Coworking operators run through a huge load of issues on a daily basis - given that they have to deal with so many offices and people occupying their space. These issues can get worse when the operator tries to expand their business: integrating newer business needs with their existing system can be a difficult task.

Any rapidly-expanding coworking business would face these challenges:

• 
  Issues relating to communication between operation teams across multiple locations
• 
  Lack of a proper and timely complaint redressal procedure
• 
  Irregularities in meeting room bookings

However, these are all solvable by employing a competent PMS, which bumps up retention rate and efficacy. This highlights the need for coworking spaces to adopt technological structures for maintaining their operations, rather than trying to stick to manual old ways. 

Here's the essential features a PMS supporting a coworking space should carry, and what a coworking operator needs to ensure ease in operations and business.

Streamlining the contract creation and renewal process

Maintaining a record of your business clients is crucial for a coworking business, to ensure timely payments and other contractual obligations to be borne by either party. 

If this is your  biggest challenge, you should look for a PMS that 

• 
  Handles data storage of your customers and staff
• 
  Can correctly tag documents, invoices and billing to concerned parties on the system
• 
  Can remind you of when to make timely contract renewals, and
• 
  Carries an e-signing integration, for a seamless, instant signature process.

Automatic Seating Allocation

A coworking PMS has the ability to auto-allocate seats or meeting rooms, precise to the client requirement. Instead of keeping manual logs of who sits where, an allocated seat - which is mapped to the occupancy calendar on the PMS - lets you know instead. This is a great way to prevent double bookings. 

Meeting Room booking

The booking of facilities can clash when there’s a large number of clientele to handle, much similar to how desk booking would have clashed too provided desk allocation was not included in the contract. A common platform comes to save the day by organising facility booking and its related data. Facilitybot is one such software that helps do this. The PMS automatically blocks out slots when a certain amenity has been booked. Additionally, if the operator wishes, credits could also be allocated to clients that they can use against booking of these facilities.

Facilities Management

Maintenance also becomes easier when the operator knows what desk is linked with the unit to be repaired, in the case of planned and preventative maintenance. For maintenance of a property-wide unit (like the centralised HVAC system) the PMS can facilitate reminders for when the repairs is to be carried out. This causes 

• 
  Time savings, and
• 
  Remedial action avoided to be taken for said units when they start to malfunction.

Automating billing and invoicing

It would be nightmarish if the coworking operator could not track extensive bills and invoices, be it for facility payments or renewals or vendor dues. With a PMS, an operator can avoid these concerns as the system automatically does it for them, as and when the invoice matures or the time to issue the invoice comes. 

These systems, aside from being timely, are also free of error, enabling accuracy of reporting. The operator can also choose to remind the other party in the invoice via email or notifying them on the app, ensuring communication as well. Zoho is a great software for coworking spaces trying to streamline their accounting and billing processes!

Integrations with door access providers

Most PMS solutions come integrated with other softwares and services that can cater to the operator’s needs. Say, an operator only wants access to meeting rooms be given to the employees of the registered office clients occupying that space. By using software integrated with an access system like Salto, this is made possible, and it allows for tightened security. 

Integrating the software with a preferred payments interface also helps with collections.

Good experience for member retention

In general, by placing technological upgrades with the aim to enhance both user and tenant experience, companies are inclined to have a better experience with the coworking space. Employee retention being a metric that defines the working space’s position in the market, a PMS can only be seen as beneficial from this viewpoint.

If you happen to be an operator interested in managing your coworking portfolio, check out MonkSpaces.Ai which offer all the above features and more - and if you’re still not convinced by this tagline, read our success stories here.