Running a successful coworking space comes with its fair share of challenges, and managing memberships is one of them. Keeping track of start dates, contract lengths, and notice periods for multiple members can quickly become an administrative nightmare, leaving little time for the essential human element of fostering a vibrant and engaged community.
Thankfully, there's a solution that can help automate many of these administrative tasks, allowing you to focus on building meaningful connections with your members. Coworking management software can be a game-changer for membership management, streamlining everything from member onboarding to contract renewals.
In this guide, we'll explore how you can use a coworking management platform to take your membership management to the next level. From simplifying member onboarding to tracking plans and payments, we'll provide practical tips and strategies to help you keep your flex space running like a well-oiled machine. With this guide, you'll be able to create a seamless and efficient membership management system that will help you build a thriving community of coworkers.
1. Checking Membership Plans Availability
The first step in managing memberships at a coworking space is checking plan availability. You need to know which seats and rooms are available every time a client shows up at your door. While relying on your memory might work for a small coworking space, it's not a scalable or reliable solution for most spaces.
The most common solution is to keep an excel file with a list of plans and track membership plans manually. This approach is free, but it requires a lot of manual work and can quickly become complicated and outdated. Plus, information about membership plans is separated from actual members, making it harder to keep track of everything.
Fortunately, modern coworking software offers a more efficient and reliable solution for membership management by helping organize all membership subscriptions in a simple and intuitive way. The platform automates routine tasks like member joining, booking, invoicing, and payments, freeing up your time to focus on building a vibrant coworking community.
Sign-up for plans on Spacebring coworking space software
Here are some of the key advantages of using coworking software for membership management:
- Free to use membership catalog
- Clean interface and thoughtful user experience
- Automation of key tasks, saving time and reducing errors
- Easy access to history and statistics via Analytics solution
- Opportunity to oversee members on the go with mobile apps
- Possibility of integration with access control systems
2. Keeping an Organized Community
The second step in putting memberships in control is keeping your community organized. Coworking spaces are all about community, and a well-organized membership listing is essential for community management. At first, it might seem like a simple task that can be handled with a spreadsheet, but as the number of members grows, so does the complexity of the task.
That's why having a robust coworking membership management system is crucial. It allows you to keep track of all your members in one place and provides valuable insights into how they use the space.
With a coworking membership management system, you can easily:
- Invite and manage all members in a centralized catalog.
- View members' plans, including start date, pricing, and any free hour credits they may have.
- Access meeting room booking history to better understand how members use the space.
- Keep track of payment status, history, and previous invoices.
By having a membership catalog that provides all this information in one place, managers can easily stay organized and on top of their community. This is especially important as the number of members grows, making it impossible to manage everything manually.
A coworking space management system like Spacebring provides all these features and more, making it an excellent choice for any coworking space looking to keep its community organized and thriving.
3. Invoicing Customers
Managing memberships involves a couple more essential steps, which are invoicing customers and receiving payments from them. Invoicing can be a time-consuming task that takes community managers away from more important aspects of their job. However, with the right coworking space management software, invoicing can be made simple and automatic.
For example, Spacebring' invoicing system is designed to streamline the invoicing process for both individual members and companies. After the administrator assigns a plan to a tenant, the system automatically generates monthly invoices that include all relevant charges such as rent fees, add-ons, bookings, shop orders, event passes, and more. Members can then pay for everything at once through the app, making it easier than ever to keep track of payments.
With Spacebring' invoicing system, you can free yourself from the hassle of manual invoicing and focus on providing the best possible coworking experience for your members. Plus, by automating invoicing, you can reduce errors and ensure that all charges are accurately and promptly billed, leading to better financial management for your coworking space.
4. Receiving Payments
There are various ways to receive payments from your customers, including bank transfers, POS terminals, and in-app online payments. Each option has its own set of advantages and disadvantages, and it's important to understand them before deciding which method to use.
Bank Transfer
Bank transfer is an old-school labor-intensive way of receiving payments. While it has the advantage of low fees (usually free), members need to manually transfer money, which can be inconvenient and may require continuous reminders.
Additionally, bank transfers don't allow for remote charging, making it challenging to charge members' accounts regularly. Administrators need to manually check whether everyone has paid, which can be time-consuming, and use a membership management system to track payments.
POS Terminal
POS terminals are commonly used in some countries, such as South Korea. They have moderate fees (usually less than 1%) and allow members to pay for services anytime. However, they require physical contact with the member to collect a payment, and there's a lot of manual tracking and checking similar to bank transfers. POS terminals can also be unreliable, with occasional signal problems or technical malfunctions.
If you're using bank transfers or a POS terminal, you can simplify payment tracking by using coworking software like Spacebring.
In-App Payments
In-app payments are the simplest way to handle payments for both administrators and members. Members can pay directly using their smartphones or computers, and payments are charged instantly with zero effort from the administrator. In-app payments are also automatically charged, making it easy to charge members' accounts regularly. Information is automatically passed to the membership management system, so there's no need to track anything manually.
The app also reminds members to pay unpaid invoices, and automatic "paid" status integration with an access control system allows for full business automation.
Finally, in-app payments involve fewer administrative errors, fewer returns, and fewer losses, since there's no need for admin involvement.
The only downside to in-app payments is relatively higher fees (usually 2-4%). However, the benefits of in-app payments far outweigh any cons, which is why more and more coworking spaces are opting to integrate in-app payments into their payment systems.
Takeaways
Utilizing innovative technologies can significantly improve customers' experience at your flexible workspace. The information provided above can help streamline membership management and free up valuable time for your community managers to focus on improving the quality of your services and encouraging collaboration among your members.
If you want to learn more about managing membership plans with Spacebring, schedule a free demo call with our product expert.
Thank you for reading, and we look forward to helping you create a more efficient and user-friendly coworking space!
