Welcome to Parkalot! This guide will help you make your first step as a car park administrator.

Initial setup steps.

This is a screen that will be visible to you after you register. Listed here are the things that have to be done to start testing Parkalot.

1. Create your car park.

This step is already done! Please contact us, using the same email that you’ve used for registration, to validate your account, if you haven’t already.

2. Add parking places.

Parking spaces are what users see and reserve. For your car park to function smoothly, all the spaces should be clearly described. You can find a guide on how to add and edit them here.

We’ve pre-added four parking spaces, so that you know how they look like – you can edit or delete them.

3. Invite users.

A good idea is to add some test users, so that you can collect feedback from them. Alternatively, you can invite yourself using an alternative email address. That way, you’ll be able to see how the app looks like from the user’s point of view.

You can find a guide on how to invite users here.

4. Assign spots.

Most companies have a pool of parking spaces that are assigned directly to certain people. If your car park has such a rule, here’s how you can recreate it. First, go to the Setup spaces screen. Then, find a space that you’d like to assign to someone. Lastly, choose an owner from the list of users and specify whether they need to confirm their reservations.

Settings.

1. General settings.

Parking name is what users will see in the invitation and while using the app.

Timezone is essential since it will regulate time in the whole car park.

Timeslots: Parkalot allows to reserve spaces only for a part of a day. It’s especially useful if the company operates in shifts. You can set custom timeshifts that suit your needs best – contact us to make changes to this setting.

You can specify how far into the future can users place reservations. Here you can set the default value for all the users. You can change this setting for some group of users by setting up additional reservation rules. You can contact us – we will gladly help with that.

2. Policy.

Cancellable reservations should be active in most car parks. If you would like to set a cancellation deadline, or, for example, users shouldn’t cancel a reservation that is already in progress, you can contact us, and we’ll help with that.

Publicly visible reservations are a good idea if you want to keep your parking situation transparent for every user.

Waitlist is an important feature of Parkalot because, thanks to it, users can check the app less frequently. If the waitlist is enabled, when there are no spaces available to reserve on a given day, users can join the waiting list. If a space gets released, one of the users from the list is assigned a space and gets notified by email.

3. Groups.

Groups allow you to create more advanced parking policies, like restricting access to some parking spaces or giving priority to some users. This topic is covered here.

4. Notifications.

This setting allows you to choose whether parking space owners receive weekly summaries via email. This helps people remember about releasing their parking space when they don’t need it.

Remember that you can always contact us when you need help!