News
We had a heap of feedback in regards to using System Credits as prizes and there were two main requests. The exhibitors want to be able to withdraw the credit into their bank account, this is in progress and the clubs would like the option to hand out a voucher so the exhibitor is given a prize, this is complete.
Clubs can still allocate System Credits after the event directly to the exhibitor's account or they now have an option to print Credit Gift Vouchers before the event to be handed out.
The process for both is pretty much the same but we would encourage clubs to print and hand out vouchers as this seems to be the preferred method. When printing the system will print three to a page then you can just cut them up and hand it out!
South Australian Exhibitors can now generate their application for title forms from the results added to your account.
This article will give you more information. https://showmanager.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/202377684
We have added to the Show Manager Steward App and also the Breed Sheets the 'Judge Method' which will indicate if the breed is to be judged on a table, ramp, ground or combination.
Hopefully this will take away the confusion and help the stewards to remember how the breed is to be judged.
Seems like everyone is on the Show Manager Live Results site! So we have added a handy new feature for the clubs to help send out messages.
As the event is running the club is now able to send out a Live Alert from the Show Manager Steward App. This alert will appear on the Live Results site as a pop up a message or you can also subscribe to 'Push Notifications' so that you can receive the alert the same as a text message or app notification.
This article will tell you how to subscribe to receive notifications. https://showmanager.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/8466257991567-Event-Live-Alerts
Over the past 12 months Dogs New Zealand has been evaluating different online entry providers and we are thrilled to announce that Show Manager has been selected to partner with Dogs New Zealand to upgrade their show program for clubs. This is a terrific milestone for our business, to take our system into another country and we are really excited by the opportunity.
I would like to thank all the clubs, workers and exhibitors who support us. We have seen a high rate of growth in the recent times with many new clubs joining our family.
When asked why Show Manager was selected, the response from Dogs New Zealand was that the feedback from clubs, stewards and exhibitors in Australia using the different systems was overwhelmingly in our favour. For this we can’t thank you enough and we look forward to serving your needs into the future.
In the system, we store all the Judge profile information, which is used to associate a judge with an event. This information contains the Judge name, email and some other basic information.
If you are a judge, My Judge Links will allow you to link the Judge Profile to your user account. This will allow you to maintain your judge details and also view your upcoming judging appointments in your account.
Click here for more infomation on how to set this up. https://showmanager.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/8304040429199-My-Judge-Links
This feature will allow the club to easily allocate system credits into the exhbitors account as prizes. If you don't have time to go to the bank and put cash in envelopes, this is a great alternative for prizes!
As well as the Club Credits we have also created some Prize Reports to help you plan your event. Check out the video and if you have any questions let us know!
https://vimeo.com/showmanager/clubsystemcredits
Help Articles:
- Club System Credits: https://showmanager.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/8010435196943
- Event Prizes: https://showmanager.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/8219253808783
Thank you and welcome to all the new clubs that have moved to our system this year. More and more clubs are moving their events to ShowManager all the time and it's wonderful to hear the positive feedback.
We are pleased to announced that the Royal National Capital Agricultural Society has also recently joined the ShowManager family.
From the 'Configure Catalogue' page you can already select the order of the dogs for a class. The options are; Owner Name, DOB, Registration Number and Entered Order. These can also be sorted asending or descending based on your preference.
We have had a request from a few clubs to be able to sort babies in age order from oldest to youngest so we have added a new option to override the order of the Baby Puppy class so that not matter the selection of the class order babies can be sorted in age from oldest to youngest.
With more clubs running raffles from our club activity module we have made it quicker and easier to add and setup a raffle and also include any additional requirements that you may need to include.
Now when you create a new Club Activity the system will ask you if this is a Raffle or other Club Activity. This will then enable new additional options related to running a raffle. For example, you can include the total number of tickets to be sold, the date and location of the draw, the raffle Terms and Conditions, lotter number and more.
When a ticket is sold we will also include the raffle tickets as a separate document with the invoice email, the tickets will also include all the details and terms and conditions of the raffle. These tickets can also be downloaded from your Invoices page or also from the Raffle page.
Check out some of the new changes we have started to implement for Dog Sports.
Steward App, Live Results, Digital Certificates and Scores for Rally and Obedience have been done first with other disciplines coming soon.
Like all our software, there is no cost to the clubs to use this or any other of our other modules.
Special thanks to the clubs and people that have help us get the dog sports up and running!
If you use cash or vouchers for your prizes there is now an easy way to print your class prizes.
When you generate the Class Prize Envelopes just select how many places you want and the system will generate that number of envelopes for each class. Then you can print out all the DL size envelopes and not have to write them out.
Conformation shows have always had this feature which will save a lot of writing, there can be typically 70 - 90 envelopes per show!
