What is an allocation?
An allocation is a long-term parking assignment for a driver.
It means:
A specific bay is assigned to a specific driver
The assignment has no end date (unless you remove or change it)
The driver does not need to make a daily booking to use that bay
You can think of an allocation as a permanent booking for one person.
What’s the difference between an allocation and a booking?
There are two main differences:
Who creates it
Allocations
Created by admins in the Management Portal
Drivers cannot create or change their own allocations
Bookings
Created by drivers in the app
Drivers choose dates and times within the rules you’ve set
How they are used
Allocations
Best when a driver is assigned to one bay on an ongoing basis
Often used when someone has 24/7 access or very long access hours each day
The bay is essentially reserved for that person
Bookings
Best for casual or flexible parking
Drivers book only on the days they are actually coming in
Designed to increase utilisation of your bays
When should I use allocations vs bookings?
Use allocations when:
A driver needs guaranteed access to a specific bay (e.g salary sacrifice drivers or executives).
They are in the office very often (e.g. most days, long hours)
You have a clear business reason to reserve that bay for them (for example, key roles, accessible parking, or special agreements)
Use bookings when:
Drivers do not have a permanent bay
People are hybrid or only in the office on some days
You want more staff to share the same pool of bays
You want to maximise utilisation of your car park
Why bookings help with utilisation
When a bay is permanently reserved for one person (via an allocation), we often see:
The driver is only in the office a few days a week
The bay sits empty on the days they stay home
Other staff could have used that space, but never see it as available
With bookings:
The bay is part of a shared pool
Drivers only book when they are actually coming in
More people across the office get a chance to use parking
Your utilisation goes up, even with the same number of bays
Allocations are useful and sometimes necessary, but if you reserve too many bays permanently, your car park can look “full” on paper while many bays sit empty in reality. Bookings help you avoid that by letting more people use the same limited space.
Monitoring and improving utilisation of allocations
If you use permanent allocations, you will see a specific chart in your Overview reports showing the utilisation of allocated bays. This tells you how often those reserved bays are actually used.
If the utilisation of allocated bays is low, it may be a sign that your current setup is too rigid and you could unlock more bays for casual bookings to give more staff access.
Allocations can also be combined with features that help you use those bays better:
Share – the allocated driver can release their bay back into a shared pool so other people (in a defined group) can book it on the days they are not coming in.
Gift – the allocated driver can give their bay to a specific user for a specific day.
Admins can also help by gifting or sharing bays when they know allocated drivers are not coming in. These tools have been shown to increase utilisation of allocated bays, especially in teams that actively promote sharing.
However, sharing and gifting do add some extra admin work, even with good tools. They are a good way to try to improve utilisation when allocations are necessary, but the reporting will help you see over time whether it makes sense to propose a bigger change – for example, moving more bays into casual booking to increase parking equity and support higher office attendance.