Preparing for the Update

Theatre Manager will:

• Upgrade the database with new database fields to track course sales and each class.

The venue will need to

• verify any of the optional steps.

8.04 Changes & Enhancements

Version 8 consists of many hundreds of little changes through out Theatre Manager. Version 8.04 contains further improvements to this version upon request of venues.

Company Preferences

• You can now provide a name or purpose for each one of the hold codes that will display on the map and during the hold process

Default Data

• Added an option to set the rollover preference for performances to be end of year

Ticket Sales Process

• Fixed issue where the tax calculation on ticket fees was updating the patron total purchases and balance due incorrectly. This affected only the field on the patron window and did not affect end of day. Upgrading to version 8.02.04 will recalculate outstanding patron balances automatically to correct the issue.
• Added a maximum and minimum base price to the sales promotion record. If the base price is outside that range, then the sales promotion is disallowed for that price. This means you can now set up a case where 2 for 1 is available, but only if the price is > $15.00 (for example).
• Enabled the check for maximum uses of a sales promotion per performance. It also checks for people who have that sales promotion in their shopping cart and prevents usage of the sales promotion if it happens to have reached its maximum use count.
• Theatre Map tool tips now show the meaning of the hold codes if defined in Company Preferences'
• Fixed an issue so that the outstanding balance warning for a patron works again.
• Fixed an issue where selling tickets with a price that is 'half a cent' might cause the total sales for a performance to calculate incorrectly due to rounding. The upgrade will correct and verify any performances with half a cent as part of the price (e.g. something like $18.945 would cause an extra cent to be retained in the event total). Note: this did not affect any actual ticket sales or end of day issues.
• Corrected the count of holds for reserved seating events. Inadvertently, they were being set to zero as the tickets were released. The upgrade will correct all hold counts for reserved seating.
• Added the ability to search by event sales method(e.g. course or reserved)
• Added the ability to search for the event by the new event type field.

Event And Dates

• Added a customizable popup flag for each performance
• Added a new sales method called 'course'. When selected, you can elect to create each 'date' of the course (to track attendance at each class), or just set it up as a start date to track sales.
  • At this time, any event set up as course might be sold on the internet using the general admission pages (in the future, separate pages will be added).
  • Coming soon for this sales method is the ability to add report cards
• Addition of volunteers/staff to each performance has been streamlined and made a little more intuitive when dragging from the volunteer capabilities to the volunteer area on the play & dates window. You can drag
  • to each performance one at a time
  • to a selected list of performance to assign the person to those performances
  • TM will as what you are intending to do.
• Editing and removal of volunteer activities has been made a little more obvious with buttons and context menu support.
• Context menus have been updated to make more sense in all the windows.
• Creation of a reserved seating event is much much faster.
• Mass refund of tickets for a performance can now authorize credit cards and cause the actual refund to go through.
• When new price codes are added to venue, editing the event window will add the price code as it always has. However, a new 'safety value' has been added. If the event is on sale for the internet, then the price code will be disabled so that it is not possible to sell zero priced tickets on the internet inadvertently.

Patron

• For convenience, the patron and volunteer windows now show the calculated age of the patron if a birth date is entered. It also does the same for the other date fields on that window.
• Revert to saved when entering phone numbers and additional addresses for a patron now draws the screen properly.
• When adding a new patron to the household, Theatre Manager now positions on that new patron by default, ready to take a ticket sale. IT no longer remains on the previously selected patron.
• Find duplicate patrons on the patron list window now provides the option to look at a number of the address fields in addition to the patron fields.
• The recent patron list has been optimized for performance. It now displays the icons for primary patron as well.

Gift Certificates/Passes

• Added an account in the setup so that you can defer future fiscal year passes into a different liability account than current or prior year gift certificates/passes. This is much like donations can be set up to be deferred.
• An option was added to completely prevent a future dated pass from being redeemed in the current year
• Trying to redeem and pass that is deferred into a future year will result in a warning if it could be sold - indicating that the pass was meant for the future year.
• Any pass for the next fiscal year that is deferred will be rolled over into current year and G/L entries created automatically - just like donations.
• Notes placed on each pass/gift certificate can now be printed on an invoice

Donations

• Tax receipts are now printed to the screen so that you can preview them for correct data on them. They are no longer forced to go directly to the printer.

Merchant Setup

• In version 8, we added an edit to check to see if the first authorization of the batch was for a refund. Some banks/service providers do not like those. Since this check was mandatory, a couple of sites asked us to make it optional. You can now turn off this option if you wish in the merchant setup
• There are 3 new mandatory fields in the merchant setup. These are for the name, number and email address of the technical contact at the merchant service provider. This is to save your staff time as this information is now displayed on any message associated with a decline or hold card where the appropriate action is to call the service provider.

Reports

• The order transaction balance report will now find orders where fees and transactions are out of sync.
• entering a time on a search using a date/time field will no longer over-ride the time and set it to 11:59:59 pm on the search to field
• Record count report has been updated to force selection of a summary field that is required for the report to do its job.
• Mask credit card detail on all reports - even for master users. It is no longer necessary to have all that data in printed form
• The record count by postal/zip code on a mail list window is now based on the list of people in the mail list to reflect accurate totals, less those people peeled off the label report.
• Added a report that print the attendance worksheet for a course.
• There is a new option when printing an invoice to also print the notes that are associated with a GC/PASS. This means if you use this kind of item for ancillary items like room rental or other misc items, you can see an extra description of the item.
• Added search criteria 'is all of' for belongs to mail list, volunteer position or events. It allows searching for people who happen to be in all of the lists simultaneously and without a lot of other criteria.

Miscellaneous

• Updated the database connection code to do a better job of reconnecting should the network disappear or the machines go to sleep.
• Changed the icon on the 'payment' tab in the patron record if a post dated payment has already been authorized, but not yet deposited.
• Tax Rate entry now defaults the earned tax account to the deferred tax account on the same tab when entering new tax rates.
• Maximizing the word processor window no longer takes up the entire window. It resizes top and bottom, and always leaves space for the palette window.
• The coupon redemption transaction now includes the patron and household data so that they appear on the transaction detail.
• Ticket faces will no longer compile/print if the I_PAY_METHOD_RESULT field is used.
• Duplication of giving levels now clears the pledge/actual totals on the new giving level.
• A change was made to consolidate the opening of windows into a common approach. It means that you can no longer open the same employee preference or patron window by coming at things from a different direction within Theatre Manager.
• Dropping data from any lookup onto the appropriate field now shows the proper menu bar state after the drop. The toolbar on the window will activate the revert/delete/save icons.