User manual

How Desk & Park works

A complete guide to booking desks and parking spaces, checking in with a QR code and managing the office — for employees, Board Members and administrators.

Introduction Roles For employees Board Member Administrator Kiosks Key terms FAQ

Introduction

What is Desk & Park

Desk & Park is a platform for booking desks and parking spaces in a hybrid office. Everything happens on an interactive map — you pick a free space, book it for a chosen day and check in on-site with a QR code. The app runs in the browser and on your phone, with no installation. What you see depends on your role.

Roles

Roles and permissions

Employee

Books desks and parking, checks in and manages their own reservations.

Member

Board Member

Has a permanent space. Can release it for a given day and review Board Reports.

Board Member

Administrator

Configures locations, maps and spaces, and sees full analytics.

Admin

Getting started

Signing in

1
Open your company address
Enter the app address in a browser on your computer or phone.
2
Enter your email and password
Use your work email address. You set the password from the link in the welcome email.
3
Confirm the 2FA code
If your company requires two-factor login, copy the code from your authenticator app.

Add to your home screen

On your phone, add the page to your home screen — then QR-code check-in is always at hand.

For employees

Everyday use

The three things you do most often: book a desk, book parking, and check in on-site.

Booking a desk

1
Go to reservations
From the left menu, choose Reservations / the office map.
2
Pick a day
Set the date you want a space for. Today is the default.
3
Click a free desk
On the map, green dots are free, red ones are taken.
4
Confirm the booking
Check the space code (e.g. D-12) and the hours, then confirm.

Floor plan of an office with numbered desks D-1 to D-28 and meeting rooms marked as pins on the plan. — FreeTakenclick a pin to book

Two taps from the dashboard

The "Book a desk" and "Reserve parking" tiles on the dashboard open the booking form directly, with that type already chosen and a date filled in for you: today if you have nothing booked yet, otherwise your next working day — and the form says which it picked and why, so you can change it before confirming.

Booking parking

Works just like a desk, only on the parking map. Spaces have codes P-1, P-2… and spots with an EV charger are additionally marked.

EV chargers

If you need charging, look for spaces with a charger icon — their availability shows on the map just like regular ones.

Who is in the office

On the Dashboard, right under Quick Book, one panel answers "who is coming in that day — and where?". Pick a day and a floor: every booked desk carries its person — photo or initials ringed in the team’s colour, with a green dot once they check in — and the roster beside the map lists the same people grouped by team. The Desks | Parking toggle swaps the floor plan for the parking map, so “who is parking today” gets the same answer — EV chargers and Board-Member spots included. The toggle appears when your organization has both kinds of maps; a parking-only setup opens straight on the parking view. Clicking a person highlights their space on the map, and tapping a pin highlights the person on the list.

The who-is-in-office panel in the Desks view: a floor plan with avatars pinned to booked desks, and a roster grouped by team on the right. — Desks view — the floor plan with people on it, and the team roster beside it.

The same panel switched to the Parking view: a parking map with avatars on booked stalls, EV bays marked, and the roster on the right. — Parking view — the same day answered on the parking map, EV bays included.

Same privacy rules as the booking map

People who opted out of appearing on maps (Settings), or an organization with the map switch off (System Config), are simply absent from the data — the server never sends their names, so the panel shows no hole where a name should be.

Booking a meeting room

If your office has meeting rooms, they appear on the map too. Pick one and book it for a chosen time slot — the same click-to-book flow as a desk, and the room shows up in your reservations.

You can also book a room without opening the app first — scan the QR sticker by the door.

1
Scan the sticker
Point the camera at the QR code on the door. You do not have to be on any particular screen.
2
Room free — you are in
The room is booked for the next half-hour slot and you are checked in straight away. One move, no extra confirmation.
3
Room busy — you get the next slot
The screen says until when it is taken and offers the first free slot, for example "Book 12:00–12:30". Nothing is booked until you tap it.

