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What's New in HandicapMaster 8.5

Changes to HandicapMaster in Version 8.5 (2015 Edition)

Bookings

New Diary/Calendar

A new 'Bookings' link is added to the 'Places' box in HandicapMaster. In the Premier and Network editions, this provides access to a new 'Calendar' view, showing opened competitions, along with Group Bookings (see below) and Notes.

Access to bookings for competitions is available by clicking the competition links in the calendar.
You may also record general notes and these will also be displayed on the Calendar. The Calendar includes 'month', 'week' and 'day' views, for easy access to forthcoming bookings.
New Calendar

Fixture List

You may create a fixture list report based upon the entries in the Bookings Calendar.
The Fixture List is also published to Master Scoreboard website when completing the Publish wizard. Open Competitions with a future date (current and next year) are published, along with any Group Bookings and Calendar Notes.
Fixture List
You may elect to exclude chosen future opened competitions, Group Bookings and/or Calendar Notes from being included on the Fixture List.

Booking Future Competitions

All competition bookings are now managed by the Master Scoreboard web site; you will need an account on Master Scoreboard to operate the bookings facility.
There are no additional charges for accounts on Master Scoreboard. For information about requesting an account please see Register an account on Master Scoreboard.
You may now choose whether players may book into a competition either in the clubhouse (I.e. through the Player Entry system) or online (i.e Master Scoreboard website) using a new option added to the Booking Templates.
You may now elect to receive bookings into a competition up to 1 year in advance of the competition date.
You may now add additional tee times (Games) to the beginning of any existing bookings arrangement, where the booking is by Tee Times (not Blocks).
You may now configure HandicapMaster Userid security to allow Users to be granted/denied access to Bookings (by player Gender) specifically (and separate from general competitions management).
Competitions that have been closed to bookings will now continue to be listed on Master Scoreboard, with a link to 'View Entries' (allowing members to view the bookings, but not book in), until a Start Sheet is published or the date passes.
The option to link the HandicapMaster Bookings to an external system by file input/output is removed.

Booking Club Open Competitions online

A new facility is added to offer players the facility to book into club Open competitions, paying by credit/debit card at time of entry (*). When you chose to accept bookings for a competition through Master Scoreboard only (not through Player Entry) you may elect to require players to pay at time of entry.
Visitors booking into club's 'Opens' online will automatically be added to the HandicapMaster database where viewing bookings or creating a Start Sheet for the competition.
Book into Club Opens online
(*) Additional charges and configuration/set-up applies.

Group Bookings

You may now record group bookings, such as golf society bookings, in HandicapMaster (Premier and Network editions). You may record a group booking for tee reservations, food reservations and/or clubhouse room reservations. You may record numbers and rates and prepare a confirmation of reservation report, itemising the booking, for sending to the customer.
Report confirming Golf Society booking

Player Entry

Golf Clubs linked to the Central Database of Handicaps (in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland) may now choose to allow Visitors to be automatically added to the system when a Visitor types their National ID (or swipes a magnetic card with National ID included), using the CDH to obtain latest handicap, etc, for the players.

Sign in labels/print to score card

You may now print a number of additional items on the labels or scorecards when players sign in (Premier and Network editions). These include
  • Player PIN numbers
  • Competition format
  • Player Lifetime ID (England Scotland, Wales), GOLFnet ID (Ireland)
  • Time of sign in
  • Home Club
  • Tee Colour(s)
  • Time Score entered, to allow player to write down the time they entered the score.
When you select to include titling for each item printed, a player prefix letter (E.g. Player A, Player B) is now added.

Competition Fee deduction

Where competition fees for members are being deducted from an external Accounting or Till (EPOS) system an option is added to 'Display the Account Balance' if they successfully sign in.

Account Balance

Where competition fees for members are being deducted from the HandicapMaster Subscriptions Option, an option is added to Display their Previous Account Balance if they successfully sign in.

Central Database of Handicaps

England, Scotland and Wales CDH Services

You may now select which gender to publish data for from the Publish to Internet wizard. The setting for this has been moved from File -> Options to this wizard for improved usability.
In some circumstances HandicapMaster will now recognise when an incoming Away Score is a revision to a previously received score. When the revision is accepted, HandicapMaster will automatically replace the previous away score in the Player's record.
When exiting from HandicapMaster and you have decided to publish to the CDH the 'Print' button on the 'Unknown members' page of the publish wizard is removed as it is not required.

Ireland GOLFnet

You may now search for, and check, players and their handicaps on GOLFnet, direct from HandicapMaster. You may check a player using their GOLFnet ID or by a combination of name and home club.
You may now add Visitors to the system by entering their GOLFnet number in the Add a Visitor window and clicking Look up Player Details button.
You may now update some or all Visitor handicaps on the system in one go prior to running an Open competition.
When publishing to GOLFnet, latest playing handicaps of 'Away' members may now be checked and updated in HandicapMaster.
The facility to download GOLFnet Player files is removed.
The option to receive away scores from GOLFnet by email is removed, along with the option to 'silently skip unsafe away scores'.

