Three new languages, our own e-invoices, venues as rooms and app 3.1

It has been a little over two weeks since our last roundup in early October, and they were the busiest weeks of the year. Chorilo now speaks Polish, Turkish and Russian, issues every invoice itself as an e-invoice, and venues become rooms where Chorilo warns you about double bookings. On top of that come many wishes from choirs: "maybe" can be switched off, parents can respond on their own for their children, albums get folders, and the app has reached version 3.1. Tentative events and cancelled rehearsals got their own post. Here is everything else.

Three new languages: Polish, Turkish and Russian

Chorilo is now also available in Polish, Turkish and Russian: the web version, the app, emails and push messages, the help centre, the training videos and the blog. That makes eleven languages to choose from, and every member sets their own. A Polish-speaking tenor and a Russian-speaking alto each read the same announcement in their own language.

To make sure the chosen language stays put, we made improvements in many places. Registration now starts with a language picker right below the heading, and the choice is saved to the account. You can change it at any time from the profile menu. Invitations to people who already have an account arrive in their language, and links in emails open Chorilo in the language of the email. PDF reports such as member lists, birthdays, attendance, sheet music and contacts appear in the language of your interface. Anyone creating a new choir gets the voice parts in their own language, the ticket shop and choir website stay in the chosen language, and English dates follow your region: in the UK or New Zealand the day comes first, not the month as in the US.

Our own e-invoices for every payment

Chorilo now issues its invoices itself, as e-invoices: a PDF that also carries the invoice data in machine-readable form. This applies to everything you pay us for: the subscription, invoices paid by bank transfer, sheet music from the shop, partner titles, performance fees and tickets. Refunds and cancelled or expired bank transfer invoices automatically produce a cancellation invoice.

All administrators see the choir's invoices on the subscription page, as a PDF and as an XML file for the bookkeeping. Anyone who buys something themselves, such as a ticket or sheet music, finds the invoice in their profile under "My invoices". Purchases over 250 euros require the choir's full address. And invoices that choirs write themselves with Chorilo are now valid e-invoices even without a VAT ID, because the tax number is filled in instead.

Venues become rooms

Rehearsal room, parish hall, church: venues now have an address and a capacity, and they are shared by the main choir, its sub-choirs and projects. When you create an event, you pick the venue from the list. If it is already booked at that time, for example because the children's choir rehearses there, Chorilo warns you and asks before saving. Each venue has its own page with upcoming events, the venue list shows the next booking, and bookings can be exported as PDF, CSV or Excel, for example for the building manager or the parish office. In the event view, one click on the venue takes you straight to that page.

Events and responses

Not every choir wants a "maybe". You can now switch this answer off for the whole choir or for individual events. Anyone who has already answered "maybe" keeps their answer. The setting carries over to event series and to copies of an event.

For children's and youth choirs there is now a switch "Only parents respond" next to the parent link. When it is on, linked children no longer accept or decline themselves and no longer vote in polls. Their parents do that, and the choir leaders can still record attendance. Children still get reminders, just without response buttons.

In the attendee list, members within each voice can be sorted by first or last name, ascending or descending. The row menu lets you reset an answer back to "Pending". You can now edit your own comments on events and notifications instead of deleting and rewriting them. They then show an "edited" note, and only people newly mentioned are notified.

Sheet music: sharper and faster

Sheet music looks sharper in the app, and page turns are faster. After turning, the preview stays in place until the page is crisp, and in landscape on Android the bottom of the page stays sharp too. Scanned sheet music that builds up slowly is now optimised automatically after upload: black and white scans are recreated as clean black and white, colour scans keep their colour.

For licensed and partner sheet music, your choir now maintains duration, reference, video, visibility, tags and custom fields itself, just like with your own sheet music. Only your choir sees these details, not the other choirs that bought the same piece. Event lists count licensed and partner sheet music in the number of pieces, and downloading an event's sheet music works with protected PDFs and with pieces that have no PDF. In the voice trainer, clapping and other noise notes with a cross notehead now sound as percussion instead of a pitch. And publishers can upload a MusicXML file for their titles, which becomes a voice trainer exercise for all licence holders.