Slots start on the hour or half hour

Scan at 11:14 and you get 11:30–12:00 — not 11:14–11:44. Room calendars are read at a glance, and bookings squeezed between round hours turn the day into a mosaic with unusable gaps. Scan at 11:31 and the slot is 12:00–12:30, even though the room is empty; if you need those in-between minutes, book normally and pick the hours yourself.

See who has the room today

Under the scan screen there is the room's schedule for the day — who booked it, from when and for how long. It is the one place the app shows other people's bookings, because standing in front of a closed door the first question is how long it is taken. Names only, never email addresses.

Check-in — confirming arrival

A booking is only half of it. To take the space, you must check in within a time window. This way unused spaces return to the pool and nobody "blocks" a desk just in case.

Check-in is available from an hour before the start until an hour after the reservation start.

1
Open "Check-in"
From the left menu, open Check-in — you'll see your reservations for today.
2
Check in
Click Check In next to the reservation, or scan the QR code on the desk / space.
3
Done
The status changes to Checked In. The space is yours.

No check-in = losing your space

If you don't check in by an hour after the start, the reservation is released automatically (status "no-show"), and the desk / parking returns to the free pool — someone else can take it.

Meeting rooms need no check-in

A room is held for the hours you booked and is never released as a no-show, so there is nothing a check-in there would protect. Your rooms for today are listed for reference, without a button.

Too early?

If you try to check in earlier than an hour before the start, you'll see a message that the window hasn't opened yet.

Your reservations

You'll find all your reservations in the reservations view. You can check the details (space, floor, hours) and cancel the ones you won't use — a cancelled space returns to the pool right away.

Add a note to a booking

When booking you can leave a short note — for example "I need a second monitor" or a guest's name. It shows on the reservations list and in the administrator's audit log.

Emails and notifications you get

A booking confirmation tells you not only what you booked, but where it is — for example "HQ Berlin · Floor 3 · D-301" — with a Show on map button that opens the plan with your space highlighted. A calendar invitation is attached, so the booking lands in Outlook or Google Calendar with one click.

One email, not three

Booking a desk and a parking spot is two actions in the app but one decision — "I am going to the office on Tuesday". Confirmations wait about a minute and arrive as a single message covering everything you booked. A recurring booking sends one summary of all the dates, not one email per day. Time-critical messages, like a check-in reminder, are never delayed.

If you use the mobile app, the same messages can also reach you as push notifications on your phone — including when the app is closed. Allow notifications when the app asks after your first sign-in; you can switch individual categories on and off at any time in Settings → Notifications, where you also see the list of your registered devices. Signing out stops push on that device.

For Board Members

Permanent spaces and reports

As a Board Member you have an assigned permanent space — a desk, a parking spot, or both. Some meeting rooms may be reserved for the Board only. On top of the everyday employee features you can release your space for a day and review Board Reports.

You never check in

A permanent space is not booked and cannot be lost to a no-show — it is yours whether or not you come in. So the My day screen shows you something else: your spaces with today's state, and one button for the day you are away. Bookings that a check-in does protect — a hot desk you took after releasing your own — are still listed there with their button.

The dashboard knows too

Instead of "Book a desk" and "Reserve parking" you get "Release desk" and "Release parking", and under them a line that names your spaces — so you never have to look up your own desk code.

Releasing your space for a given day

If you are not coming in today, open My day and press "I'm away today". Pick which spaces to hand over if you have both a desk and parking, and confirm. Colleagues can use them today only — your permanent assignment does not change.

1
Open "My Releases"
In the Board section you'll find your permanent space (My Releases).
2
Pick a day and release
Choose a date and confirm the release. The space becomes available to others. With both a desk and a parking spot, pick which one you are handing over.
3
Come back whenever you want
You can undo the release as long as no one has taken the space for that day. The history shows exactly that: waiting, taken by a named colleague, or expired unused.

Scanning your own space

If you scan the QR sticker on your own desk or parking spot, the app recognises that the space is yours and says so: it is yours all day, nothing to check into. If you released it for today and nobody has taken it, the same scan offers "Take it back" — one tap and the day is yours again. If a colleague already took it, you will see that, with the nearest free desks.

