Create your spaces

Define your rooms and their capacities to attach each event to the right space and keep availability reliable.

Your spaces are the foundation of your business: they are what you sell. Defining them well in Joinways lets you attach each event to the right room, compute availability automatically and avoid double bookings. This article explains in depth how to create a space, set its capacity per setup, link it to a venue and a catalog, then use it across your events and quotes.

A space represents a room or area that can actually be sold at your site: the main hall, the cocktail lounge, the garden, the orangery. This is the unit Joinways reasons about to block dates, detect conflicts and suggest the right services. The more accurately your spaces reflect the physical reality of your venue, the more reliable your planning becomes.

Prerequisites

Before creating your spaces, gather a few things to move quickly and stay consistent.

Have a venue already created to attach the space to (the venue groups the spaces of a single site).
Know the real capacity of each room for the main setups (theater, banquet, cocktail).
Have sufficient rights on the workspace to access Settings and edit venues and spaces.
Ideally, have prepared the service catalog to associate, so you can link the space right at creation.

What you'll learn

Create a space and define its capacity per setup.
Link it to a venue and a service catalog.
Use it in your events and quotes.
Understand how availability, blocking and conflicts are computed from spaces.

Create a space

Creation happens in Settings. Each space is a standalone object you give a name, a capacity and a setup. Once saved, it becomes selectable everywhere you plan an event.

Go to Settings then Venues / Spaces: the list of existing spaces appears, grouped by venue.
Click New space: a creation form opens.
Enter the name, capacity and possible setup: this information then feeds availability calculation and space selection in a quote.
Attach the space to the right venue so it appears within the relevant site.
Save: the space joins the list and becomes immediately usable in events and quotes.

Define capacity per setup

Capacity is not a single value: the same room holds far more people in theater or cocktail setup than seated banquet. Entering a capacity per setup lets Joinways show the right limit for the event type and warn when a guest count exceeds what is realistic.

Choose the setup (for example theater, banquet, cocktail) matching the room's use.
Enter the realistic capacity for that setup, that is the number of people actually accommodated.
Repeat for each setup you genuinely offer in that space.

Link the space to a venue and a catalog

A space comes into its own once attached to a venue and a catalog. The venue places the space within its site; the catalog determines which services are offered by default when building a quote for that space.

Select the venue the space belongs to so it shows in the right place in the list.
Associate the relevant service catalog so quotes linked to this space draw from the correct list of services.
Check that the space name matches what your clients know, to avoid any confusion on documents.

Field and option reference

Here is the meaning of each element you encounter when creating or editing a space.

Name: label of the room or area, as it appears in lists, events and quotes.
Parent venue: site the space belongs to; a venue groups several spaces.
Capacity: number of people accommodated, ideally broken down by setup.
Setup: room layout (theater, banquet, cocktail…) the capacity refers to.
Associated catalog: list of services offered by default in quotes for this space.

How it works

Once your spaces are defined, Joinways relies on them for all planning. Selecting a space in an event reserves it for the relevant dates and feeds availability calculation.

When you create an event, you choose the space: Joinways marks it as occupied for the period.
Displayed availability accounts for already-reserved spaces, so a booked room is not offered.
If two events target the same space at the same time, a conflict is flagged for you to arbitrate.
In a quote attached to the space, services from the associated catalog are offered first.

In short, the space is the pivot around which bookings, blocks and alerts revolve: it is what you select and what Joinways watches.

Edge cases

Some situations deserve special attention so your spaces stay true to reality.

Modular rooms: if a large room divides, create one space per sub-room that can actually be booked separately.
Combinable spaces: when several areas are rented together, make sure each booking reflects the occupied spaces so conflicts are accurate.
Outdoor areas: a garden or terrace is modeled as a full space, with its own cocktail capacity.

💡 Tip: create one space per room that can actually be booked separately (e.g. "Main hall", "Cocktail lounge"). This granularity is what makes availability and conflict detection reliable.

Best practices

Set realistic capacities by setup (theater, banquet, cocktail).
Link each space to its service catalog for consistent quotes.
Name your spaces the way your clients know them, to avoid ambiguity.
Keep the list current: remove or rename a space as soon as its use changes.

Troubleshooting

Problem: a space does not appear when creating an event.

Cause: the space was not attached to a venue, or the venue is not the one selected.

Solution: open the space in Settings then Venues / Spaces and check its parent venue.

Problem: Joinways flags no conflict although two events seem to overlap.

Cause: the two events do not point to exactly the same space.

Solution: open each event and make sure they reference the same space over the same period.

Problem: the expected services do not appear in a quote linked to the space.

Cause: no catalog, or a wrong catalog, is associated with the space.

Solution: edit the space to associate the right service catalog, then recreate the quote.

Real-world example

An estate creates three spaces: the barn (120 seated), the orangery (60) and the garden (cocktail 200). Each space attaches to the same venue — the estate — but keeps its own capacity and catalog.

When a wedding is planned in the barn, Joinways blocks it on the date and marks it unavailable. The orangery and garden stay bookable the same day for another part of the reception, and each quote draws from the right catalog.

Another example

A seminar center models four meeting rooms and a large auditorium as five distinct spaces. The auditorium has a theater capacity of 300, while each meeting room caps at 30 in seminar setup.

Thanks to this separation, the venue can host five different clients the same day without conflict, each booking occupying only the relevant space and triggering the right capacity alerts.

FAQ

What is the difference between a venue and a space?

The venue groups several spaces (rooms) of the same site. The space is the individual bookable unit; the venue is the site that contains them.

Should I create one space per room setup?

No. A room stays a single space; the different setups (theater, banquet, cocktail) are expressed as distinct capacities within that same space.

How do I change the capacity of an existing space?

Open Settings then Venues / Spaces, select the space and adjust the capacity per setup, then save.

What happens if I delete a space in use?

Prefer renaming or updating over deleting: a space referenced in events or quotes serves history and conflict calculation.

Can a space be booked twice on the same day?

Yes, on different time slots: availability calculation reasons over the occupied period, not the day alone.

Is the associated catalog mandatory?

It is not required to book the space, but associating it makes quotes faster by offering the right services directly.

Do spaces influence conflict detection?

Yes: it is precisely on the space that Joinways detects the same room being requested by two simultaneous events.