2015 Q2
The following is a list of changes associated with the 2015 Q2 release of PatronBase.
New Tools
QuickPOS
QuickPOS uses a touch-screen and scanner to make product selection easy. Patrons can quickly be associated with a sale by scanning a membership card or searching using name, phone number, or email address. Returns can also be processed.
Products are represented by large, easy-to-tap tiles. Products can be organised into logical product categories. Product variations can be multi-layered, for example presenting both size and colour options. Tickets can also be sold (GA only at this time).
A cart lists items scanned or selected. Quantities can be increased or decreased with a tap.
QuickPOS integrates with the new Inventory feature in Administration and all sales can also be seen in Box Office.
WebHub
Touchscreen point-of-sale terminals benefit from having a simple home screen that puts all needed tools a finger-touch away. WebHub combines the key PatronBase tools needed in the box office, and packages them with useful team collaboration tools. Making this tool available in your browser means you can use any computer, including Macs, and tablets, including iPad and Android devices. Casual access means tasks can be assigned to additional staff, such as helping with a rush of walk-up ticket sales before the start of a performance. Patron information can be updated even when you are out and about, maybe while you have a meeting with a sponsor.
Headline Features
Patron Attributes & Culture Segment Support
Patron Attributes provides support for Culture Segments, the new international standard for patron segmentation in the arts and culture marketspace, defined by Morris Hargreaves McIntyre. By classifying your patrons using the Golden Questions survey from MHM, you can engage with your patrons more personally and build better relationships with them. The MHM survey tool interfaces with PatronBase, and the outcome of the survey is entered automatically into the patron’s record.
For even more versatility, Patron Attributes supports customisation, allowing you to create any number of other patron attributes you would like to collect. Select options from lists, tick checkboxes, enter dates or numbers, or enter free-form text.
Patron Attributes can then be accessed in Marketing. Filter using these new patron attributes to select specific segments of your patron community and provide them with customised communications that personalise your connection with them.
Inventory
Manage stock levels with Inventory. Additionally, with improved Inventory capabilities, patrons can be associated with sales, so you can collect better information about your patrons’ purchases.
Detail product variations. Specify stock point locations. Identify suppliers, with multiple potential suppliers for any product. Record the receipt of goods. Manage returns. Transfer products between storage facilities and retail shops. Simplify stock management by specifying reorder points, safety stock, and typical order lead times. Inventory even deals with stocking and selling products in different units, such as wine stocked by the bottle and sold by the glass. It supports price differences at different sales locations. Inventory maintains a current stock valuation using a weighted average, catering to cost price fluctuations.
Managing Multiple Membership Groups
Multiple member groups can now be managed by one operator. Previously an operator may have needed several logins as each was specific to a membership group. Logging out and back in again with a different identity was awkward when managing a group for Friends of the Theatre, another for Comedy Club, another for Philharmonia Supporters, and more besides. Now an operator can manage all these groups and more, and each operator requires only a single login identity.
Group Memberships
Membership classes can include Group Memberships. Family memberships may have been offered earlier, but now these can be specifically identified as multiple-patron membership groups, and each patron can be associated with the membership subscription.
Flexible and Specific Membership Periods
Membership periods are flexible and specific. Select a period of any number of days, weeks, months, or years. Choose to have memberships share the same due date, or the membership period can start from the date of purchase. Life memberships are also catered for.
Member Groups Setup in Administration
Setting up memberships has been streamlined. In Administration > Setup you will find a Members menu item, and here you can set up groups, categories, and volunteer roles, without switching between application modules. Plus, you now associate a membership with a product when you set it up, so the operator no longer needs to select the correct fee when selling memberships in Box Office.
New Marketing Filters
Refine your queries with new filters added to Marketing. The Patron Gender filter not only allows selection of either male or female patrons, but also can distinguish between people and companies. For people, it further allows selection by date of birth range or year of birth. To search for patrons using MHM Culture Segments, use the new Patron Attributes filter. You can also use this to find patrons using any other custom attribute you have added to the system. The Production filter has been enhanced to support Production Attributes. You can pull out information by specifying attributes such as Department, Project, Account code, Playwright, and even Tags.
Adding Multiple Venues to a Single Booking
A single booking in Venue Manager can now reserve more than one room. This simplifies managing bookings for customers hiring multiple rooms for the same event.
Venue Manager Resource Booking and Tagging
Resources can be allocated to a booking, and charges for these resources will be added when billing. Resources allocated to one booking cannot also be reserved for another booking if the booking times overlap. Never again accidentally double-book the AV system!
Attach tags to bookings and see the tag codes in the calendar view.