Board Reports

In Board Reports you'll see an executive summary: office and parking utilization, the number of active Board Members, the ghost bookings ratio, plus the trend over time and the impact of space releases.

Plan usage at a glance

Board Reports also include a Plan usage card — live counts of spaces, users and locations against your plan's limits, so you can see how much room is left.

Only your organization

All the numbers concern only your company — every customer's data is fully isolated.

For administrators

Office configuration

The administrator sets up the office: adds locations and floors, uploads maps, places spaces and looks after settings.

Maps and placing spaces

1
Add a location and floors
In settings, create a location and, within it, floors or parking zones.
2
Upload a plan
Upload a floor or parking plan — we support PNG, JPG, SVG and CAD (DXF/DWG).
3
Turn on add mode
In the map editor, click Add desk or Add parking.
4
Click on the map
Each click creates a new space (auto-code D-N / P-N) and drops a pin.

You don't need to create anything first

Spaces are created straight from the map — there's no need to add them in settings first. You can also pick an existing space from the panel on the right and just place it.

QR stickers

Every pin on a map has its own QR code. Employees scan it to check in, to take a free desk, or to book a room by the door.

1
Print the whole set for a location
One document with stickers for every desk, room and parking space at the location — across all floors and parking maps, not one floor at a time.
2
Stick them on
The code on the sticker matches the space code on the map, so you can check placement without scanning anything.
3
Confirm they are printed
Marking the location as printed clears the "needs reprint" flag.

Rotating codes invalidates the old stickers immediately

You can issue new codes for a whole location at once — the right move if stickers leaked outside the building or a photo of the office went public. Do it knowing that from that second every sticker on the walls is dead: people will scan and get an error until the new set is up. Plan the rotation together with the reprint, not before it.

The "needs reprint" flag

After a rotation the location is flagged until someone confirms printing. The flag records the date of the first rotation since the last print, so it tells you how long a site has been running on dead stickers — not merely that something happened.

Managing spaces

In the space list you can change the code, name and booking policy, and deactivate spaces you don't need. Three policies: HOT (anyone can book), PERMANENT (permanent space), BLOCKED (excluded from booking).

System configuration

In System Config you set operating parameters, including the check-in window (60 min before and 60 min after the start by default) and the maximum booking horizon in advance.

Analytics

In Analytics you'll see real office utilization: average desk and parking utilization, peak days, the ghost bookings ratio, demand for EV chargers and AI recommendations — with breakdowns by department and team. The data grows as the app is used.

Users and roles

In User Management you add people, set their role (employee, Board Member, administrator) and assign a department and team — the same grouping Analytics and Board Reports can break down by. New users get an e-mail invite and activate the account themselves.

Import many users from CSV

Use Import CSV to add a whole team at once. Download the template, fill in e-mail, name, role, department and team, then upload it. Imported users are active right away and sign in with a one-time e-mail code — no passwords to hand out.

Plans and limits

In Organization → the Plan usage card shows live counts against your plan's ceilings: objects (desks, parking and meeting rooms), users and locations. Bars turn amber near a limit and red once you reach it.

Four plans scale with your team — Start, Standard, Pro and Enterprise. You can compare them on the pricing page.

Reached a limit?

When you hit your plan's cap, adding another space, user or location is blocked until you upgrade the plan or free some up — for example by deactivating unused spaces or users.

Backups

Every organization is protected by nightly encrypted backups of its data and uploaded maps. Admins can review the schedule and backup status under Organization settings. Copies follow a daily → weekly → monthly → quarterly → yearly schedule; restoring an earlier state is done together with support.

Restores are reversible

A restore switches the organization to the chosen copy while keeping the current database untouched under its old name for a few days, so a rollback is always possible.

Subscription and payments

You manage the subscription in Organization — that is where you change the plan and open the secure Stripe payment portal to update the card or download invoices. If a payment fails, nothing stops working right away: the organization keeps 30 days of full access to settle the payment. Once it goes through, everything simply carries on.

