Book and secure the common spaces
of your residential building

Which common spaces in a residential building can be opened to booking?

Any common space used individually and for a limited time can be opened to booking: the common room, the laundry room, visitor parking, the bike store, the roof terrace or a shared garden. Each one becomes a space with its own calendar, usage rule, rate or deposit, and access point. Everything is managed from the same screen.

• The common room: booking by the day or half-day, deposit, condition report backed by the history.
• Visitor parking: spaces booked by time window, visitor code, access ends automatically. See parking space booking.
• The bike store and laundry room: access by resident badge, usage time windows, no more spare keys to manage.
• The roof terrace: limited time slots, usage rule shown before booking, history of who used it.

The full cycle: booking, deposit, access, condition report

Booking software for a residential building’s common room has to cover all four stages of use, not just the first. The booking sets the date. The deposit or usage fee is collected before the space is used. Access opens at the start of the time slot and closes at the end. The condition report is backed by the time-stamped entry log, and by camera images if the building is equipped.

This last point settles the most awkward question for a managing agent: withholding or returning the deposit. When the history shows who was using the room between two bookings, the decision rests on facts. The condition report and deposit page explains this approach in detail.

The role of the managing agent and the residents’ council

The managing agent administers the common areas and carries out the decisions of the general meeting. The residents’ council assists the managing agent and oversees their management. In booking software, this division of roles is simple: the managing agent sets up the spaces and the voted rules, and the residents’ council consults the usage history and income. The official information sheets describe the duties of the managing agent and the residents’ council.

For a professional managing agent who looks after several buildings, each building has its own spaces, its own rules and its own history. Usage income – deposits and fees – is linked to the booking that generated it and can be exported for the building’s accounts.

Co-ownership rules and general meeting decisions

Opening a common room to paid bookings, setting a deposit or installing access control affects the use of the common areas. These decisions are generally a matter for the general meeting of co-owners, and the usage rule must remain consistent with the co-ownership rules. The software applies what the meeting has decided.

In practice, the voted resolution becomes a setting: deposit amount, any fee, maximum duration, permitted time windows, who is allowed. Every booking applies it in the same way. Calling the general meeting follows the usual rules, and our guide to booking common areas goes through these points one by one.

Resident badges and visitor codes

A resident comes back to the bike store or laundry room every week. A visitor comes to the car park once. These two uses call for two different kinds of access. The permanent badge suits the resident: it is active on the spaces and time windows that are theirs, and is deactivated when they move out, with nothing to collect. The code suits the visitor: it arrives with the booking and is only valid for the time slot.

The two coexist on the same equipment. A badge reader and a keypad can control the same door or the same gate. Residents keep their habits, visitors have nothing to install. The key and access management page explains what happens to a bunch of keys when every right of entry has a set duration.

What does the residents’ council see?

The residents’ council sees how the common spaces are actually used: which bookings took place, by which flat, for which time window, for what deposit or fee, and which entries were recorded. It also sees what did not happen: a room never booked on Sundays, visitor spaces permanently occupied. This view replaces hearsay with facts, without exposing more data than necessary.

This transparency has a practical consequence: general meeting decisions on the common spaces can be based on a year of actual use rather than an impression. It falls within the GDPR framework, with data hosted in France and access to the history limited to authorised persons. For a look at real-life situations, building by building, see the residential buildings use case.