Members, permissions and chats

Under choir settings › member fields you now arrange sections and fields yourself, choose half or full width and hide fields your choir does not need. Hidden fields also disappear from the invitation, the member list and the export. A preview shows the form exactly as it will look. You can also hide built-in and your own functions from all selection lists.

You can share email addresses and postal addresses in the member list separately, without showing all sensitive data at once. That turns the list into a member directory where people can reach each other. By default administrators and editors see both, members do not. New active members automatically get the "Member" function, however they join the choir. And every choir keeps at least one administrator: the last one can no longer leave the choir, be removed or be set to passive.

Group chats can now also be put together by permission group, next to voice parts and functions. New members of the group join the chat automatically. When a choir or an account is deleted, Chorilo now also deletes all stored files completely.

Polls, albums and videos

Poll results can be exported as CSV, Excel or PDF and show the votes by voice part, so you see how many sopranos, altos, tenors and basses chose which answer. Albums get folders that can be nested as deep as you like, such as one folder per concert with subfolders for the rehearsal weekend and the performance. Videos in albums start right away and can be skipped through instead of loading completely first. iPhone photos in HEIC format are converted to JPEG on upload.

Board, club mailbox and cash book

Your open board tasks now appear under "My tasks" on the start page, on the web and in the app, and you can tick them off in the app. In the minutes you see who is editing an entry right now. The title and date of a meeting can be changed until the minutes are closed. Speech recognition for meeting recordings now understands English too, and the minutes PDF appears in the language of the meeting.

In the club mailbox, a deleted mail now also lands in the trash at your mail provider, and a mail marked as done moves to the archive there. Undo brings it back. Subject lines, sender names and attachments with special characters are displayed correctly.

In the cash book you choose the category and SKR account right when confirming a bank transaction. If you have booked with the same payment partner before, both are prefilled. Both can also be changed later under "More details". The audit log now also shows reconciled entries and entries confirmed during bank matching. Receipt recognition reads PDF receipts reliably again, and if a club has no chart of accounts yet, the cash book overview suggests one.

The setup wizard for new choirs has become shorter. Instead of bank details and a chart of accounts, it now asks about what matters in everyday rehearsal life: decline reason, "maybe", reminders, parent links, birthdays, projects, response deadline and voice parts.

For choirs in a choir association

This applies to associations that work with Chorilo. If your choir is a member of such a participating association, you use Chorilo free of charge for good, even after the trial: all features except the cash book and the board area, with 50 MB of storage. When the storage is full, Chorilo tells you. For the cash book, the board area and more storage, the choir needs a subscription.

The app: version 3.1

The app has now reached version 3.1.3. You can fine-tune the playback speed from half to double speed in small steps, with a slider or plus and minus. Tapping the value resets it. The mini player has a timeline for seeking without opening the full player. In the sheet music view the screen reliably stays on. You copy the text of a chat message from the menu that appears on a long press. Filters, dialogs and pickers no longer flip the app to portrait in landscape mode, buttons in lists and in the mini player can be reached with VoiceOver, and in the calendar Sunday no longer slips into the next row.

New on the website: vocal range test and training videos

What is my voice type? The new, free vocal range test answers the question in about five minutes: you sing a few notes into the microphone, and the test measures your range and shows which choir part suits you best. It runs entirely in the browser and needs no account. It is handy for newcomers who want to know where they belong before their first rehearsal. On the learn to read music page there is now also a printable note chart as a PDF, with all note names in treble and bass clef, note values, rests and accidentals on one page.

The help centre has two training videos: one for members and one for choir directors, split into chapters so you can jump straight to the topic you need. Both are available in all languages, as is the new promo video on the homepage. And the code for embedding the event list on your own website now includes a plain link.

More improvements

The AI assistant keeps the conversation when you close the help panel, and names menus and buttons in the language of its answer. The AI sheet music analysis shows its values in your language. The composer field no longer suggests people with the same name from Wikipedia who have nothing to do with music. Members without a name appear as "No name". Events and notifications can be saved again when two of the choir's functions have the same name. The list of passive members pages correctly again, and in large choirs with restricted events no events go missing any more. The error message for full storage is translated, and auto-filling sheet music details works for large scanned pages too.

Many of these improvements come from wishes sent in by choirs. If something is missing or could work better, let us know: via the AI chatbot, the feature request page or by email.