Quick Sales
Quick Sales are as quick as two clicks. Sell tickets to a pre-defined cash or card payment type, print the tickets with minimal operator effort. This is ideal for cinemas, or when there is a huge queue for the box office just before a performance. If there is time, using Quick Sales doesn’t preclude the option of adding patron details to the sale.
Box Office Performance Graphic Seating Plan Scaling
Earlier versions of Box Office automatically scaled the display so the seating area filled the available screen space. You can now customise the size of the seating area by adjusting the scaling control in the top right corner of the Performance Graphic screen. You can make the change a temporary adjustment, or you can save the setting.
Automatic/Manual Patron Search Settings
Some PatronBase systems have such a large number of patrons in the database that the automatic search for patrons as you type in their details can be too slow. The new PatronLookupAuto system property can leave this on or turn it off, providing a manual search button instead.
PatronLookupTextThreshold is a new system property that gives you control over the number of characters required to trigger the automatic search. The default value is three. If you type the surname of Dennis Xi into the Bus/Last Name field in the Find window with the default value set, nothing happens because the name is too short to trigger the search. Use PatronLookupTextThreshold to adjust this behaviour.
Postcode Filtering Threshold
The new system property PatronLookupPostcodeThreshold lets you set the number of characters required in the Post Code field before the automatic search is triggered. By default the number of characters required is one, but when you have a lot of post codes that start with the same number or letter, this results in almost the entire record set being returned when you type that one character. In that situation the search will be slow, and will not return a useful list, as there won’t be enough to differentiate between patrons in the database. Increasing the number of characters required before the automatic search is triggered will make the search more responsive and provide more useful search results.
Gift Aid (UK)
Another system property can turn GiftAid features on and off. When activated, it prompts the operator to ask for a gift aid declaration, which is recorded against their patron record when they make donations through the box office. Additionally, the GiftAidConfirmationMonths system property controls the reminder period for when Gift Aid declarations need to be renewed or checked.
Scanner Configuration
Box Office features a new way to detect scanners that have been attached to the sales terminal, making it easier to use scanners in Box Office.
Remote Support Assistance
To provide you with improved support assistance, a new feature sets up a remote screen-sharing connection with PatronBase support. In the PatronBase menu on all desktop modules is a new Host Support Session menu item. This will start a TeamViewer session. Tell your PatronBase support agent Your ID and the one-time session Password and not only will you be able to demonstrate a problem, but the support agent will be able to take over and control your computer, just as if you had them sitting next to you. This won’t give the agent permanent access to your computer. It will only work for that one assistance session; a new session password will be generated and required for future support calls.
Further Common Changes
Issue Fix: Changing PhoneType Term
If the PhoneType term in Properties was changed eg CellPhoneType was changed from Cell to Mobile, when the patron added their details online the PhoneTypeID is converted to the first 4 chars of the changed term eg Mobi, and this caused downstream errors.
Issue Fix: Focussed Textbox Changes Not Saved
When editing a WPF form and the form was saved, the changes made in the last control edited were lost, if the focus was left in that field.
Patron Form Changes
Show multiple memberships for a patron. Additions: Job Title information and Partner Gender.
Issue Fix: Voucher Sales Only Generating 3 Characters for Operator
When a voucher sale was generated in Box Office, all entries in the DB were only populating the first 3 characters of the Operator identity. This meant that operators might not show up on allocation reports.
Further Administration Changes
Further Box Office Changes
Selected/In Web Basket Seats Not Available
Available statistic includes seats that are selected by another operator or are in a Web basket being bought online, so aren't technically available for selection by another operator. A bracketed number of selected seats (incl ones selected by you) has been added to the Available count on the legend.
PrintSpool Deadlock Halting Ticket Batch Print
Some clients reported that batch printing large numbers of tickets resulted in ticket printing stopping part-way through the print jobs. A resource contention deadlock has been resolved with a new version of PrintSpool (v3.2.5155.19384 or later).
Refunding Credit
Scenario: Customer cannot attend show and is offered credit on their account. Ticket is refunded to credit. Customer then wants a refund, and venue refunds with cash. Prior to this change, the tickets could be released, but the sale could not be balanced. Now, on the Credit tab there is a Refund Remainder button and on the voucher tab there is a new Refund button.
Tracked Patrons To Appear on House Report
Tracked Patrons now listed on the House Report along with disabled guests etc, they are under the heading "Noted Patrons"
Issue Fix: Public Notes Cropping Title and Details
The formatting of Public Notes was cropping the title and details of the production. The edging overlapped and was missing the bottom of the box outline and cropped off production details.
Issue Fix: EasyVTerminal Errors
1) Processing Failed: Transaction service has not responded - processing failed.
