Coworking space software: memberships, desks and meeting rooms

Your plans are the product, so the billing module comes first. Load every plan you sell today. Include hot desk, dedicated desk, private cabin, virtual address and the odd custom deal agreed over coffee, such as a startup that pays for six desks but uses four.

Then check the awkward cases. They always appear. A member joins on the 19th, another moves from a hot desk to a cabin mid-month, and a third pauses for six weeks. The system should handle each without a manual credit note.

Run a full invoice cycle on test data before you pay anything. Do not skip this. Open the PDF a member would receive and read every line, from the plan name and the period covered to the credit balance and the bank details.

Desk and room booking should feel like a calendar, not a form. Staff want to drag a booking, members want to pick a slot on a phone, and neither wants a double booking.

Test the clash. It is the oldest bug in booking software. Book the board room for 3 pm from the admin screen, then try the same slot from the member app. Check buffer time between bookings and whether the room calendar syncs with Google or Outlook.

Day passes need their own path: a link, a payment, a QR code and an entry at the door. If front-desk staff must retype the visitor’s name, the flow is not finished.

Door access is where billing meets the real world. The software should tell the reader at the door who may enter and when, using a card, a QR code or a phone pass.

Test a lapsed member properly. When an invoice is unpaid past your grace period, does the card stop working, and can you override it for one day? Ask what happens if the internet drops at the door controller.

The portal is the member’s front door online. It should show invoices, bookings, credits, guest invites and a place to raise a printer or air conditioning complaint.

Spreadsheets hide the shape of the business. Software should show it at a glance, with filters for date range, ticket type and building. Occupancy by desk type tells you which product sells and which sits empty.

Room utilisation by hour shows whether the 11 am slots are always full and the 4 pm slots always free. That points to a pricing or promotion change. Churn by month and the age of unpaid invoices show where the money leaks.

Ask for a sandbox, not a slide deck. Create five fictional members across five plans, book a clashing room, issue a day pass, run an invoice cycle and expire one card.

Score every step as pass, work-around or fail. Be strict. A work-around that needs a developer counts as a fail for a small team. No exceptions.

Also check data ownership. Members, invoices and bookings must export to a spreadsheet whenever you ask, so leaving a vendor never means starting from zero.