Space management software is bought for one of two completely different reasons, and buying it for the wrong one is the most common mistake in this category. Reason one: nobody can say how much of the space is actually used, and a lease event is coming. Reason two: people cannot find a desk on a Tuesday. The first needs a record of spaces and their occupancy over time; the second needs a booking engine. Products exist for each and several claim both, usually doing one properly. This page is about the first, which is the record, what it has to hold, and the arithmetic it exists to produce.
What space management systems hold, and why occupancy has to be over time
A space with an area, a type, a capacity and an occupancy history. The last word is the one that matters: a single snapshot is not utilization, and a week measured in August is a fact about August. Space management software earns its cost by holding occupancy as a series, so the question "how much of this floor did we use last quarter" is a lookup. A product that shows you a live floor plan and keeps no history will tell you about today forever, which is exactly the wrong resolution for a lease decision that will bind you for five years.
The arithmetic a space management program exists to produce
Utilization, the empty desks, the cost carried by them, and the area you could release at that occupancy. On the space utilization sheet here, 180 desks with 108 occupied is 60% utilization and 72 empty desks; the space costs $2,333 a desk provided but $3,889 a desk actually used; $168,000 of a $420,000 running cost is carried by desks nobody sits at; and 5,600 of 14,000 square feet could in principle be released. Those five numbers are the entire business case for the category, and you can work them today from a fortnight of counting.
Where space management ends and booking begins
Allocation is a record; booking is a transaction. Assigning a team to a zone, a person to a desk or a department to a floor is space management, and it belongs with the estate record. Reserving a desk on Thursday is a booking product, and it belongs with the calendar. They overlap in the data they produce, because booking data is one way of measuring occupancy, but they are bought by different people to solve different problems. Buying a booking product to answer a lease question gives you attendance among the people who book, which is not the same population as the people who come in.
How occupancy actually gets measured
Four ways, in ascending order of cost and accuracy: a manual count over a representative fortnight, badge or access data, desk booking records, and sensors. The manual count is free, is good enough for a first utilization figure, and is the one nearly everybody skips. Badge data tells you who entered the building rather than who used a desk. Booking data tells you about bookers. Sensors tell you about desks and cost real money per desk. Start with the count, work the figure, and let the number decide whether the sensors are worth it.
Questions people ask about space management software
What does a space management system actually do?
It holds the estate's spaces with their area, type, capacity and occupancy over time, and allocates people and teams to them. Everything else in the category, floor plans, move planning and reporting, is a view of that record. The test of a product is whether occupancy is a history or a live snapshot.
Are space management solutions the same as desk booking?
No. Booking is a transaction for a person who wants a desk on Thursday; space management is a record of what space exists, who it is allocated to and how much of it gets used. Booking data is one way of measuring occupancy, but a booking product bought to answer a lease question measures the people who book rather than the people who come in.
Does a space management solution need sensors to work utilisation?
No, and starting with them is usually a mistake. A manual count over a representative fortnight is free and good enough for a first figure. On the worked example here that gives 60% utilization, 72 empty desks and $168,000 of running cost carried by them, which is enough to decide whether continuous measurement is worth paying for.
What is a realistic utilisation figure?
This site publishes no benchmark, deliberately: the figure that matters is your own, measured the same way twice, and the published averages you will find are taken across estates that work nothing like yours. What is worth comparing is your own number before and after a change, and the cost your empty desks carry either way.
Are spreadsheets good enough space management tools to start with?
For a first figure, yes: a manual count over a representative fortnight and the free sheet here give utilization, empty desks and the cost they carry. Software earns its place when occupancy has to be held over time and allocation kept current.
Is occupancy software a different product from space management software?
Usually it is the measurement half sold on its own: sensor platforms and badge-report tools that say how much a desk or a floor was used, with no record of what space exists or who it is allocated to. The distinction matters because the two are bought for different reasons. If the question is how much of the estate gets used, a fortnight of manual counting answers it for nothing and continuous measurement answers it in more detail. If the question is what space exists, who has it and how that changed, the record is what you are missing.