2) Unknown Error: An unexpected error occurred: The value for column 'Text' in table 'ip_cc_getTransactionStatus' is DBNull.
Issue Fix: Credit Causing Imbalances
Scenario:
1) seats were added
2) a credit redemption was used as payment
3) the seats were deleted
4) a new credit was added for the deleted seats
At step 4, the new credit should get the allocation the deleted seats don’t need any more - this is what happens when they're paid for by a normal payment, but this was not happening if they were paid for by a credit.
Issue Fix: Find Sale Window Title Typo
Title read 'File Sale' rather than 'Find Sale'.
Issue Fix: SeatRange not displaying in Export Templates
Box Office > Open Sale (with seats) > Export. SeatRange was not being picked up on export templates. AU 2221 fixed.
Email Field Added to Patron List Report
Email is probably more relevant today than the postal address.
Print Ordering
The previous sort order for tickets was grouping items together that caused confusion for some box office operators and patrons. The sort order has been changed according to the recommendations that came out of discussions with affected customers.
Issue Fix: Apostrophe in Venue Name Caused Error on Wait List Report
A venue such as the Queen’s Theatre resulted in an error when printing the Wait List for the venue.
Specify a time for BookType timing
Some customers wanted to be able to amend the time that a Book Type becomes available - instead of midnight on the specified day. This has been implemented by the book type override being specified in hours and minutes. A future modification may change this to a date/time control.
Seating Summary Report - Export to CSV
The Seating Summary Report in Box Office has been simplified.
Issue Fix: Removing Hold Codes from GA Sections
Scenario:
1) Production is set to 'Reserved' Seating.
2) Within the seating plan of the event have two sections. One has GA set to 'Yes', the other GA = 'No'.
3) In Box Office, within the unreserved section hold one seat using the Hold button.
4) Then try to release this held seat.
For an unreserved production the button to the right of the Hold button would display as Release however in this case it displayed Unselect meaning it was impossible to release that held seat without switching the section to GA 'No' within Administration.
Free Product Issue Report
A new report similar to the Product Sale Report but listing only products included in sales where the line value is $0.00.
Further Marketing Changes
Issue Fix: New Patron - Productions With Duplicate Names
When there are two productions with the same name, it was only possible to select the first production to query it for New Patrons that attended the production.
Filter by Person vs Company and Male vs Female
The new Patron Gender filter allows filtering using Person and Company attributes, and Male and Female attributes.
Advance Booking Period
This answers the question: How much in advance did patrons buy their tickets?
Expired Wait List Patron Extraction
Extract patrons on an expired wait list so they can be included in alerts to similar or repeated events.
Reduce the List of Productions/Performances When Applying a Date
When completing a marketing extraction for productions and ticking the box for a date range, reduce the production list to those that are within the date range. If the Performance Date radio button is selected then the Productions list is constrained to those productions with a performance in the date range specified. If the Sale Date radio button is chosen, the list is constrained to only those productions that had a sale within those dates.
Change Relationship Button
Alongside the Add Relationship and Delete Relationship buttons is now a Change Relationship button. This saves you from having to delete a relationship and then add a new one.
Fix Issue: Membership Fee Date Filters Pulling 00:00:00 Instead of 23:59:59
Scenario:
You wish to report on all renewals for membership for a month period using Marketing module (for this example Sept 2014) .
1) Marketing > Reporting, then drag over required membership group
2) Filter Join Date - 01/01/2000 - 30/09/2013 (early year to encompass everyone)
3) Filter Due Date - 01/09/2014 - 30/09/2014
4) Preview results
However this only displayed those customers who renewed between 01/09/2014 - 29/09/2014
Pull Productions By All Production Attributes
When using the Production and Performance internal groups for a Marketing report, you now have the ability to select/filter productions by available production attributes (Department, Project, Account Code, Playwright) and tags.
Issue Fix: Problem Using Performance Dates in Production Extraction
Start and end dates used include time in the query, and the end date was using 0:00:00 instead of 23:59:59, leaving out performances that were on the second date.
Further Members Changes
Life Member Option
Memberships that do not expire and need no renewal, for patrons given life memberships.
Issue Fix: Category Dropdown Not Showing Complete Description
When adding a member in the members module, the category selection only showed the first 20 characters.
Further Reporting Changes
Issue Fix: Error on Referral Report
The report needed to be updated to cater for longer 30 character telephone numbers.
Issue Fix: Run Summary Error
When executing the Run Summary report while there are no held seats: when you navigated to the Hold Code filter you received the message “NoOptions: There are no options to select”.
Issue Fix: Unpaid Comps Show When They Shouldn't
Reporting > Date > Run summary > Period Sales. At the last prompt when selecting NOT to include unpaid tickets, the report still included comps that had not been marked as paid.
