Renting out shared amenities
Many properties have shared spaces tenants can reserve for a party or an event: a gazebo, an activity salon, a sports court, a rooftop. Habitia lets you set each space’s hours and price once, and tenants book it from the Amenities page in their portal. Requests, approvals, payments and cancellations all land on the Reservations page, so nothing has to live in a text thread.
1. Make a space reservable
Shared spaces live in the property’s Spaces tab (or the unit’s spaces for a single-family home).
- Add or edit the space and tick Shared amenity if it isn’t already.
- Tick Tenants can reserve this space and fill in:
- Price: leave at 0 for a free space, or enter an amount per booking or per hour.
- Approval: Needs your approval (you confirm each request) or Instant (open slots are taken straight away; paid spaces are confirmed once paid).
- Slot length and max slots per reservation: 60-minute slots with a maximum of 4 lets a tenant book one to four hours.
- Opening hours: one or more weekday windows, in the time zone your browser is in when you set it up.
- Lead time, cancellation cutoff and how far ahead tenants can book, all in hours or days.
- Rules shown to the tenant before they book (cleanup, noise, capacity, etc.).
- Save.
Seasonal prices
Under the price you can add seasonal prices: a label tenants will see (“Holiday rate”), a date range that can repeat every year (Dec 15 – Jan 6 works across the year end), optional weekdays (tick Sat and Sun for a weekend rate), and the price per booking or per hour. Rules are checked top to bottom and the first one that matches the reservation’s start day wins; if none matches, the base price applies. Use the arrows to put the more specific rule first. A reservation keeps the price it was booked at even if you change the rules later.
Tip: to take a space out of service for a day (repairs, a private event), use Block a space on the Reservations page. The hours stay as they are, and that time just isn’t offered.
2. What the tenant sees
In the tenant portal, Amenities lists the reservable spaces at the tenant’s property with their price. The tenant picks a day and a start time, chooses how long, adds a note, and sends it. What happens next depends on the space:
| Space | Free | Paid |
|---|---|---|
| Needs approval | Request → you approve → confirmed | Request → you approve → tenant pays → confirmed |
| Instant | Confirmed at once | Tenant pays at once → confirmed |
Tenants are told at each step (in the app, with a push notification when they have the app installed). A paid reservation is only confirmed once the payment goes through. Unpaid ones keep holding the slot until the tenant pays or someone cancels, so clear out stale ones from the Reservations page.
3. Approve, decline, cancel
Open Reservations from the left sidebar. The Requests view lists what’s waiting on you; Upcoming is the calendar, and All is the history.
- Approve: a free space is confirmed; a paid one moves to Awaiting payment and the tenant is asked to pay.
- Decline: optionally add a note that the tenant will see.
- Cancel: for anything active. The tenant is told, with your note if you add one.
Tenants can cancel their own reservation up to the space’s cancellation cutoff. After that, only you can.
4. Payments and the books
Tenants pay by card or bank through the same online payments you use for rent. The money is recorded as a payment with the category Amenity fee, on the tenant’s lease, and it shows under Payments with a receipt in the tenant portal. It is not a charge on the rent ledger, so it never mixes with the rent balance.
With accounting on, amenity fees post to 4600 Amenity Fees. On a managed property, the property’s Amenity reservation fees go to setting decides who keeps the money:
- The owner (default): the fee is swept to the owner like rent and appears on their statement. Your management fee applies to it only when the property’s fee basis is all income.
- You (the manager): it stays your income and never reaches the owner ledger.
Cash or check. When a tenant pays outside the app, open the reservation on the Reservations page and click Mark as paid: enter the amount received, the method (cash, check, bank transfer, Zelle, ATH Móvil, other), the date and an optional reference. That records the payment in the books exactly like an online one and confirms the reservation in one step. If you delete that payment later, a reservation that hasn’t happened yet goes back to Awaiting payment.
Refunds. Cancelling a paid reservation does not refund it by itself. Refund the payment from its record under Payments when the tenant is owed the money back; that also reverses the owner’s share.
Not covered yet
Damage deposits on reservations, ATH Móvil for amenity fees (card and bank through Stripe only for now), and recurring reservations.