Page 24 - ABF Newsletter June 2025

Masterpoints
I have mentioned this a few times as it’s the next major development work planned for My ABF. There are still a lot of discussions to have in this area – both internal and with clubs, states and their respec- tive masterpoint secretaries (watch this space). But here are a few basics:
WHY ARE WE GOING TO MOVE THE MASTER- POINT CENTRE (“MPC”) INTO MY ABF?
Two main reasons:
a) Technology. The existing MPC was written back in 2011 so the software is now very old and out of date to maintain. What’s more the current developer isn’t keen to keep maintaining it!
b) Integration. It has a close linkage to other func- tions already in My ABF – most notably membership and billing (remember the MPC today looks after much more than literally just masterpoints – it tracks all ABF members, all clubs, all home club member- ships, and issues bills for masterpoints and capita- tion fees).
WHAT WILL AND WON’T CHANGE?
A lot of details are still to be sorted out but the basics are:
• The masterpoint scheme itself (point calculations, ranks, etc) won’t change.
• Billing for masterpoints and capitation fees will continue but My ABF will generate them.
• We are aiming to streamline the processes by which masterpoints get from their original source (nearly always a scoring program) to your mas- terpoint account.
The third point is probably the most important one. Much of this is quite manual at the moment – points are collated to form a separate masterpoint text file, submitted to the MPC, approved (sometimes via a State masterpoint secretary, sometimes directly by the MPC), initially processed as provisional points and then finally reach your account “properly” at the month-end update. All those steps require manual intervention – our plan is to automate as many of them as we can to reduce the amount of work re- quired at all levels.
We have also looked at some more fundamental changes around where points are calculated and what data and files need to be transmitted by scor- ing programs in the first place – but those will come later.
WHEN WILL IT HAPPEN?
Again the full details of the project are still being planned, if feasible we will implement at the end of March 2026 which is when annual fees are billed.
Club Session payments
In the last couple of months there has been a pleas- ing number of new clubs starting to use the function in My ABF allowing them to collect money for club sessions via bridge credits. Not only can this be very convenient for the players it can greatly streamline the administration work for clubs in terms of recon- ciling, banking, etc (club treasurers take note!)
Effectively what it does is allow players to run a pre- payment account via their bridge credits which they can then use to pay for club sessions. Their names/ ABF numbers are uploaded from the scoring pro- gram during, or shortly after, the session; charges automatically calculated and then applied (the table money is set in advance by the club and can ob- viously vary based on session type, membership status, type of payment, etc).
This is a sample of one of the screens that is generat- ed for the director after the import. It lists the play- ers by table – showing what’s initially picked up and where things can be changed before the charges are applied:
MYABF UPDATE with Julian Foster
Page: 24
Australian Bridge Federation Ltd. Newsletter: June 2025