Summary on Return of Investment Report
A summary at the end of the Return on Investment report for when multiples are selected, to show an overview.
Issue Fix: Vouchers Duplicated in Products Report
On a given day, 3 vouchers were sold. The Product Sale report duplicated these sales (qty 2 for each item) whereas the Voucher Sales report did not (qty 1 for each item).
Print@Home Attendance Reporting
New P@H Customers Attended - By Performance and - By Date reports.
Issue Fix: Payments By Operator - Missing Payment Type Summary
Date > Payments by Operator > By Production used to include a Payment Summary with payment types, but this went missing.
Issue Fix: Product Sales - Total Values, Not Prices
In the Product Sales report, removed total on the Price column (kept the total on the Value column).
Inventory Stock Status Report
Replicates the functionality of the Stock Status tab of the Products form in a report.
Displays stock, reserved and back ordered quantities for each variation permutation, grouped by Product.
Options to filter by:
- Product
- Location
- Supplier
- Option to show / hide zero quantities (lines where stock == 0 && reserved == 0 && backOrdered == 0)
Add Note to Run Summary Report
A definable text field has been added to System Properties that includes a note to the Run Summary (if the text field is set). If the field is empty, it is excluded. Customers can add their own text - for instance one customer require a note that read: "The published ticket prices include a <value> per ticket <name> fee which is deducted from the Box Office before any royalties are deducted and/or the Net is calculated for any split."
Issue Fix: Products Report Ordering on Memberships
Product Sales report by Payment Due selecting as products Family Membership, Membership, and Membership Concession resulted in a report without any order to the list. This only occurred on Membership products.
Issue Fix: Run Summary Report Use of p.m.
Both pm and p.m. were used - change made to be consistent to use pm.
Add Filters to Exclude Inside Charges
New filters added into all existing reports which include Inside Charge as a breakdown. The inside charge totals will be deducted from the ticket price displayed on the reports and the inside charge is not displayed. For example using £10 ticket with £1 inside charge the report will only display £9 for the ticket total on the report and exclude the inside charge completely. In Post Production Analysis where there is a filter to include inside charges, clicking no to this simply hides the column from appearing but does not change the report totals - ensure that wording on the filter is clear so the customer knows the outcome.
Reports include:
- Post Production Analysis
- Post Performance Analysis
- Sales Summary Reconciliation (Payment, Allocation, Sale)
- APRA
Stock Reorder Report
A report listing stock on hand and stock to reorder.
Sales Report
Report on sales (over a selected period of time).
SSR - Add Date to Title
Added the day of the week into the title of the SSR.
Issue Fix: SSR Speed/Performance
A customer reported unusual slowness on running SSR after a bid sale day. A query revision to suit this customer can be enabled via system configuration settings. A universal change has not been made as the changes may not suit all venues.
Date > All Advanced - Add Performances Count
Added a column with performances count to the Date > All Advanced report.
Issue Fix: Date > Project - Bug in Overview
Project report crashed on load, because of a mismatch between the dataset and the db field size on the project title.
Issue Fix: Stock Sales / Stock Reorder - Error
Fixed null reference exception when running stock reports.
Top Sales Report
Summary report of the top selling inventory items, top at the top and least at the bottom, one line per item with quantity sold, and a date range filter on it.
Issue Fix: PPA - Perf Filter Not in Date Order
Performances filter for PPA was not in date order.
Issue Fix: Stock Status Report - Filter Not Populated
Stock Status filter was not populated.
Further Venue Manager Changes
Save Viewing Preferences in Day View Mode
Save viewing preferences in Day View mode - order seems to switch around each time the user logs in - remembers spaces but the order they are displayed doesn't remain the same.
Issue Fix: Booking Statuses in Sale Export
When trying to export a sale template through Venue Manager the Status field did not reflect any of the custom statuses that were set up.
Resource Bookings - Booking Summary Report
Now that Resources can be added to Venue Manager booking, they should be listed in the Summary report. The booking summary report needs a section that lists the resources, by date, in the booking.
Multi-venue Bookings - Reporting
Now that a Venue Manager booking can span different venues, this needs to be reflected in reports.
- By Venue
- Event Summary
- Event List
- Venue Extract
- By Referral
- By Venue Referral
- By Patron Type
- By Staff Member
Resource Reporting
Added required resources to the Event Summary report.
Display Booking Tag as a 'Pill Box' Button on Calendar Views
Previously any tags were prefixed to the title of a booking within [ ] braces. Now, they are displayed prefixed to the Venue Manager booking title within a small offset 'pill' shape.