coming from and therefore help you to identify how much to spend on advertising in specific each area.

Member Event Booking Payment Detail

The new member event booking payment detail is a very useful report to produce a full history of all a specific member or contact's bookings along with detailed records of all payments made against each booking.

Member Event Booking Payment Summary

The new member event booking payment summary is a useful report to display a list of members in alphabetical surname order followed by a single figure representing their total spend on event bookings for the selected period.

Event Bookings Payment Summary

The new event bookings payment summary report takes a very similar format to the existing event bookings by slot type report as it lists bookings for a particular event but placing more emphasis on company name and user defined field values and less on slot type.

Upgraded Development Tools

Book-It 3.0 was previously written in Microsoft Visual FoxPro 6.0. All Instinctive Systems software is written using Microsoft tools as we believe that most of our customers wish to run standard Microsoft Windows operating systems with software such as Microsoft Office and it makes sense for our software to be as compatible with their software as possible. We chose to write the Book-It Office System in Microsoft Visual FoxPro because we believe it is the fastest database system available (far quicker than Access and other Microsoft offerings) and it provides extremely powerful professional development tools to help us to be as creative as possible with our own software whilst operating in an extremely stable environment. The latest release of Microsoft Visual FoxPro is version 9.0 and it made sense to upgrade to these new tools which will be aware of all the latest operating systems and new technology for the release of Book-It 4.0.

New Book-It Tour / Tutorial Software

Here at Instinctive Systems we have spent several months developing new software that will quickly help you to familiarise yourself with your Book-It software. Initially designed as a sales tool, our tour software has evolved into an extremely useful tutorial which takes you through all the major areas of the Book-It software in the space of approximately one and a half hours. The tutorial is an ideal place to start if you are new to Book-It, or if you already use Book-It but find that you are only using a small number of features and you want to find out what all the other features do. The tour / tutorial can be run directly from our homepage and can also be accessed from the help menu within the Book-It software.

Additional Enhancements

Miscellaneous Screens

Sort and Find Order No Longer Reset Automatically

In previous versions of Book-It, if you left a screen that had a specific sort order set to visit another screen and then came back again, the sort order would be reset to its default setting automatically. Now the sort order that you last used on the screen you are visiting will automatically be restored for you. This change should really benefit customers who are predominantly dealing with company names rather than individual names.

New Date Calendar Picker Tool

All date fields in all screens in Book-It now have a calendar picker tool beside them that will allow faster date selection using a small popup calendar.

New Postcode Map Button

A new map button is now displayed beside all fields containing a postcode (except during editing). If the button is pressed it will launch your internet browser and contact an internet based mapping site which will then display a map of the selected postcode area.

New Mailmerge Fields

Several new mailmerge fields are now available including membership type, card expiry date (can be different to renewal date!), company name, job title, event time, event from time, event to time, event from date, event to date, event category and event reference number.

New 'Correspondence' Highlight

A new highlight labelled 'correspondence', similar to the 'notes' highlight is now present on member / contact and enquiry screens that have any correspondence information registered against them in their correspondence pages.

Correspondence Notes Added to Enquiry and Member / Contact Detail Reports

Full correspondence notes have been added to the enquiry and member / contact detail reports below the existing general notes entry permitting reporting of up to 64,000 characters of correspondence history.

New 'To Do' Filter Button

A new button labelled 'To Do' is now available on the filter screen in the enquiries and member / contact areas. This button will replace the active filter with another filter which will filter out all records where correspondence information has been set up to request that the currently logged in user contact people either today or a date in the past i.e. to pull up a list of records in the active database that require some action by the Book-It user. The filter can then be easily manually amended to look at other dates in the future for example.

Reference Information In Ad-Hoc Email Subject Line

Any time that an ad-hoc email is generated in your default mail client by pressing the '@' button beside the email address on a member / contact, enquiry or supplier screen the subject line of the email will now be automatically prepopulated with the words 'Your Ref' followed by the reference number of the selected record.

Company Name and Job Title Field Widths Increased

Company name and job title field widths have now been increased to 50 characters each throughout Book-It.

Right-Click Notes Field Full Screen Edit and Copy and Paste Feature

A new right-click feature has been added to all notes fields throughout the system. Using the feature it is now possible to both view and edit notes field information in full screen format rather than in the 3 or 4 line height area that the notes field normally occupies. Other new features include the ability to copy and paste between the notes field and other applications. Copying can also now be done without having to be in edit mode.

Double-Click 'List Records' Record Selection

It is now possible to double-click a record in the 'list records' area of the toolbar on all screens in order to quickly selected records.

Remember Grid Layouts

When users resize columns and move columns in grid objects such as member lists, bookings lists, payments lists etc, the new layout will now be remembered in that specific screen for the currently logged on users allowing different users to each retain their own preferred layouts. A right-click feature is also now available to reset layouts back to their defaults if required.

Highlight Selected Record In Grids

The selected record in all grid / list objects is now always clearly indicated in bold type to avoid confusion.

New Jump Buttons

New blue jump buttons have been added to several areas of Book-It such as member card production, email production, letter production, report production in the main toolbar to gain quick access to the setup screen areas related to the selected options

Enquiry Screen

New 'Email Fail' Button

A button labelled 'Reject' is now available on the enquiry screen. This button has the same effect as clicking to edit the enquiry record, changing the status to 'rejected' and then pressing the save button, however, everything can now be done with a single button press.

New 'Reset' Button

A button labelled 'Reset' is now available on the enquiry screen. This button should be used if you have a new enquiry from a person that previously enquired about your organisation a long time ago. The button has the effect of resetting the 'first contact' date for the selected record to today's date overwriting the original date, however, a copy of the original enquiry date will be retained in the correspondence notes area.

