What is a booking app?
A booking app is just as simple as its name suggests: a mobile app you can use to manage bookings. But of course, there are apps and then there are apps, and here we’re going to talk about what we consider a smart booking app – something that goes a bit further than what you may have seen so far.
Because normally, when making bookings in communities that use an app, these tend to be very basic. So basic that they only allow you to set time slots for each facility you wish to book and mark that slot as booked or unbooked. Although this approach works for many communities, it soon falls short of the requirements needed to manage this type of facility properly.
We add intelligence to the booking process
For us, a smart booking app must have far more features than simply keeping a record of time slots each day. We believe it should include at least the following features:
- Different timetable each day. It must allow you to set a different timetable for each day of the week, with different time slots if required. For example, at weekends a padel court could be booked until later than on weekdays.
- Different time slots each day. Furthermore, the time slots defined can be of different durations, independently for each day.
- Blocking time slots. It is often necessary to block time slots, whether for maintenance or for special events such as classes, parties or meetings. Blocking should be permitted across dates, times and days of the week, and also defined using all three variables simultaneously. Returning to the previous example, blocking the padel court every Tuesday from 11:00 to 13:00 during May and June because classes are taking place is something that happens frequently in a community.
- Time slots with capacity limits. For certain facilities, it is not enough simply to allow the booking of a time slot; it should also be possible to manage capacity, which would mean that the number of people able to use the facility during a given time slot is controlled. A good example is often a small community gym, which should not have more than 5 people using it at the same time. To achieve this, the booking app must manage a booking list where, in addition to noting the desired time slot, it keeps track of the people who will be attending, enabling or disabling the booking if capacity is full.
- Usage limits. There is much to discuss here, but in residents’ associations it is standard practice for bookings to be limited per property, not per person, as communal charges are calculated per property (and its allocation) rather than per person living there. Therefore, booking limits must be controlled for each property in the community and, in addition to being able to withdraw booking permission from residents in arrears (which is already legally possible in Spain), the booking app must set limits on the use of the facilities. Usually, the number of days in advance that a booking can be made, the maximum number of bookings per day, and the maximum number of bookings for the days in advance are defined. Regulations vary widely from one community to another, but these variables can cover most of them.
- Flexible booking opening times. As mentioned above, usage limits must be definable, but these limits must also be based on flexible booking opening times. This allows, for example, the counter for these limits to be reset to zero at a specific time of day, or to be reset after the completion of each booking. This should be configurable for each Community.
With these requirements in place, we already have a booking app for communities that incorporates a degree of intelligence into its processes. In other words, it allows different options to be configured for each community so that it aligns as closely as possible with the booking regulations approved in their statutes.
What if we take the level of intelligence a step further?
But if we want to meet certain requirements of specific communities—which are often unique yet essential to their operation—our booking app must go even further. In addition to the above, it should include certain features that further enhance its intelligence:
- Cancellation and exemption periods. We believe it should be possible to define these periods for each facility. These would be a set of minutes during which bookings cannot be cancelled or during which established booking limits can be waived. In the first case, defining a booking cancellation period prevents residents from constantly booking and cancelling just a few minutes before the booking time. With the exemption period in the second case, we allow a facility that has not been booked to be rebooked by residents who have exceeded the established limits, all to maximise the use of the facilities.
- Cancellation notifications. Our smart booking app should notify residents if bookings for the time slots they are interested in are cancelled. For example, if a resident wants to book our padel court a week in advance and the desired slot is already booked, our app should notify us if the existing booking is cancelled and allow us to book it ourselves.
- Sharing bookings across multiple facilities. This happens more often than we’d like, and once again, padel courts are usually the most common example. In estates where there is more than one padel court, the regulations set limits on residents’ bookings for padel across both courts. In other words, a resident has limits on how often they can book one court or the other. Our app should allow bookings to be shared between both courts and apply the limits to both at the same time.
Now we really have a truly smart booking app. It is no longer simply about managing spaces, but adds features that make it far more useful for the purposes typically required by residents’ associations.
What if, instead of just making it smarter, we make it more comprehensive?
But it is not only possible to improve its intelligence; we can also make it more comprehensive so that it meets the needs of residents’ associations not only during the booking process, but also whilst the facilities are in use. And to do this, there are two recurring issues that often accompany bookings:
- Booking payments. Increasingly, we encounter cases where residents’ associations wish to charge a fee for the use of a facility or as a deposit for liability arising from such use. For example, associations often wish to charge residents who book the paddle tennis court after a certain time in the afternoon because the court lights need to be switched on, which entails an additional cost. It is also common for a deposit to be required when booking a communal events room, which is refunded once the room has been checked and found to be in good condition after use. In either case, the ability to make payments linked to bookings is a complementary feature that adds further value to our booking app.
- Access management. Another requirement that arises implicitly from the use of community facilities is the control of access to them. We want to control and limit who can make a booking, but we also want to control who accesses our facilities. Our booking app could control the facility’s electronic access system so that access is only granted to those who have previously booked it. And not just access; we could also ensure that, returning to the earlier example of the lights, these can be switched on and off automatically if the booking includes the use of the lights.
These two solutions serve to enhance our booking app and take it to a level of intelligence that not only meets the necessary requirements of residents’ associations, but also resolves the issues associated with their use through payment and access. With these added solutions, our app for residents’ associations becomes a smart booking app that meets all the needs of a modern residents’ association.