Competitions

You may now highlight up to 999 players as overall winners of a competition (and/or up to 999 players as divisional winners).
You may now choose to run competitions played over fewer than 9 holes through HandicapMaster (i.e. any length of round from 1 hole upwards).
You may now change the overall name of a closed aggregated competition, as well as the name of the individual round.

Start Sheet Labels

A new option to produce a 'custom' start sheet label is added. The existing 'standard' label formats remain available. The new 'custom' label allows the user to design the format and layout of the label.
Custom labels may include the following extra items:
  • Strokes received
  • Player PIN numbers can be included
  • Competition format
  • Player Lifetime ID (England Scotland, Wales), GOLFnet ID (Ireland)
  • Home Club
  • Tee Colour(s)
Two new label formats have been added:
  • Avery 3475
  • Dymo 99010 (28mm high x 89 mm wide) continuous roll

Order of Merit

You may now clear all 'Other Points' allocated to an Order of Merit in one go with the addition of a 'Remove all' button.

Knock-out Competitions

When viewing matches for a KO competition in HandicapMaster, the last play date for each round is now displayed.

Letters

When sending out letters by e-mail, you may now
  • Enter a subject title for the e-mails, and
  • Change the default text used in the body of the e-mails.
  • Send letters to a distribution list of members with 'competition' and/or 'non-competition' handicap status (CONGU editions in England, Scotland and Wales only).
Within letters you may now include these new field codes:
  • <AmountsPaid>; Where the Subscription option is not installed this field will display the date paid and the amounts recorded for a single subscription payment, locker fee and other amount along with the total.
  • <MemberAddress>; This will embed the address of the addressee within the body of the letter.
  • <Transactions>; This will embed a member's transaction history for all dates (Subscriptions option only).
You may now choose to use the recipients full name in the recipient address section of letters, this also includes subscriptions and invoices and receipts where the Subscription option is installed.

Reports

A new tab titled 'Bookings' is added to the Reports place. The following new reports are added to this tab:

Competitions

  • Competition Bookings
  • History of Bookings (Opened Competition)
  • History of Bookings (Closed Competition)
  • Online Payments Received (Opened Competition)
  • Online Payments Received (Closed Competition)

Group Bookings

  • Confirmation of Reservation
  • Forthcoming Group Bookings
  • Catering

Calendar

  • Fixture List
  • Calendar Note
Based on Customer feedback the following reports are amended:
  • Player Identification Numbers; This report now lists entries in numeric order rather than alphabetically.
  • National ID's and Membership Card Numbers; This report is renamed to 'National ID's Membership Card and PIN Numbers' and player PIN numbers are now included in this report. This report is listed by member name in alphabetical order.
CONGU Annual Review report; You may now access the CONGU Annual Review computer report through an entry added to the list of Handicapping reports. Width of some columns are adjusted based on customer feedback. (CONGU editions only).
Handicap Certificates; When running Handicap Certificate report HandicapMaster now excludes away members and members without handicaps from the selection list.

Subscriptions, Invoicing and Payments Option

A total balance is now displayed at the end of the Account Balances (Summary) report.

Address labels

Where no labels are produced the message displayed now indicates that 'No Records found or no address information or selected subscriptions are to be sent by e-mail'.
A label is no longer created for a subscription pool member when a subscription pool contact has an e-mail address, but the pool member does not have an e-mail address.

Integration with external Membership Systems

When adding or updating a player from an external membership system, if another player with the same name and home club already exists in the system, then a suffix like '(1)' will now be applied to the existing player record, not the player record being added/updated, as previously. This applies to updates received through the 'Remote Requests' and 'LoadCSV' interfaces and where the existing player record resides in the Visitors or Past Members lists.

EGA Handicap System

You may now record the National Federation to which the club or society is affiliated. The National Federation name is shown on the players' Handicap Certificates.

Other

Visitor PIN Numbers

Previously, when restricting PIN number allocation to a limited range, and the range was nearly exhausted, performance of HandicapMaster was affected. This is no longer the case.

Distribution Lists

For Member and Visitor distribution lists you may now include players with 'Competition' and/or 'Non-Competition' handicap status (CONGU editions in England, Scotland and Wales only).

E-Mail

When sending e-mails a new popup context menu (displayed with a right click of the mouse) is added to the E-mail Recipients window. You may now edit or delete 'Other Recipients’ from this menu.
Improved logging is added to assist with dealing with errors where an e-mail cannot be sent.
You may now send e-mails (via a distribution list) to Members or Visitors with 'Competition' and/or 'Non-Competition' handicap status (CONGU editions in England, Scotland and Wales only).
When e-mailing Start Sheet, Competition Results, KO Draw, Order Of Merit, Best of Series or Eclectic reports, past members are now excluded from the distribution list of recipients.

My Golf Ranking

Sending competition scores to My Golf Ranking external website is now invoked by selecting a new option in the PUBLISH wizard, when publishing to Master Scoreboard. You now longer need to publish competition results round-by-round to My Golf Ranking; these will be collected by the My Golf Ranking service directly from the Master Scoreboard web site (when option has been selected). My Golf Ranking is an external website not operated by HandicapMaster Ltd.