How to choose desk booking software for a UK office of 30 to 250+ people
A buyer's guide: the questions to ask, what the main vendors publish as a price, and what each of those prices actually counts.
intheOffice makes one of the products in this guide. Our prices and our limits are in it too, on the same terms as everybody else’s.
Start with the problem, not the product
Offices buy desk booking software for one of three reasons, and which one is yours decides what you should be comparing.
More people than desks
Tuesday is full and Friday is empty. You are buying capacity and a booking that follows the day a person says they are coming in, rather than a scramble at the door.
Spaces nobody can find or hold on to
Rooms block-booked and empty, desks with no name on them, a car park that runs on goodwill. You are buying a plan of the building and rules for the things on it.
Nobody knows who is in on Thursday
The desks are not the problem; the asking is. You are buying the schedule first, and the desks follow from it.
The words people search for and the question behind them are not always the same. People look for desk booking software, and what they usually want is to know who is in the office on a given day. If that is you, compare the schedule as hard as you compare the booking screen.
What desk booking software is
Desk booking software lets people reserve a desk, a meeting room or another space for a day or a time, so that an office with more people than desks, or with shared desks, runs without arguments.
Hot desking is sharing desks rather than giving each person their own. Desk booking is how you run it: people book the desk they need for the days they are in. The two words are used as though they were the same thing; one is the practice and the other is the tool.
It is not the same as a screen on a meeting room door, which manages one room, and it is not space planning software, which is about how a building is laid out rather than who is sitting in it on Thursday.
The questions to ask every vendor
Twenty-five questions, in the order they come up. Ask all of them of every vendor, including us, and write the answers down.
Price and billing
- How much is it per person, in pounds?
- Is the price counted per person, per desk, per location or per site?
- Is there a tier at no charge, and what does it cap?
- Is there a trial, and does it start at signup or when we switch something on?
- Do we need a card, and is there a contract?
- What happens to the bill when someone joins, or when someone leaves the company?
- Is VAT in the figure you have quoted?
What a straight answer sounds like. A figure, a unit and a currency, with VAT stated. The unit matters more than the figure: per location is one price however many people you have, which suits one busy site and punishes five small ones; per bookable resource grows every time you add a desk or a locker; per person grows with the people. Work out which of those you are before you compare any two numbers.
The desks and the spaces
- Can we book meeting rooms, parking spaces and lockers as well as desks?
- Can we mix desks that belong to someone with desks that are shared?
- How do we stop people booking a desk and not turning up?
- Can people book from their phone, and is there an app to install?
- Can we see how many desks we actually need?
What a straight answer sounds like. Ask to see the booking screen on a phone during the demo rather than in a recorded video. Then ask the awkward one: what happens to a booking when that person changes their day to working from home. If the answer is that somebody notices and deletes it, desks will sit booked and empty every Friday.
The people side
- How do I know who is in the office on a given day?
- Do people have to set their day every day, or can it repeat?
- What is hybrid working, and do we need a written policy before we start?
- Do I need IT to set it up?
What a straight answer sounds like. A booking tool that does not know who is coming in can only tell you who booked. Ask how the two are joined up, and ask the vendor to walk you through an office manager’s Monday morning, step by step, on the real screens.
IT, data and leaving
- Does it work with Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams?
- Can staff sign in with their Microsoft account?
- Where is our data held?
- Does it work across several offices?
- What happens to our data if we stop, and can we export it?
What a straight answer sounds like. A vendor should name the regions the data sits in and hand over a Data Processing Agreement without being chased. A compliance badge on a web page is not an answer; the regions, the sub-processors and the agreement are. Ask what the export looks like before you sign, not after.
Visitors and the fire register
- Is a visitor book a legal requirement in the UK?
- Does a paper visitor book meet UK GDPR?
- How long should we keep visitor records?
- Does the fire evacuation list include visitors and contractors?
