Is it easy for your tenants to reserve building resources? If so, you’re probably already using resource reservation software. If not, you’re probably not making the most of your building amenities or maximizing building revenue.

Having great resources does help attract and retain more tenants. But if it’s difficult and time-consuming to book conference rooms, event spaces, or other amenities, tenants shy away from using these resources. And when their lease is up, you don’t want to lose tenants to another building with amenities they can actually use, even if your building has better resources.

Difficult to use resources limit the revenue you can earn from them—if no one books your amenities, you lose out on earnings. With buildings having so many common areas, this can be a significant revenue loss.

So how do you make it easy for tenants to use building amenities?

1. Create Billable Resources

The first step to driving more revenue from resource reservation is to create billable resources which allow you to earn revenue from amenities. So when tenants want to use a conference room, lobby meeting space, or any other common area, you can charge a fee.

You need a process for billing and collecting payment for amenities. Without one, instead of just earning revenue every time a tenant uses resources, you have to waste time writing up charges, getting them to tenants, and tracking down payment.

Having predetermined billable resources helps you quickly charge every time tenants use building amenities. To do this, assign a flat fee or hourly rate to every resource available to tenants, like a conference room. Then when tenants want to use amenities you have a price ready to go.

If you have more time than budget, you can create a spreadsheet or Word document to track all billable resources. Obviously however, this is time-consuming to create and maintain. You have to enter all data and updates for all your amenities by hand. Then you have to manually share this resource with your team and tenants whenever you create or update it.

Resource reservation software with templates for billable resources is faster and easier. Simply fill out a template with a description of the amenity, pricing, and availability. Then you can easily to share it with anyone who has access to the software, like your team or tenants.

Creating billable resources is the first step to simplifying resource reservation and driving more building revenue.

2. Streamline Tenant Scheduling

After creating billable resources, the next step is to make it easy for tenants to reserve those resources. The easier you make something to do, the more people will do it—think of how easy Jeff Bezos has made online shopping. And when tenants reserve more resources, they generate more revenue.

Scheduling resources is often a hassle for tenants. They have to call or email to find out if resources are available. Then they have to reserve the amenity, which usually involves another call or email. After all this, tenants could find out a resource was double-booked and be unable to use the amenity.

A process like this is time-consuming and frustrating, which reduces tenants’ use of building resources. Instead of using your conference room, tenants end up taking meetings in nearby coffee shops, restaurants, or even other office buildings.

With an inefficient reservation process, not only do you miss out on potential revenue from amenities. You also miss an opportunity to create a positive tenant experience and increase tenant retention. Great amenities can help you keep good tenants. But difficult to use amenities can be a factor in tenants moving to another building.

Software Makes it Easier

So making it easy for tenants to reserve resources is important for driving more revenue and maintaining satisfied occupants. Again, doing things manually is inefficient, such as creating a paper sign up sheet. You have to spend time on a weekly or monthly basis drafting it, and tenants have to go to wherever the signup sheet is rather than it being wherever they are.

It’s much easier and more efficient to use resource reservation software boasting an online tenant portal. A good one allows you to create resource blocks that reoccur every day, week, or month. Then tenants only have to schedule each resource once. Ideally tenants should be able to reserve resources on the same calendar, making it effortless to book amenities.

Streamlining tenant scheduling is another way to simplify resource reservation while generating more revenue.

3. Quickly Approve Requests

Along with creating billable resources and simplifying tenant scheduling, it’s important to be able to quickly approve resource reservation requests. This creates a better tenant experience than forcing tenants to wait for confirmation.

Often when tenants want to request a resource, they have to call, email, or text the property team. This forces property teams to keep track of requests from multiple communication channels. This complexity makes it easier to miss a resource request or make a mistake in a booking.

Even if property teams do respond to all requests, few respond to them instantly like tenants expect. It can take hours or days for teams to respond to tenants about resources. This is a negative tenant experience and makes it less likely they reserve amenities in the future, reducing revenue.

So it’s important to respond to tenant requests as quickly as possible. You could hire someone to respond to reservation requests. But hiring staff is costly. And reallocating existing team members could harm other aspects of your building operations.

Resource reservation software to the rescue. A good platform lets you see all amenity requests in one place, and set automatic approvals for some (or all) tenants or resources. If you don’t want requests automatically approved, you can still approve requests in seconds. Plus, good software will notify your tenants with confirmation—one less thing you have to do.

Quickly approving amenity requests is another way to simplify resource reservation and capture more revenue.

Choosing the Right Resource Reservation Software

Great amenities can give your building an edge over competitors. But if it’s hard for tenants to reserve and use them, you potentially nudge tenants to buildings with easier to use amenities.

Building resources can help you generate more revenue—but not without a process in place to capture it.

So drive more revenue by making it easy for tenants to use amenities. Create billable resources, streamline tenant scheduling, and quickly respond to requests. Resource reservation software makes all this easy.

To find out more about how to maximize revenue from resources, watch the Building Engines Webinar: How to Increase Revenue Opportunities with Prism Resource Reservations.