DESK BOOKING

Desk Booking System for Hybrid Workplaces

Reserve, check in and manage office desks in seconds, sit with your team, and see how many desks your organisation really needs.

OVERVIEW

An easier way to manage office resources and encourage attendance.

Nura Space Desk Booking simplifies workspace management for hybrid teams and organisations. Employees can easily find, reserve, and check into workspaces giving them full control over their work environment while providing real-time insights for facility managers.

BENEFITS

The perfect solution for a
hybrid workforce

Working together with our smart Desk Occupancy Sensor, you can manage all your work-point needs in one convenient place.
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Live floor plan & data

Easily locate and reserve desks with our interactive floor plan. Get real-time visibility into desk usage to optimise workspace planning.

Seamless Desk Reservation

Book desks via mobile app, web portal or through Microsoft Teams with just one tap. Employees can filter desks based on dual screen setup, window views, or quiet spaces.

Follow-Me Ergonomics for Personalised Workspaces

Integrate with a Smart-Desk and automatically adjust the desk to your pre-set ergonomic preferences.

Workplace Strategy

Deliver a tailored working experience to each of your business units with Nura Space's workplace management and strategy features.

Save cleaning costs

Indicate to cleaners which desks were occupied to optimise cleaning. Set up ‘automations’ that command desks to re-set to a standard height at the end of the day.

Check-in and auto-release

Check in by app, QR code or desk hardware. Desks that are booked but not claimed are released automatically, so no-shows stop blocking the floor.

Watch how Nura Space is enhancing
the desk booking experience

How the Nura Space desk booking system works

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Step 1: Find an Available Desk

Use the live floor plan to see real-time desk availability.

Step 2: Reserve & Customise

Select your workspace and adjust settings (height, dual screens, quiet zones).

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Step 3: Check-In & Work Seamlessly

Scan the QR code, auto check-in via the app, integrate with desk hardware or security access control.

Step 4: Optimise Usage with Insights

Chart data on desk utilisation for better workplace management.

WORK PLANS

Set your office days once. Nura Space books the rest.

A Work Plan captures how someone likes to work: the days and hours they come in, the building and floor they prefer, and the colleagues they want to sit near. From there Nura Space either reserves a desk automatically each week or suggests one for a single tap to confirm, so regular office days never need a manual booking again.

QUICK BOOKING

One tap, best available desk

Quick Booking picks a desk for you. The algorithm weighs your usual location, the desks you prefer, who is in that day and what is available, then offers the best match with its building, floor, hours and equipment shown up front. Book it, or open the floor plan to choose another. Ideal for the days that do not fit a plan.

TESTIMONIALS

What our customers say about Nura Space

Before we engaged Nura Space, we were using Outlook to book desks which was clunky, inefficient, time wasting, and not transparent. Nura Space transformed this space. It means swapping desks is easy and seamless. The system is very flexible and provides great data to base decisions upon. The Nura Space team is also great to deal with and highly proactive in improving the system. Highly recommend it as a product.”
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Fiona Bottcher, Carr
Definition

What is a desk booking system?

A desk booking system is software that lets employees reserve a desk before they come into the office, see where their colleagues are sitting and check in when they arrive. It replaces assigned desks and first-come, first-served hot desking with a managed, shared pool of workstations, and it records bookings and check-ins so the organisation can see how many desks it actually needs.

Most organisations that share desks use one to run hybrid work: people choose their office days, book a desk near their team and release it automatically if they do not turn up.

How many desks does a hybrid office need?

The most widely accepted desk sharing ratio in Australian workplaces is 1.2 people per desk: about 100 work points for an organisation of 120 people. Two people per desk is at the aggressive end and only works when desks are replaced with collaboration and touchdown space. Space per person has fallen from 10 to 20 m² in the early 2000s to 8 to 10 m² in the early 2020s, according to the workplace strategists interviewed in our research.

