Seat booking software and seating software are two records that have to agree, and offices that buy one without the other find out on a Monday. Seat booking is the daily row: this person has this seat, desk or space on this day, whether it came through an office space reservation system, a workspace booking system, a space booking system or facilities booking software for the shared rooms and areas. Seating software is the standing allocation: this team has these seats on this floor, kept in office seating software, office seat allocation software or the office seating chart software the manager draws the stack plan in. The booking has to sit inside the allocation, and the allocation has to sit inside the inventory, and this guide is the three records in that order.
The inventory, then the allocation, then the booking
The inventory is every floor, room and seat position with its area and its use. The allocation assigns positions to teams: marketing has 24 desks on three. The booking puts a person on one of marketing's 24 for a day. Each layer is a claim about the one below it, and seat booking software that lets a booking land on a seat the allocation does not hold, or an allocation float free of the inventory, produces a stack plan that adds up to more seats than exist. Change the seat count on a floor and both layers above should complain.
Facilities scheduling: the shared rooms and areas
Facilities scheduling covers the spaces that are booked by the hour rather than the day, project rooms, quiet rooms, the training suite, and the record is the same row with a time on it. What it is not, on this hub, is meeting room booking with displays and calendars, which is another product with another buyer. A space booking system that keeps the desk row and the room row in the same table gives the utilization figure for both from one export; one that keeps them apart gives two figures nobody can add.
The count the bookings become
84 in on an average day against 140 seats is 60% utilization; 126 on the busiest day is 90%; 14 seats are spare; the attendance supports 7 seats per 10 people. A workspace booking system earns its price by producing that table by seat and by day; the free space utilization worksheet on this site works the figures from the two counts you enter. The office seating chart is then a drawing of the allocation with the attendance laid over it, which is the honest version of a stack plan.
What HardFM keeps of the three
The inventory, the allocation and the desk bookings, with shared and assigned seats side by side and the ratio visible, and the counts that fall out, all exportable, for $24 a month for the whole team. It does not draw the seating chart, book meeting rooms or sign in visitors, and it publishes no other vendor's figures; those are other products and other pages.
Questions people ask about seat booking software
What is the difference between seat booking software and office seating software?
Seat booking is the daily row, a person on a seat on a day; office seating software is the standing allocation of seats to teams. The booking has to sit inside the allocation and the allocation inside the inventory, or the stack plan adds up to seats that do not exist.
Does an office space reservation system count the floor?
Only if it exports the reservations as a table by seat and day; that table is the attendance count. The free space utilization worksheet works the utilization and the sharing ratio from the counts you enter, whatever produced them.
Is facilities booking software the same as room booking?
Not here. Facilities scheduling on this hub is the shared rooms and areas booked by the hour as part of the same record as the desks. Meeting room booking with displays and calendars is a separate product with its own buyer, and HardFM does not do it.