Hello!

Nice to meet you. 👋

You’re here because your local community facility has decided to make it easier for everyone to manage their bookings by using SpacetoCo.

You’re also here because you are one of those special folks who spend their time running programs, activities, classes and events - and therefore you’re a regular booker at a community space. People like you make things happen, bring people together and make our communities stronger. We salute you for your work. 😇

We created SpacetoCo so that community organisers and community spaces can remove the ‘back & forth’ and admin of managing bookings. Because we know your time should be spent on what really matters - building your community and doing what moves you.

This page is a one stop shop for information about what to expect as your facility moves to online bookings, how it will all work and why it will make your life easer.

Have a read through, or jump to an area you want to know more about by clicking on a section.

Keep doing what you’re doing,

The team at SpacetoCo & your local community space.

Why is my community centre moving to online bookings?

There are many reasons why community spaces decide to move to an online process to mange their bookings, but the top 3 are:

It saves everyone time - if you can see and manage your bookings online - it’s much quicker than back & forth emails
It can help community centres get more bookings. The more bookings they get, the more revenue they can create, and the more they can invest in the facility.
It makes payments and invoicing much more accurate and predictable.

For more information on why community spaces take bookings online, check out our guide here.

If you pay monthly for your bookings (we call this Regular or Verified bookings)

You can have up to 3 year’s bookings scheduled
You can cancel any booking’s you don’t use, and you will not be billed
You are only invoiced for the bookings you used.
You can check your monthly bill total at any time
You will receive invoices at the same time every month and you can download and review them online any time
Your payment will be automated by card payment or direct debit - so no more remembering to pay!

You know when...

You need to find a new community space and you have to call or email each space separately to find out what’s available, how much it is and whether it’s suitable...

You've got a quick question about how much your bill is going to be and you can't get time to call the centre when they're open...

Your new committee or team member wants to see all the bookings you have, but it's not written down anywhere...

The invoice comes at different times each month and sometimes there is mistakes that need to be queried...

You're spending your precious free time paying invoices and sorting admin for your community centre bookings...

You've paid a big cash deposit as a security bond. It's never been needed, and your group could really do with that cash...

...and you probably know that...

Community spaces are drowning in admin. There is so much manual effort involved in taking bookings, creating invoices, emailing out reminders and checking availability.

Often community spaces have peaks and troughs in demand - some times and days are super busy, other’s are quiet.

Most community spaces have the ambition to get more customers, as funding is tight, grants are becoming harder to get and they rely on the revenue from space hire.

Community spaces often need to report bookings data to authorities like Council or Trusts. Paper heavy processes make this data hard to get - and again take up time.

How will my regular bookings be managed on SpacetoCo?

Very soon you’re going to get that life changing gift of TIME back in your life. No more ringing up to check how much you owe and no more scrabbling through your emails to check what booking you made and when.

So let’s go through how it all works.

Getting set up

If you’re an existing regular user of a community facility that is moving to SpacetoCo, or maybe you’re about to become a regular user of a community space that is already using Spacetoco, you will need to complete a one time set up activity.

Your community centre will communicate the exact instructions and timelines, however the process will use these Steps:

Step 1: You will receive a link to register as a regular user.

Step 2: You will register for an account and you will complete a short online form that takes your details and most importantly your bank or payment card details.

Step 3: Your centre will review and approve your application and will add in your regular bookings

Step 4: You’ll receive an email and can log in and see all your bookings online.

A detailed guide to this process is here.

That’s it - you can keep using/accessing the centre as normal, except now you will be able to see and cancel all your bookings in one place, and you’ll be on a monthly payment schedule.

How do payments & invoicing work?

This is probably the biggest change to how you’re used to working with the community space. When your regular bookings have been entered into SpacetoCo, your invoicing and payments will be automated.

Don’t Panic! It’s completely secure, much easier than manual invoicing and far more accurate. It will save you time and make it easier and more predicable to manage your community groups finances. More on why this is a good thing and some FAQs are below.