What happens after the 30 days

The organization is paused: employees can no longer sign in, and their reservations and data wait untouched. The administrator can still sign in — to a billing-only page where the payment can be settled. As soon as it is, access is restored automatically for everyone. Data of a paused organization is kept for another 30 days before it is permanently deleted.

Meeting rooms

Meeting-room kiosks

A tablet mounted beside a meeting room, showing that room's day and taking check-ins. Nobody signs in to it: the device is paired once to one room and authenticates as itself from then on.

1
Open the kiosk list
Administration → Kiosks shows every meeting room and the state of its tablet. A room with no device is the row worth acting on. The same action is available from a floor's space list.
2
Generate a pairing code
Click Generate pairing code on the room's row. Six digits appear — keep the screen open, they cannot be read again.
3
Type it on the tablet
In the tablet’s browser open www.deskandpark.com/kiosk — the same address you use for the portal, with /kiosk at the end — and enter the code on the keypad.
4
That's it
The tablet starts showing the room's day and refreshes itself. To retire a device, use Unpair tablet on its row — it stops working on its next request, and the action lands in the audit log.

The code is one-time and short-lived

It burns on first use and expires after a few minutes. If nobody got to the tablet in time, generate a new one — there is nothing to recover. A room row reads "no tablet", "waiting to pair", "code expired", "tablet paired" or "not responding" — the last one usually means the tablet is off, off the network, or has been moved.

A kiosk cannot book — on purpose

It reads the room's day and confirms arrivals, and that is all. A wall device has no idea who is standing in front of it, and a reservation with nobody's name on it is worse than no reservation. Booking stays in the app and the portal.

Appendix

Key terms

Hot desk: A space anyone can book — available on demand for a chosen day.
Permanent space: Assigned to a specific person (a Board Member). Free for others only after it is released.
Check-in window: The window when you can check in: from an hour before to an hour after the reservation start.
No-show / auto-release: No check-in within the window → the reservation is released automatically and the space returns to the pool.
Ghost booking: A reservation that was never used (no check-in). Analytics counts these.
Per-tenant isolation: Each company's data lives in a separate database — it never mixes with other customers' data.
Meeting room: A bookable room placed on the map. Booked for a time slot, and it counts toward your plan's object limit like a desk or a parking bay.
Plan & limits: Your subscription tier (Start, Standard, Pro, Enterprise) sets how many spaces, users and locations the organization can have.
Department / team: Optional grouping for users. Analytics and Board Reports can be broken down by department and team.
Backup: A nightly encrypted copy of the data. Restoring an earlier state is reversible and done together with support.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

I can't check in+

Check the time. Check-in only works within the window: from 60 min before to 60 min after the reservation start. Outside it you'll see a "too early" or "the window has closed" message.

My reservation disappeared+

If you didn't check in within the window, the reservation was released automatically (no-show) and the space returned to the pool. Book again and remember to check in.

The "Add desk / Add parking" buttons are disabled+

These are admin features in the map editor. First upload a floor or parking plan — then you add spaces by clicking on the map.

Analytics shows little data+

That's normal at first — metrics are computed from real reservations and check-ins, so they grow as the app is used.

I'm a Board Member — how do I give up my space when I'm away?+

In the Board section, release your space for a chosen day. It goes to the pool of free spaces; you can undo the release until someone takes it.

I can't add another desk or user+

You've probably reached your plan's limit. Open Organization → Plan usage to see how much is left, then upgrade the plan or free up room by deactivating unused spaces or users.

How do I add many users at once?+

In User Management use Import CSV: download the template, fill in the rows and upload it. Imported users activate with a one-time e-mail code — you don't hand out passwords.

What happens if we miss a payment?+

Nothing dramatic at first. You have 30 days of full access to settle the payment (Organization → Stripe payment portal). Only after that is the organization paused — employees cannot sign in, but the administrator still can, straight to a billing page. Settling the payment restores access automatically and no data is lost; data is permanently deleted only 30 days after the pause.

Need help?

Contact the administrator at your company or visit www.pixelofsoftware.com.