What a straight answer sounds like. No law names a visitor book. What the law asks is that you know who is on the premises and can account for them in an emergency: the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 and the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 put those duties on the employer. So the question is not whether a product has a visitor book. It is whether the evacuation list includes everyone in the building, staff, visitors and contractors, and whether you can get that list outside the building.
What the vendors publish, and what each price counts
Five names a UK buyer meets, read from each vendor’s own pricing page. Two of them publish no figure at all, which is itself worth knowing before you spend an afternoon on a form.
| Product | What the price counts | Published price | Read |
|---|---|---|---|
| RobinDesk and room booking, from the United States. | Not stated on the pricing page. | No figure is published. "Every workplace is different, so we start by getting to know yours. Complete the form to speak with our team." | robinpowered.com/pricing |
| Envoy VisitorsVisitor sign-in, from the United States. | Per location per month. |
| envoy.com/pricing |
| Envoy ReservationsDesks, rooms and other bookable resources, the same account as Envoy Visitors. | Per bookable resource per month, so every desk, room and locker adds to it. |
| envoy.com/pricing |
| Condeco, now Eptura EngageDesk and room booking inside a wider estate suite: assets, space planning, visitors. | Per user supported, and per location for the visitor product. | No figure is published. The pricing page names tiers and asks you to talk to sales for the numbers.Condeco has been rebranded to Eptura Engage, so a search for Condeco pricing lands on Eptura. | eptura.com/pricing |
| Sign In AppVisitor sign-in and desk booking, from the United Kingdom. SwipedOn is now part of it. | Per site per year, whatever the headcount at that site. |
| signinapp.com/pricing |
List prices change, and most of these vendors quote rather than publish. Treat the table as the starting point it is: open each source before you decide, and note the date you read it, as we have.
Where intheOffice fits
From £0.95 per person per month +VAT, with no contract and no card to start. You pay only for the days each person is on your account.
One account covers who is in on a given day, the desks and rooms people book, the visitors at reception and the Live Health & Safety Register that lists all of them for a roll-call. You switch on the parts you need and pay for those alone, and you can switch one off again the same day.
| What you switch on | Price |
|---|---|
| Scheduling | £0.97 per person per month, billed daily, plus VAT |
| Advanced Scheduling | +£1.09 per person per month, billed daily, plus VAT, on top of Scheduling |
| Desk & Space Booking | £1.19 per person per month, billed daily, plus VAT |
| Visitor Management | £0.95 per person per month, billed daily, plus VAT |
| Reporting | Talk to us |
What intheOffice does not do
No calendar integration
A booking does not appear in a calendar, there is no calendar sync, and there is no Slack notification. If a desk has to land in someone’s diary, intheOffice will not put it there.
No app to install
intheOffice runs in a phone’s browser and as a tab in Microsoft Teams, and Scan In uses the phone’s camera. If your requirement says native app on the app store, this is not it.
No approval workflows
Every booking confirms as it is made. If a manager has to approve a desk, a room or a parking space before it is held, intheOffice cannot do that today.
We would rather you knew all three now than found them in week two. The rest of what IT asks, including where the data is held and how to get it back out, is on the page for IT, and every price on this page is on the pricing page.
When something else is the better answer
Three cases where we would not expect to win, written down so you can rule us out early.
Reception at several buildings, with a large headcount
A price per site or per location is one figure however many people walk through the door, so at a few busy receptions it can come out below a price per person. Sign In App prices per site and Envoy prices visitors per location. Run your own headcount through both shapes before you assume per person is cheaper.
An estate rather than an office
Assets, space planning and moves across many buildings is what Eptura sells, in the suite Condeco is now part of. intheOffice does not do any of that, and nothing on this page should suggest otherwise.
Bookings that must be approved, or must sit in a calendar
Both are named in our own limits above. If either is a requirement rather than a preference, take intheOffice off the list at this stage rather than at the end of the trial.
And if the real choice is between a product and the spreadsheet you already have, that comparison has its own page: intheOffice or a spreadsheet.
No card, no contract, nothing to install.