Over the past week we have started to update parts of the system to that the exhibitors address details are not longer accessible on reports and export files.
The exhibitor email and phone number will remain so that you can contact the exhibitor, however address details will be removed to help reduces personal information from being accessed.
The majority of the system has been updated with these changes and we will continue to monitor and review the system for other improvements around personal information and it's usage and make the appropiate changes.
There is a feature in the system for Dog Sports catalogues that will allow you to easily bulk update the exhbitor numbers if you need to move dogs around. Often this is used to separate the same exhibitor so they don't have more than one dog running after the other.
After you have run the 'Generate Report Data' step, this will active a button to the right 'Bulk Update Exhibitor Numbers'. This page will step you through the process, but the basics are you download the catalogue excel export file, edit the numbers and then upload the file again.
This will then renumber the dogs and move them around in the catalogue to where you want them to be. It's a quick and easy way to make many changes without having to individually edit and change each entry.
Some clubs have asked to not automatically deposit the funds when the online entries are closed to allow them to process refunds after the event is closed. This typically happens in a ballot type scenario.
We have updated the system so that when you close the online entries you can select a status of 'Active (Hold Funds)', this will close the entries but the system won't automatically deposit the funds into the clubs account allowing you to process any refunds.
When you are finished and ready to receive the funds, all you need to do is edit the event details page and change the Event Status from 'Active (Hold Funds)' to 'None' and this will trigger the system to pay the club on the next daily payment run.
Contact us for more information and help with this feature.
CNCC Showground at Hillsborough has now been added to the list of sites where you can book and pay for you camping.
As Hillsborough camping is paid 'Per Person' the system has also been modified so you can select the number of people when you create a booking. There are no allocated sites so you can just select any booking to be able to pay.
For Exhibitors: It has been requested that this will only be active during events that are run via the Show Manager system. To book and pay for camping simply click on the 'Camping Sites' option from the menu and then select CNCC.
For Clubs: You no longer need to collect camping fees and pass it on to CNCC. The system will automatically activate camping when there is an event at the location and will deposit the funds directly to CNCC.
It can be tricky to keep up with all the different groups and pages in different states to get help and information about an event so we have added a new 'Event FAQ' feature to help keep all the information together in a single handy location.
The Event FAQ will allow the allow the club to have common Questions and Answers added to an event. The Event FAQ will appear on the public event page and from the entry page and will help reply to common questions for an event so that many exhibitors may not need to contact the club with the same question.
The Club can add a FAQ including both the Question and Answer or an exhibitor can also ask a Question.
https://showmanager.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/6953107429519-Event-FAQ
With a few national shows around the corner, just a reminder to clubs that we can configure the system to ensure challenges are not able to be awarded or issued for the given breed if you are running a show at the same time as the national event and are not to issue challenges.
The system will still allow you to place the classes, however the steward will not be able to place a challenge and no certificates will be issued for the breed.
The person who does the catalogue will be able to configure this for you. From the Configure Catalogue page, click on the 'Judges' tab then select the 'Breeds' link for the judge. Tick the 'Exclude From Challenge' box for the selected breeds.
With more clubs only using the steward app and not printing any certificates from the 'Client Application' we have enhanced the steward app to be able to publish the marked catalogue and also generate state body reports. This is especially handy for speciality shows.
From the list of events click on the 'Reports' button below the event name, then you will be able to publish the marked catalogue (which will also send electronic certificates) and generate the state body files which will create the files used in your state.
Have you ever wondered if those small handler rounds up add up? I was thinking about this today so I checked how much has been donated since we started this feature.
To my surprise there has been a grand total of $32,400 donated by you, the members since we started the round up feature.
Special thank you to everyone who has donated over the years, as you can see it truly does add up and makes a massive difference to their fundraising.
With clubs starting to gather their financial information for reporting we have added a few tweaks to help this along.
* Membership * - Both the summary and detailed membership list reports now have an option for 'Financial Only'. These reports have also been updated to include the membership number.
* Club Accounting * - The Profit & Loss Report and Balance Sheet Report now have a section at the bottom of the report to be able sign and input your position and date. These same reports also now have a 'This Year, Last Year' options which will put the current and previous periods onto the report side by side.
Congratulations to all the NSW members who did a round up with their entries.
Today we transferred $3,008.93 which has been donated by the members. I'm sure the handlers will very much appreciate the assistance.
If your show is running different order than normal you can easily set the sequence order of the breeds by clicking on the 'Breeds' link for the Judge.
If your show is running an out of sequence judging, for example, L-Z then A-K we have a bulk edit screen where you can select the first breed being judged, in this case an L breed. Alternatively, from this page you can also simple reverse the normal judging order by selecting the 'Reverse Order' option to easily change the order of Judging.