So here’s how your regular payments will work ongoing:

At the end of a month where you have had bookings, you will receive a bookings summary and the total of what you will be charged.

On the 7th of the next month, you’ll get a formal invoice with all the details

On the 10th payment will be taken from your nominated card or bank account

Here’s a diagram showing the flow:

More information about how this all works is here.

To put your mind at ease:

You can always see what your running monthly total is in your dashboard
As long as you’ve cancelled bookings you haven’t used, you will only be charged for what you’ve actually used
If there is any mistake in the booking summary, you have 7 days to query it or get changes made. You can also use this time to approve the invoice, if this is part of your committee processes.
The payment providers we use (Go Cardless & Stripe) are completely secure and trusted by large organisations like Xero and Shopify

How do I manage my bookings ongoing?

So you’ve got your account set up, you can see your bookings and you’re eagerly awaiting your first automated invoice and payment 🙂

So what next?

How can I see my bookings?

At anytime of day or night (yep we do get people checking at 3am!) you can log in to your dashboard and see all your future and past bookings.

More info on this is here.

How do I cancel?

You can cancel and have the booking removed from your monthly bill. You can do this any time within the cancellation policy of the specific space you have booked. For example, if the policy is 7 days, then you can cancel any time up to 7 days prior to the booking. After this time has passed, you can contact the centre and it’s up to them to decide if they are OK to cancel on your behalf.

You can see how to cancel here.

Can I change a booking?

If you need to change a booking, like adding an additional 30 mins, you can message the space directly and ask them to do this for your booking. They will advise if this is possible, and you’ll see an email with confirmation of the change.

Can I make new bookings?

You can always make new bookings at your regular space or at other SpacetoCo spaces, by going through our marketplace and doing a casual or upfront payment booking. This means your card will be charged when the booking is accepted, and this new booking will appear in your dashboard - but won’t be on your monthly bill, as you’ve already paid.

SpacetoCo does have the ability for regular bookers to add new bookings to their monthly bill. Your centre will have to give you permissions to do this, and will communicate if this is part of their bookings policy. You make these bookings through your dashboard - so that you don’t need to pay upfront.

More information on how to make these bookings is here.

How can I see my invoices?

You can log in to your dashboard and view and download any current or past invoices whenever you want.

Here’s how you do it.

How can I contact my community centre?

You can of course call or visit your centre to chat, however we recommend using the Messages feature in your SpacetoCo dashboard. The benefit of this is that it keeps all your conversations and questions about your booking in one neat location. You can share documents or photos. If you have multiple people using your organisations account, they can also see all this information without the need to dig through or forward lots of email threads. The system will notify you via email when you have a reponse, so you don’t miss anything.

Here’s how you use messages.

Who can access and manage my bookings?

Your organisation will have one main account which will be linked to an email address that you would like to receive all notifications, reminders and invoices. You can then add personal accounts to also be able to access and manage your bookings, who have their own log in.

Can I change my email or bank details?

You can log in to your account and change things like your email, password, address and payment method at any time. This is particularly handy if you lose a payment card.

Here’s how to make those changes.

How can I get help?

If you find this whole computer-digital-technology malarchy a bit fiddly/scary/annoying - do not worry! Help is at hand

The website has been designed to be as easy to use as a website like Facebook. It doesn’t require any training and it’s already being used by 100’s of community users - just like you.

However, if you do get stuck you can:

Search our help site. It's written in plain English with lots of pictures.
Use the Chat symbol (bottom right on the SpacetoCo website) to get help from a real person
Contact your centre for any questions about your invoices or bookings through the messaging tool in your dashboard (or give them a call)
Your centre may have organised ‘drop in’ times to get help with your application

Questions, Challenges and FAQs

How much does it cost to use SpacetoCo?

It’s free for you to use SpacetoCo to manage your bookings and make bookings. The cost of being on the SpacetoCo platform is covered by your facility. Our pricing model is designed to be offset by increases in bookings revenue from increased usage of the facility. We want to make it affordable and a no-brainer for every community space to get the benefit of a space sharing marketplace and time saving automation.

