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January 2022 Release Notes: https://help.pm.leapevent.tech/a/1497647
We're pleased to announce the first product update of the year!
This release contains more flexibility for handling refunds, the ability to use STS gift cards during an exchange, better mobile branding for your PTS and Donation Forms, data consistency improvements, an update for the barcode scanning app, and more. Read on to learn all about:
- Refunding Ticket Orders after multiple payments
- Differentiating refunded vs voided Donations
- State & country picklists
- STS gift card improvements
- Better branding on mobile devices
- Barcode scanning app update
- Other improvements & bug fixes
Let's jump in!
Prefer watching to reading? Here's the release webinar:
Reminder: Legacy Donation Forms will stop working after January 31, 2022
Follow the steps outlined here to ensure there's no disruption to your ability to process online Donations.
You can also watch a recently-recorded webinar on the topic: New Donation Forms: Making the Switch.
Refund handling enhancements
Prior to this release, you weren't able to refund to a credit card if there had been multiple payments on a Ticket Order. As of this release, a user you designate with a special Permission Set will be able to handle those kinds of refunds in PatronManager (rather than reaching out to our support team), saving you time and expediting refunds for your patrons.
Learn more about refunding on Ticket Orders with multiple payments here: Managing Complex Refunds.
Differentiating refunded vs voided Donations
To ensure accurate financial reports, mistakenly-entered Donations can be refunded, but can't be deleted. It can sometimes be confusing to have actual monetary refunds and refunds that represent backed-out mistakes represented in the same way in PatronManager. With this release, you'll find new ways to move and adjust those voided entries.
State & country picklists
Want to make it easier for donors and ticket buyers in other countries to interact with your PatronManager sites, by first choosing their country then selecting a relevant state value from a dependent picklist specific to that country?
And wouldn't it be great if all the state and country values on your Contact and Account records were spelled and abbreviated the same way (instead of "NY" vs "N.Y." vs "ny" vs "New York" etc), so you could easily group or filter in reports to see, for example, how many donors you have per state?
Good news: we have a feature for you! Bonus: it'll clean up your existing data, too.
Ready to get started with this feature? Head over here to learn more.
STS gift card improvements
Do you use the gift card solution offered through Smart Transaction Systems? If so, you can now charge or refund to a gift card during a ticket exchange, helping your patrons use their stored value and reducing the need to give monetary refunds or force equal exchanges.
If you also use PatronPortal, those patrons will be able to select that refund-generated electronic gift card as a payment option when logged in and purchasing online - no need to search through their email for their gift card number.
When completing a ticket exchange where the patron owes a difference in cost, STS-enabled organizations will now see an option to pay via gift card (just as you can when selling a ticket).
If the patron has a gift card already stored in PatronManager, you'll see it as an option to select; otherwise you can input their gift card number manually.
And when completing an exchange where the patron is owed a refund due to a difference in cost, you'll now see the option to refund to gift card (just as you can when refunding a ticket or an order outside the exchange process).
Selecting this option will allow you to select an existing gift card if the patron already has one stored in PatronManager, or generate a new STS electronic gift card for the patron and attach it to their Contact for future use. The exchange confirmation email will also include their new gift card number and balance, allowing them to easily use their balance toward future purchases on your PTS.
If you've refunded to a gift card in PatronManager, or if a patron has used an STS gift card to pay for a ticket in PatronManager, patrons who log in via PatronPortal will see those gift cards as payment options during checkout.
After the patron chooses to pay by gift card, they can select from any cards on file or enter a new gift card number, then check the balance and continue to pay.
Better branding on mobile
If your organization's logo contains fine details/text, it probably doesn't look great on small screens. Good news: you can now add an alternate mobile header image to your Public Ticketing Site and Donation Forms!
The header on the PTS and on Donation Forms is constrained to a maximum height of 200 pixels on large screens and 30 pixels on mobile devices, to ensure plenty of space for the content of those sites and for the fields that allow patrons to interact and purchase or donate.
Some logo images that look perfectly fine at 200px tall, however, are nearly illegible at 30px tall (particularly if your normal logo includes small text). While you can of course select a logo image that works at both scales, some organizations prefer to use a more detailed image where possible.
To ensure that your logo is clear on all screen sizes, PatronManager now supports an alternate header image for mobile.
If you don't upload an image to the new "Header Image (Mobile)" field, PatronManager will continue to use the primary header image on all screen sizes.
Barcode scanning app update
The PatronManager barcode scanning app is getting an update on February 1, 2022. The update resolves an issue that caused some devices to rotate the screen unexpectedly while scanning, and also adds support for an improved Socket Mobile scanner pairing experience.
If you use Socket Mobile scanners, you'll need to download a free companion app for those scanners following the barcode scanning app update. Follow the prompt to do so, and that's it - the companion app should recognize the existing scanner pairing, and no further action is needed. Read more in the FAQs here
Don't worry - it's a free download and it'll help the scanners pair and reconnect more quickly, speeding up your scanning process.
If you scan tickets using the phone's camera, this update won't require any extra steps - just make sure you have auto-updates enabled, and you'll be all set.
Other improvements & bug fixes
With each release, we tidy up bits of unexpected behavior and make incremental improvements to PatronManager.
If you use both Portal and PatronManager's Virtual Events, your patrons with Portal logins will be able to access their virtual ticket links from their Portal order history.
When you submit a payment on a Ticket Order in the box office and choose "Check" for the payment method, a check number field appears. Previously, this field was optional, which was problematic since there was no way to add the check number to the transaction after submitting the payment. Now the check number field is required for Ticket Order payments made by check.
Custom payment methods like Third Party include the check number field as optional; you can use it to log extra information about that payment (e.g. a voucher number) that should appear on the transaction record, but it isn't required.
Just what it says on the tin! When organizations processed multiple partial payments for Memberships in PatronManager Box Office, previously each payment installment could trigger a Benefit record. This has been resolved so that each Membership Order will only trigger one Benefit.
That's all for this release!
Want to be part of the product development process? Log in to the Client Community to suggest and vote on Product Ideas, track suggestions your organization has given us in the past, see what's planned and in progress, and much more. Read All About Product Ideas to get started!