Setting the breed order will also flow through to the tabets and other software and reports.
Club Membership has the concept of 'Membership Types' and 'Membership Extras'. Examples of Membership Types are Single, Dual , Family etc... and the Membership Extras can cover everything else. Many clubs may include Donations or Printed Newsletter and other items as part of the membership extras.
When a club is using the Club Accounting module, the system will automatically create the accounts transaction for you to record the membership income saving you from having to input all the details. By default, these costs are allocated to the 'Membership' chart of account.
When configuring the Membership Types and Membership Extras you can now select the chart of account mapping to be used when the transaction is created. This will allow clubs to allocate the income to an account of their choice. If there is no mapping the system will default back to the Membership account.
Recently we have had many clubs request that when an event is processed that it's not active straight away and they would like to open the entries at their desired time or have it hidden from the calendar to allow members to be able to enter the event first.
You can now edit the club details and set your preferred option for when we process an event and setup the online entries. The Default Event Status options are:
- ACTIVE: Automatically Activate straight away. (Default Option)
- CLOSED: Event will be closed when processed allowing you to re-open when you choose.
- HIDDEN: Event will be activated, but will be hidden from the event calendar allowing you to share a link to the event and then make it public when you choose.
- CLOSED AND HIDDEN: A combination of both the other settings.
When these options have been selected, you can then either 'Activate' or 'Re-Open' the online entries from the event details page.
Over the past 6 months ago, since about August 2022 we added read only API access to the Dogs Australia database, this made it very quick and simple to add a dog into your account by just inputting a the dogs registration number and clicking on the Search button.
The most common question we get is that the dogs details are not found, this is typicall due to a 1 day delay from when the database is updated and when we get access to the information.
If your puppies have just been registered and you want to import their information they may not be available until the next day. However, if you can't wait you can still aways manually input all the details.
Recently, we made a change to make it even easier to get a refund or credit if your card is no longer active.
When a refund is processed, the bank will only allow us to refund back to the original card that was used in the transaction. This is good for security as we never store the credit card details, however it can be a pain if your credit card has been lost, stolen or expired as we can't refund the card any more.
We updated the self refund process so that if we can't refund the original card the system will then give you the option to apply a credit to your account to be used for future payments. Any future payment will then automatically use the credit first, then the remainder can be paid with your new credit card.
The option for credit will only appear if the refund fails. If you don't want to apply the credit and still wish to receive the funds, you will need to contact the club running the event to arrange an alternative direct refund.
When you have your approved schedule all ready to go, you can now upload the schedule yourself for processing. When the schedule is uploaded we will also automatically send a copy to DogzOnline as well. This will be the quickest way to get your event up and running ASAP.
Here are the steps:
- From the menu click on 'Club Area' then select 'Club Events'.
- Click on the 'Upload Schedule' button.
- First select the schedule document and then input the basic required information.
- At the bottom of the page, click on save.
And that's it! If you have more than one event, you'll also just need to upload the schedule for the other events.
Another year has passed and it was great to see things getting back to normal.
At the start of the year, we were wondering if all the work we did around making it easy to cancel or postpone an event and enable self-refunding would still be used. Unfortunately, we had many severe weather events causing many cancellations this year, but it was great that the clubs were still able to use all the features we created for COVID to make cancellations as easy as possible for the club and the exhibitors.
It’s been two years since the launch of our Steward App and this product continues to strengthen and improve all the time thanks to ideas and suggestions from stewards and clubs. It’s great to see all the positive feedback, especially the ability to run offline without the internet, so the ring never needs to stop!
2022 saw the launch or many new features and innovations. While Live Results launched over a year ago, this year it has really taken off. It’s amazing to see the amount of traffic this results site now gets with an average of 450,000 views per month. The single largest individual show was the NSW Spring Fair CACIB show with 58,000 results page views.
Fully integrated Free Club Accounting was also a fresh addition this year. Clubs can now use the system at no cost to help manage their finances and accounts. The club can run a profit and loss over a period of time or you can select one or many events to check your probability. There is a nice and easy ‘tick and flick’ bank rec process, but best of all, you can upload your statements and other documents for the transactions to keep them on file for auditing.
Digital Certificates were an extra surprise this year. Now exhibitors can have their certificates delivered by email or download them from their account. With clubs now able to self-print certificates, we saw an opportunity to make this even easier for the club by introducing a Self-Serve kiosk system. Club Members can now spend more time on other activities helping to run the show, as they no longer need a person sitting in the office printing certificates all day.
Thank you to all the exhibitors, existing and new clubs that have supported us this year. We have had more clubs than ever join us and take advantage of all our new innovations. We welcome these new clubs and hope to continue working together in the future. We wish you a wonderful holiday season and look forward to another great year with new and exciting challenges coming!
Jeremy & Ruth