v1.2.1 — On-Site Updates, Budget Actuals & Registration Controls
Released: September 2026 | Version: v1.2.1
What Changed For Your Team
v1.2.1 follows v1.2.0 with a focused set of improvements and a large round of fixes. Most of the work is in four places: bringing your existing data into ema, the hardware you run at the venue, the numbers your finance team reads, and the registration flow your attendees move through.
On-site equipment now maintains itself. Kiosks and room devices update in their own quiet hours, verify an update before trusting it, and roll back on their own if one does not take. Each device reports the version it is actually running, so you can see the state of the floor rather than assume it.
Budget actuals now come from one place. Every budget surface reads the same figure for a deal, so the number on a summary and the number on a detail page cannot disagree.
Beyond that, 120 fixes across registration, finance, emails and the exhibitor portal. Nothing in this release requires any action on your part.
Highlights
Bringing Your Own Data In
Data you already hold elsewhere can now be imported into ema: contacts and companies, and around fifty other record types across the product. You map the columns in your file to ema's fields once, preview what will happen before anything is written, and run it — or put it on a schedule so a file you produce regularly loads itself.
On-Site Devices That Update Themselves
Room devices and kiosks now apply their own updates during a window when nobody is using them — for a kiosk, while its display is off. An update is checked before it is applied, and a device that cannot complete one returns to the version it was running rather than staying half-updated.
You can also push an update immediately from the device's service menu when you would rather not wait for the window, and a device with no schedule still gets a maintenance window instead of never updating at all.
Every Device Reports What It Is Running
Each on-site device now reports its own version, so the floor's state is something you can read rather than infer. A device that has fallen behind is visible before it becomes a problem during a session.
Lectern Alerts Reach the Control Desk
When something needs attention at the lectern, the alert now reaches the operator running the room from the control desk, rather than staying on the device where only the speaker would see it.
Speakers Presenting From Their Own Laptop
A talk running from a speaker's own laptop now shows as ready, and going live on one offers to switch across to the room's external input — so the handover between a speaker's machine and the room's own source is a deliberate choice rather than a scramble.
One Source for Budget Actuals
Every budget surface now reads actuals for a deal from the same place. Summary figures and detail pages are drawn from one source, so they agree, and the figure you present to a client is the figure the system holds.
Turn Off an Email Type for One Project
From the email templates page you can now disable an email type for a single project, without affecting any other project or changing the template itself. Useful when one event handles a particular notification outside ema.
Commission Differences Land in the Ledger
Where a commission settles slightly above or below what was expected, the difference is now posted to your accounts automatically — a surplus as money owed to the hotel, a shortfall written down — so small variances no longer sit unreconciled.
Independent Registration Flow Controls
The steps in your registration flow can now be switched on and off independently, so the path an attendee takes matches how your event actually sells, rather than a fixed sequence.
Finding Financial Documents by Asking
People with finance access can now find invoices, credit notes and related financial documents by describing what they are looking for. The results respect the same permissions as the rest of ema — someone without finance access sees nothing new.
Detailed Changes
How a Device Decides to Update
A device only updates inside its own quiet window — for a kiosk, while the display is off. Before applying anything it verifies the update is genuine and complete; if applying it does not succeed, the device returns to the version it was running rather than staying part-way through. A device that has no schedule at all is given a maintenance window, so it still receives updates instead of falling behind indefinitely.
The service menu on each device has an apply-now option for when you would rather not wait for the window — during a quiet afternoon before doors open, for example.
Where Budget Actuals Come From
Budget surfaces used to derive actuals separately, which is why a summary figure and a detail page could disagree. They now read one figure per deal. If you have been reconciling those by hand, you can stop.
Disabling an Email Type for One Project
On the email templates page, an email type can be switched off for the project you are in. The template is untouched, other projects are unaffected, and the type can be switched back on at any time.
Tax and Billing Figures That Move
Four changes alter numbers finance teams read, so they are worth knowing about rather than discovering:
- Input tax is now bucketed by the day its journal posted, not the day it was approved. Input tax can therefore fall in a different tax period than it would have before.
- A partial release of a labour-cost recovery reverses its tax in proportion to the amount released. Previously the first partial step removed the whole tax leg.
- Cash-basis tenants: the output tax figure on the tax report and the general ledger account now agree. If you have been reconciling the two by hand, the difference you were adjusting for is gone.
- Recharges are struck on one converged rate for the day, and each billing run records its accounting day once.
Additional Improvements and Fixes
Registration
- Eight fixes across the registration flow, covering seat handling, the new independent flow controls, and corrections to how changes to a registration are applied.
Finance
- Corrections to budget figures, credit notes, and how a currency is recorded at the point it is entered, so an amount cannot be stored against the wrong one.
Exhibitor portal
- Team access corrections: changing one person's access no longer affects another person who happens to share their display name.
- Fixes to template handling and to which address a sent email is attributed to.
Registration and invoicing
- Bank-transfer registrants now receive the correct invoice reference and can download the issued invoice; invoice emails carry the event details alongside the payment instructions.
- The surcharge line on the order review always names the rate that produced the figure beside it, including straight after an organiser changes it.
Accommodation
- A sub-block prepurchase is priced and taxed night by night, matching the stays drawn against it when a room or tax rate changes part-way through a block.
Purchasing
- A bill and its purchase order in the same foreign currency now match on price when the exchange rate moved between them, instead of reporting the movement as a price variance and blocking approval.
AI
- The AI display for chapters is on by default, so AI features now appear for chapter users where they previously did not.
Event apps
- Poll voting and results are restricted to the event the poll belongs to. Previously someone holding a poll's identifier could vote in another organisation's poll and read its written responses.
On-site and kiosks
- Alerts raised at the lectern reach the control desk; each device reports the version it is running; own-laptop talks show as ready and offer to switch to the room's external input when going live.
What You Need to Do
Nothing. This release requires no configuration and no migration.
Two things are worth knowing:
- On-site devices will update themselves in their quiet window. If you keep devices on a specific version deliberately, set their schedule before the next window rather than after.
- Budget actuals may move slightly where a summary and a detail page previously disagreed. The figure you see now is the one drawn from the deal itself.