Intro to Calendaring Software: 7+ Benefits for Coworking Spaces

Is your workspace team using a manual calendaring system? Are you trying to manage reservations and schedules with spreadsheets and shared docs?

Maybe it makes sense for you to use a manual system because you’re small enough to manage each booking in-person. 

Or maybe you’ve had a systems meltdown when using an online program and you feel more comfortable using an in-house system.

Or maybe you were unsuccessful teaching members how to use a real-time system and you ended up with members booking large rooms for small meetings, small rooms for large meetings, or any other number of missteps.

Or, maybe the investment in a software solution for calendaring doesn’t seem worth the expense.

More likely though, you’re buried in todos and don’t know all the options available to you—let alone which ones will work for you and your team.

But, if you plan to scale, you’ll need to automate your calendaring at some point. So you may as well set it up now.

Benefits of Real Time Calendaring for Coworking Spaces

Online calendaring offers a host of benefits for coworking space operators. At the top of the list is that it takes a todo off the plate of your overextended community managers. This is a huge win in and of itself.

It can also help sell coworking and virtual office memberships, boost meeting room revenue, and give members and potential members a more seamless and convenient experience.

Here are seven more benefits to online calendaring:

1. It sets an expectation for the customer by being open and transparent about real-time availability of spaces and services.
2. It reduces the time and resources needed to reserve rooms by eliminating the need for emails or phone calls when booking.
3. It frees up staff time, allowing community managers to focus on other needs and community building.
4. Clients can see availability and make bookings 24/7/365 without being constricted by the space’s business hours
5. Most unified booking platforms have integrated billing systems to streamline payment collection which removes the hassle of chasing down payments.
6. While technology is not always fool-proof, it’s more reliable than manually keeping the information about bookings.  
7. Required fields such as name, time, date, attendees, contact info are safeguards these platforms have to prevent overlapping or booking errors.
8. Users are requiring it. Maybe not the attorney member that has been there forever and is quite happy asking the front desk staff to make the booking, but pretty much everyone else.

If it’s not real-time, many won’t book, particularly corporate users. If you don’t use a system that can provide real-time booking and that can communicate to a platform like CloudVO or Liquidspace, you cut yourself off from one of the most profitable side of your business.

Syncing Your Calendaring Systems to Platform Partners and Resellers

It’s now easier than ever to sync calendars to reservations, scheduling and booking platforms through API integration.

Through CloudVO, you can sync calendars via Google Calendar. Once you’ve officially signed up your locations through our partner portal, you can add Google credentials to each listing on the platform.  To do this, log into our portal www.cloudvo.com and access the location(s) you would like to sync.  Each room can be synced to its respective calendar and clients can start booking in real-time.

If Google Calendar integration is not available with an API for your specific platform at this time, partners can send us credentials to access their platform where we can make bookings on your behalf.  While this still isn’t “real-time” on our end, it does eliminate half of the communication needed to confirm bookings manually.

This can increase the number of leads and bookings that are received from channel partners because it’s faster than manually confirming by phone and email.

Our mission at CloudVO is to provide a seamless interface between your calendar and our platform so potential members and customers can book space in your workplace quickly and painlessly.

Have questions about which online booking platforms are the best for coworking operators? Already a partner and want to sync your calendar for seamless real-time bookings? Contact us to learn more.

Cat Johnson is a storyteller for the coworking movement and founder of Convos – virtual monthly group discussions amongst space operators on topics relevant to the coworking industry. Sign-up for the next free Coworking Convo and join the discussion!