Booking and check-in data is what makes those ratios safe. In the first half of 2024, 69% of bookings on the Nura Space platform led to a check-in, up from 55% a year earlier, and attendance peaked from Tuesday to Thursday. Organisations use that data to size floors for real demand rather than headcount.

Read the research on desk sharing and hybrid workplaces

Buyer's guide

Choosing desk booking software

Desk booking software lets people in a hybrid workplace reserve a desk before they come in, see where their team is sitting and check in on the day, while giving the organisation the occupancy data to decide how many desks it needs. Hot desking without software is first-come, first-served; desk booking software turns it into a managed system with team zones, booking rules and reporting.

The decision usually turns on three things: how little effort a booking takes for staff, whether teams can sit together rather than scatter across the floor, and whether the data is good enough to make property decisions on.

What to look for

What to look for
Why it matters
Nura Space
Booking in seconds, from the phone
Why it matters
If booking is a chore, people stop doing it and the data stops being true
Nura Space
Quick Booking picks a desk automatically; Work Plans book recurring days without any action
Interactive floor plan
Why it matters
People choose by location, window, team, equipment, not from a list
Nura Space
Floor plan with filters for team, equipment and accessibility
Team zones and neighbourhoods
Why it matters
The point of coming in is to sit with colleagues
Nura Space
Bookable team zones and neighbourhoods on rotation
Check-in and auto-release
Why it matters
A booked but empty desk is still an empty desk
Nura Space
Check in by app or QR code; unclaimed desks are released
Microsoft 365 and Teams
Why it matters
Booking from the tools people already have open
Nura Space
Teams app and Microsoft 365 integration
Occupancy analytics
Why it matters
The business case for the office lives in this data
Nura Space
Real-time occupancy and utilisation reporting by floor, team and day
Scenario planning
Why it matters
Deciding how much space to keep or give up
Nura Space
Block & Stack planning to model desk ratios and floor layouts
Lockers, rooms, car parks, visitors
Why it matters
One app for the whole day in the office
Nura Space
Same platform and app for every resource

How it works in practice

Staff set the days they plan to be in and Nura Space books a desk in their team's zone automatically, or they pick one on the floor plan. On the day they check in from the app or a QR code. Facilities teams see live occupancy and historical utilisation, and use Block & Stack to test what happens to the floor if attendance rises or a team grows.

Pricing

Nura Space Desk Booking is priced as part of the platform, from $54 per user or resource per year. Get a quote or book a demo.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

What is a desk booking system?

A desk booking system is software that lets employees reserve a shared desk before they come into the office, see where colleagues are sitting and check in on arrival. It gives the organisation booking and check-in data to plan how many desks it needs.

What is the difference between desk booking and hot desking?

Hot desking is first-come, first-served with no reservations. Desk booking, also called desk hotelling, lets people reserve a desk in advance and check in when they arrive, so they know where they will sit and can sit near their team.

What desk sharing ratio should a hybrid office use?

The most widely accepted ratio is 1.2 people per desk, or about 100 desks for 120 people. Ratios of up to two people per desk are possible, but only when desks are replaced with collaboration and touchdown space and booking data confirms demand.

How does desk booking work in Nura Space?

Employees open a live floor plan in the mobile app, web portal or Microsoft Teams, pick a desk and book it in one tap. Quick Booking chooses the best available desk automatically, and Work Plans let people set their regular office days once so the platform books for them each week.

Can employees book a desk through Microsoft Teams?

Yes. Nura Space runs inside Microsoft Teams as well as the mobile and web apps, so people can find, book and check in to a desk without leaving the tools they already use.

How do you know whether a booked desk is actually being used?

Nura Space can be paired with desk occupancy sensors to compare bookings with real presence. Unused bookings can be released automatically, and the live data feeds the workplace analytics dashboard.

Does desk booking suit small teams as well as large organisations?

Yes. The same platform runs a 60-desk design studio and an insurer with more than 15,000 users across 35 buildings. Pricing is per user or per resource, from $54 per year.

For improved employee experience

With the Desk Booking feature your people have the flexibility and freedom to create their own ideal work set-up.