More control with booking restrictions

Do you encounter long queues in the equipment room? Does equipment stay unavailable for long periods because people book equipment for longer than they need? Or do you, as an equipment manager, sometimes feel pressured to hastily prep a last-minute booking? If that sounds familiar, don’t worry: it won’t for long. Because we have added booking restrictions to Cheqroom.

Hooray! Less stressful equipment managers in the office in 3, 2, 1.

TL;DR: Watch this video!

Avoid long queues in the equipment room with booking restrictions

Before we dive into capacity restrictions, we first want to let you know that we revamped the time picker. We added time-based bookings, which are predefined time slots with time intervals. Now, You will be able to define a time interval between 15 minutes and 2 hours.

With capacity restrictions, you will be able to limit the number of people picking up or dropping off gear at the same time.

The next step is to define how many users we allow to the equipment room.

The questions you need to ask yourself: Are the users able to come to pick up their gear at a specific time? Or do I want to give them flexibility within a certain time frame? For example: Let’s say we have four people who need to pick up equipment during the period of 1 hour.

Scenario 1: Sequential consistency

We choose to go for a time interval of 15 minutes, meaning that 1 user has 15 minutes to pick up their equipment during their pre-defined time slot. Every user must come on time because they only have 15 minutes. That won’t lead to any queues. The downside is that it’s less flexible, and the equipment loaner can’t miss the bus.

Scenario 2: Flexibility and adaptability

This time we choose to select a time interval of 1 hour, and we let the same four people pick up equipment during the same time slot. People will arrive in a more scattered way, so bear in mind there could be a short queue. Of course, this will mostly depend on how many people you allow to book equipment at the same time.

This workflow works best when the person picking up the equipment is not quite sure when they will arrive. So it gives equipment users a bit more flexibility than workflow 1.

No more equipment hogging with booking restrictions!

The situation is all too recognizable: a number of projects are simultaneously happening and your equipment room is as good as empty. While you’re happy that so many things are being created, you don’t want your equipment room to gather dust. It happens that people book equipment for an inflated period of time, just to make sure that they have it for long enough. It could be that some still have assets in their possession that they are not currently using that much, if at all. This becomes an issue if others rely on the same equipment.

You want to keep things fair. That’s why we developed maximum durations for reservations and check-outs.

This feature allows you to define how long a check-out can last. You have the option to choose between minutes, hours, days, and weeks.

A second thing you can do to prevent users from holding on to equipment for too long, is to limit recurring events. As an equipment admin, you’re now able to limit the maximum time in advance that someone can make a reservation. Do remember: less-than-stellar planners or people with last-minute projects popping up will be impacted by this.

This feature does work wonders to ensure that the calendar doesn’t get fully booked too far in advance.

Guarantee minimal prep time

Lastly, prepping equipment that is going to be picked up requires some organization and planning.If you want to prevent last-minute reservations that mess up your schedule, you can limit a minimum time in advance to make a reservation. So treat yourself to some peace of mind and ensure minimal preparation time. And there you have it: your equipment management made a tad easier once again.

Booking restrictions is an account-wide feature that is available for Plus, Premium, and Academic Premium plans.

Drop us an email if you’re still on a different plan and you want to access this feature.