Meeting room and desk booking for coworking spaces

Meeting room and desk booking in a coworking space works when each bookable space is set up as a resource with its own availability, price and rules, and each membership plan states what a member can book and how much is included. Hot desks, dedicated desks, private offices, meeting rooms and event spaces each behave differently, so they need different settings.

The rest is policy: how credits work, what non-members pay, who can bring guests, how access follows a booking and how all of it reaches the right invoice. Settle those rules before you configure software, because the software will enforce whatever you give it.

What should a coworking space make bookable?

Start by listing every space and deciding how it is sold. The main types work differently:

• Hot desks are sold by the day or half day against a pool of desks. Members book a place on the floor, and the limit is the number of desks available.
• Dedicated desks and private offices are assigned to a member or company for the length of their agreement. They rarely need a daily booking flow, but they must show as occupied so nobody else is sold the same space.
• Meeting rooms and phone booths are booked by the slot, with a capacity, an equipment list and a buffer for turnaround between meetings.
• Event and training spaces are booked for longer blocks, often after an enquiry, with room hire, catering and layout to agree.

Put turnaround time on the room itself as a buffer. If a room needs 15 minutes of tidying after each meeting, the system should hold that time automatically so back-to-back bookings cannot squeeze it out.

How do meeting room credits and allowances work?

Many coworking memberships include some meeting room time. Operators usually express it in one of two ways: a fixed number of hours per month, or a credit balance where each room costs a set number of credits per hour. Credits are more flexible because a large boardroom can cost more than a four-person room without a separate allowance for each.

Say a plan includes 10 credits a month, a four-person room costs one credit per hour and the boardroom costs three. A member who books the boardroom for two hours uses six credits and has four left for smaller rooms that month.

Before launch, decide:

• Whether unused credits roll over or expire at the end of the billing period
• Whether a company's credits are pooled across its team or held by each person
• What happens when the allowance runs out: a member rate charged to the card on file, or a line on the next invoice
• Whether peak hours cost more credits than quiet ones
• How late a member can cancel and still get the credits back

How should you price meeting rooms for members and non-members?

A simple structure has three prices for each room: included in the allowance, a member rate once the allowance is used, and a public rate for non-members. Non-members usually pay in full when they book because there is no account to bill later. Members can be charged at booking or billed with their monthly membership, which keeps overage on one invoice.

Decide which rooms appear to the public at all. Some operators keep their best rooms for members during working hours and open them to outside bookings in the evening or at weekends. That protects the member benefit and still earns something from rooms that would otherwise sit empty.

How should guests and building access work?

Members bring clients to meetings, so reception needs to know who is arriving and whom they are visiting. Pre-registered guests save a queue at the front desk, and a limit on guest passes per membership stops one member's allowance turning into free desk space for a whole team.

Access should follow membership and booking status. When a membership ends or is suspended, door access should end with it. If your access control system can open a meeting room only for the booked slot, connect it to the booking record so that a cancelled booking also removes access.

How do you bill companies as well as individual members?

A coworking space often has two kinds of customer: the person using the desk and the company paying for it. A team of eight on one agreement should get one invoice addressed to the company, with seat fees, meeting room overage and any extras on the same document. Some companies pay a flat fee for an office; others pay per seat, which changes as they hire.

Keep negotiated prices on the company's account so that every booking made by its staff picks up the right rate. Store the billing contact separately from the members, because the person who pays the invoice often works in finance and may never visit the building.

How Tiquo handles desk and meeting room booking

Tiquo manages desks, private offices, meeting rooms and event spaces as bookable resources, and a booking can only be made when the space is free, which keeps two teams out of the same room. Each space can be set up as a named instance, such as Boardroom or Desk 12, and the service sets buffers before and after each booking, minimum and maximum advance booking and a cancellation deadline. The Meeting Rooms template in Simple Mode sets up bookable rooms with their prices, and the office and coworking page has the full overview.

In Tiquo, company accounts sit alongside individual members. A membership plan can be assigned to a company, and the customers linked to that company inherit it. Customers are linked automatically when their email address matches one of the company's registered domains. The company profile shows its linked customers, orders and total spend, store credit can be held on the company's profile and applied to its orders, and a discount can be attached directly to the company account for negotiated rates.

Members book through a Tiquo booking flow on your website or a hosted page, or through the customer portal, where they can also see upcoming bookings, invoices and receipts and their membership status. Booking flows send confirmations and reminders automatically, and staff can book on a member's behalf from the dashboard or a mobile device.

If you are comparing workspace tools, our posts on OfficeRnD alternatives and Nexudus alternatives cover what changes when a space also runs a café, events or wellness.