COVID and The Booking Service

The effect of COVID for us has been decreased income and increased workload. At the beginning we had two developers working on the new software, and the old software was well overdue for retirement, so we kept that work going despite not being able to get JobKeeper for either of them. 

At the same time as developing and rolling out all-new software, we provided new software to help you manage bookings, rules and refunds through lockdowns.

The decrease in our income meant that about a year ago we had to reduce our developer hours to a trickle to survive financially. We always have a plan for Business Continuity, making sure the service can continue if any one person becomes unavailable. We've done this by keeping a small flow of work to those two developers so they stay in touch with the software and could step in to keep things running if required.

Our invoicing has a retrospective turnover component, so our 1st April invoices will reflect the low turnover you experienced in 2021. We've created draft invoices based on year-to-date figures and things look better than expected, not back to normal but better than a year ago. This is partly due to new clubs joining us who pay a fixed fee in their first year. New clubs are also a lot of work and as above, we are short of help.

All this has meant that the roll-out of the new software has been bumpier than we would have liked. We switched on the new booking matrix last autumn for almost all of our clubs and used the quieter summer period to iron out bugs and improve the User Experience in the light of feedback. Opening bookings for the 2022 season has been a big test which hasn't always gone smoothly, but we want to thank those who have engaged with the software, helped us to find and fix problems, and been patient with the bugs. Thanks also for the positive feedback about all the improvements that come with the new software.

One huge job was rewriting all the custom software that implements specific rules and tariff calculations for each club. You can review your plugins via your admin menu -> site config -> plugins. These all need checking and testing before bookings open (every year, but especially this year).

Invoicing

Our southern hemisphere ski clubs can review an early draft of your 1st April invoice via admin menu -> admin -> billing.  Please take a look and check the detail looks correct. You can click on the pencil for an itemisation of the invoice - the turnover component (if there is one for your club) is based on year-to-date and will increase in the final bill, but you can review the turnover data real-time via the link provided.

We've automated the billing to save time, it's all new so please help us debug any problems by taking a look and providing feedback. Screenshots are always appreciated!

Access to read the billing is controlled by Role: BILLING which you can edit via admin menu → admin → roles. Currently it is set to Administrator level, so if your Treasurer has a lower level of access you probably want to change the Access Level given to Role BILLING_READ accordingly.  Help: https://help.cbdweb.net/roles-and-access-levels/

Also important, please update Configuration Item BILLING_EMAIL to include the email address(es) for invoicing. Help: https://help.cbdweb.net/site-configuration/

N.B. the email and PDF buttons on this screen are not ready for use yet.