Take Bookings Online

Accept or decline bookings with one click

Managing bookings currently takes you quite a few steps. Even if you get enquiries online, you may be doing some or all of the following when you take a booking.

1. Asking a set of booking questions on a form or over the phone
2. Getting T&Cs signed or a hirer contract signed
3. Emailing the customer to confirm the booking
4. Checking the availability and blocking it out
5. Taking a deposit or payment upfront and sending a receipt
6. Taking a security bond
7. Sending access instructions

This means it can take anywhere from 20 to 60 minutes to do all the steps involved. At SpacetoCo, we have learned that if you make it easy for people to book - then they will book more. Simple. Our process takes less than 5 minutes.

The key to a fast booking is to make sure both the customer and the host have all the information they need to make a decision. For customers, this means being able to check availability, see simple clear pricing, and see all the details about the space. For hosts, we collect all the important information from your customers through our simple and intuitive checkout. Hosts can even set up to 8 yes/no questions that are specific to each of your spaces. And, we capture all the customers details - no more mistakes writing down email addresses over a dodgy phone line while multitasking.

When you get a booking enquiry, all you need to do is choose to accept or decline. If you accept, all of the above steps are taken care of. If you decline, we let the customer know with the reason you provide.

All your booking requests in one list

Where do you get enquiries from at the moment? Email? Walk-ins, Facebook? Phone? Web Form? This can mean you're dealing with a LOT of back and forth enquiries and bookings data in lots of different places. This can get especially tricky if you're working in a team. Sometimes emails get lost the process or someone forgets to reply and you might have lost a potential customer, or worse, created a double booking!

Automated confirmation emails

Even after a booking has been confirmed, there is still a lot of pesky emails that need to get sent. Things like, how to access the space, what to bring, the rules, and reminding customers of their booking. When you accept a booking through SpacetoCo, not only do we send the email confirmation which contain all the information a customer needs to know before their booking, but we also send automated reminders for the week of their booking. This reduces the risk of no-shows and is a nice touch for your customers.

One-click cancellation & refunds

Unfortunately cancellations are a normal and expected part of the bookings process. Life doesn't always go to plan.

What's especially annoying about cancellations is that they involve work even though you're not receiving any money. You have to change the calendar, refund each payment and bond, confirm back with each customer. All that work and no pay is not what you signed up for. When you take a booking through SpacetoCo, we make cancellations effortless for the space owner to handle. You choose a cancellation period that you're happy with (e.g. 7 days before the booking) and we let the customer self-cancel up to that point. When your customer cancels, they are refunded in full, the receipts are updated and you're both notified. The calendar is unblocked and hopefully you can refill the slot. After the cancellation period has passed, it's up to your discretion to cancel the booking on their behalf and grant a refund. You're always in control.

Cancellations in times of COVID-19

It's possible that we're going to be dipping in and out of lockdowns for some time. When a lockdown occurs, it's stressful enough to have to deal with closing up your space and sorting out staff. Manually canceling and refunding a multitude of bookings is the last thing that you want to do. The good news is SpacetoCo is pandemic-ready for bulk cancellations. In March 2020, we experienced firsthand how much easier it is for centres to deal with lockdowns by using our automatic refunds feature. You can cancel all your bookings in a matter of minutes, with all refunds and paperwork taken care of.

As an added bonus you can access your bookings and availability data from anywhere - so enabling bookings staff to work from home is easily achieved.

You can also generate a report on revenue lost through cancellations. This is critical for COVID funding or JobKeeper payments.