Will the price I pay for my bookings change?

SpacetoCo does not decide how much room hire fees are. This is controlled by the community space, and they will inform you if there are any changes.

Is it secure? Where are my payment details being stored?

SpacetoCo are providing the online booking system and they use two secure payment systems to process the monthly payments. If you opt to pay by card, this will be handled by Stripe. Stripe is a fully PCI compliant payment gateway that is trusted and used by Xero, Amazon, shopify, Zoom and many more.

If you opt to pay by direct debit, this will be handled by GoCardless. Go Cardless is a secure platform that handles direct debits directly with all New Zealand banks. It is also used and trusted by Xero and compliant with all NZ and Australian banks.

More info on secure payments is here.

I’m not very good at technology- will I be able to use the system?

Yes - it’s as easy as using Facebook and doesn’t require any training. There are many groups just like yours using it across NZ and Australia. There is also plenty of help and support available (from real people) if you need it.

My organisation does not allow us to set up direct debits and we don’t have a payment card?

The goal of this process is to make it more efficient for you to book & pay for the space your organisation uses at the centre. After all, you set up your group to build your community - not to do admin. Most committees are ran by volunteers, so we want to give you a small nudge to think about how you can save yourselves time and automate some of the things that people don’t enjoy doing.

Although it can feel a bit nerve wracking to have an automated payment, rather than approving and actioning an invoice, you can still have risk control - but with less human error. If your normal process is to approve invoices before paying them at a committee, can you remember a time when you ever didn’t approve or pay a genuine & correct invoice?

Therefore we think it’s easier to manage the exception when they come up, rather than creating process that isn’t required. You can always query the invoice and have changes made before payment is taken anytime before the 10th of the month, and you can see what is owing online at anytime. This means you can still approve the payment, you just don’t have to make the payment.

Any bank account has the capability to accept direct debit - and the system will make it easy for you to authorise this.

Can I still pay by cheque, bank transfer or cash

If you’re set up as a regular booker on SpacetoCo the only payment options are direct debit or credit/debit card charge.

We don’t accept the following forms of payment because:

Cheques- will be decommissioned next year in New Zealand.

Cash - it’s a liability and a risk for community spaces to handle cash on the premises. We want to encourage safe and secure payment methods, and save people the time and effort of going back & forth from the bank.

Paying the invoice through a bank transfer (i.e. you make the payment, not an automated direct debit) - The biggest time saver for both bookers and spaces is automating payment collection. If we can create a neat predictable payment collection flow, everyone wins. No-one has to remember to make the payment, no-one has to check the invoice has been paid, no-one has to chase the invoice and no-one has to manually reconcile accounts receivable and accounts payable.

Hello!

Nice to meet you. 👋

Section Guide

Why is my community centre moving to online bookings?

What are the benefits to me and my community group or business?

What is SpacetoCo?

How will my regular bookings be managed on SpacetoCo?

How do payments and invoices work?

How do I manage my bookings ongoing?

How can I get help?

Questions, Challenges and FAQs

Why is my community centre moving to online bookings?

What are the benefits for me and my community group or business?

What is SpacetoCo?

You know when...

...and you probably know that...

What’s the one thing all these problems have in common?

They are all taking up time that organisers and spaces could be using to do the stuff that really matters - growing your impact in the community!

SpacetoCo is a community space finding and booking platform that aims to make making and managing your bookings easy-peasy.

What we do...

This is so you wonderful humans can do the interesting stuff.

Because who really wants to be paying invoices for their community organisation in their evenings and weekends?

We created SpacetoCo so that you can spend your precious time doing the things that matter for your community.

How will my regular bookings be managed on SpacetoCo?

Getting set up

How do payments & invoicing work?

How do I manage my bookings ongoing?

How can I get help?

Wow - you read all the way down here? Good work!

Questions, Challenges and FAQs

The End - you made it!