Member Screen

New Subs 'Update' Button

A button labelled 'Update' is now available beside the fixed subs field on the member screen. The new button can be used to perform bulk updates of multiple members fixed subs amounts rather than having to update each members fixed subs value individually should you decide to change subscription prices.

New 'Merge' Button

Occasionally members will lapse their membership and then rejoin the organisation several months if not years later. When this happens it is not uncommon for a new membership record to be created. Once a considerable history has been built up on the new membership record the old membership record with its own history may be discovered and you may wish to combine the two histories together onto a single membership record. The 'merge' button can be used to do this by transferring all booking history, payment history, credit note history etc from one member record to another in one action.

New Defaults For Type, Renewal Frequency and Method

It is now possible to configure the setup, system details screen so that when inserting new member records they automatically default to the most commonly used values for membership type, renewal frequency and renewal method (for example 'Standard Member', 'Monthly' and 'Direct Debit').

Events Screen

New Bookings Transfer Button

A new button labelled 'transfer' has been added to the bookings tab of the events screen. This button will prove very useful if, for example, you have to cancel one event and transfer everybody booked to a similar event. Rather than having to edit each button individually you can simply press the one button to transfer everybody on that screen at once.

New Default Deposit Due and Balance Due Dates

It is now possible to specify in the setup, system details screen how many days before an event start date that the deposit due and balance due dates should default to when setting up new events in the system.

New 'Sync Prices' Button

A new button labelled 'Sync Prices' has been added to the bookings tab of the events screen. Often it is necessary to change the cost to book an event weeks if not months after the event. This is a regular requirement, for example, where organisations use Book-It book trips abroad where the cost of the trip can fluctuate depending on external factors such as currency rates, oil prices etc. If bookings have already been taken for the event before the price is changed then when the price is changed on the event record, the price on the booking record will not normally change to reflect this (this is because booking records only default to the initial event price but then can each have their own individual prices independent of the event record price). The 'Sync Prices' button has been introduced as a fast means of quickly synchronising prices on bookings already taken with the new event record price.

New Event Badge Button

It is now possible to produce name badges to be worn by people attending an event in the event screen. Badges can be produced for all live bookings as well as for individual bookings.

Suppliers Screen

New 'Merge' Button

Occasionally one of your suppliers may take over another of your suppliers or supplier divisions might combine for example. Each of your supplier records will obviously have lots of history associated with them in terms of event costs and payments made and you will not want to lose that information. The 'merge' button on the supplier screen will allow you to transfer all the history from one supplier to another supplier rather than having to transfer each event cost and payment record individually.

New Public Liability Insurance Cover Monitoring

A new field has been added to the supplier screen to record the date that the suppliers insurance cover expires. This can be used in association with the Supplier Insurance Cover report to analyse which suppliers insurance is about to expire and which events booked with that supplier could potentially be affected by that. If used in good time the report will ensure that you have sufficient proof of insurance from suppliers well in advance of events taking place.

Payments Screen

New 'Reverse' Button

A new button labelled 'Reverse' is now available on the payment screen. The button can be used to create a reserve payment which will in effect cancel out the selected payment without actually deleting that payment record. Many accountants prefer to see reverse payments to cancel out administration errors, for example, because they provide a lot more traceability as well as an opportunity to record notes information about what actually happened.

New 'Credit Card Fee' Recording

A new payment type of 'Member - Credit Card Fee' has been introduced. This is to enable organisations that make an additional surcharge to event booking fees for the use of a credit card to pay for the booking to record that part of the payment separately from the main payment. This has two advantages, the first is that event profitability figures are not artificially inflated because you take more money against the event than you expect to and secondly because the payments can then be reported separately it is easy to calculate how much you took to cover the cost of credit card handling and whether the charges from your credit card company are dramatically over or below this figure. If the fee is a simply flat fee (such as £1 per booking for example) this default fee can be set up once and then easily registered against each members booking with a single button click using the new 'Fee' button on the member / contact screen booking page.

New 'Donation' Payment Type

A new payment type of 'Member - Donation' has been introduced. This payment type will allow easy separate of donation payments from other payments such as subscriptions and event booking payments and should have particular appeal to charity organisations. A 'donation' button has also been added to the payments page of the member screen for easy recording of member donations.

Bookings Screen

Ability To Amend Booked Date

It is now possible to amend the 'booked date' field on the bookings screen to backdate bookings.

Batch Screens

Membership Renewal - New Date Filtering Feature

Previously batch membership renewal screens used to us default dates to list the records that would appear in those screens. The standard renewal screen, for example, just listed records whose renewal date was today or a date that has now past, the direct debit screen would list records whose renewal date occurs before the end of this month or has now passed (or perhaps next month depending on whether you collect direct debits a month in advance or not). This worked fine in many instances, however, if you were late processing last months direct debits for example, you may find that the following months have now also been added to the list and it is very difficult to separate the two without processing each record individually. Now, however, you can change the default date filter on these renewal screens so that if you want to prevent next months coming into the list, for example, you simply change the end filter date to the last day of this month.

Direct Debit Reference - New Prefix and Suffix Values

Book-It usually generates a direct debit reference number that is the same as the Book-It member reference number if you leave this field blank. The reference number is then displayed on the member's bank statement. It is now possible to add a prefix and a suffix value to every direct debit reference by entering these values once in the setup, system details screen.

Direct Debit - Select Default Export Directory

It is now possible in the setup, system details screen to change the default directory to which direct debit export files are sent in order to make it easier to find the files for your direct debit software.