cobot news

Getting Paid - Payment Methods

Wed, 22 May 2013 18:42:00 +0200

A while ago Tom, from the about-to-open Coworking Bath, suggested we integrate Cobot with GoCardLess. They are a popular payment gateway in the UK, and since they worked well and offered competitive rates, we decided that the integration was worth it.

A couple of days ago we finished coding and testing, and sent an email to the spaces using Cobot in the UK. Even if you’re not UK based, and since this also seemed to be a hot topic on the Coworking Google Group it seemed to us this could be a good moment to talk about payment methods.

There are countless ways to get paid - cash & credit cards easily come to our minds, but lately other alternatives like bitcoins (and even jolly ranchers) are discussed in the coworking discussion groups. Let’s find out what this is all about - Payment methods can be classified in two big groups: manual and automatic payment methods.

Cash, checks, and other stuff from the past

Cash payments, bank transfers, giros, or checks, must be handed to you or ordered at the bank. These methods have little or no set up and can be processed for free, but they require you to chase your members for payment, spend some hours tracking them and they are inefficient for bigger spaces.

When a member of your space receives an invoice, some time will take until you actually have the cash. You then have to go to the bank to deposit it, and mark the invoice as paid in your invoice listings, as well as make an entry in your accounting system. Times as many invoices as you had created.

If you decide to accept these payment methods, make sure that you provide all the information necessary to make the payment asap. Your desk times and your complete bank details should be shown in your invoice - including your IBAN and SWITCH code, or routing number if you are in the USA or other country without IBAN. Otherwise you won’t be able to complain if members take longer than expected to pay their invoices.

It can also be helpful to ask your coworkers to enter a specific description for the payment - such as their customer reference or the invoice number they are paying, to make it easier for you to allocate payments and follow up on debts.

Payment Cards

Yep, these pieces of plastic most of us carry in our wallets. Payment cards are one of the most popular payment methods, used in 90% of the B2C transactions in the USA (According to a 2008 study). The most popular cards are Visa and MasterCard, although in some countries they are replaced by some other brands - like EC in Germany or AMEX in the US.

The great thing about credit card payments is that they don’t need an action from your customer. Unless the credit card is expired or the bank account linked to the card has no funds, the payment is made in the moment the invoice is generated. This reduces the payment time to just a couple of days, which is the average time taken to see the money in your bank account.

To accept payment cards, all you need to do is set up a Merchant Account with a Payment Service Provider (PSP) (a specific type of bank account that lets businesses accept payment cards). You can use a Payment Gateway (kind of a link) to send payment orders from most invoicing applications to these PSP, so that they send a request to your customer’s bank to send the money to your account. Once the payment has been made, the payment status PAID and the processing date are added to the invoices report.

PSPs are a great time saver. In the past, first we would have to wait for the customer to receive the invoice and pay or transfer you the money. Then, we would spend hours cross-referencing bank statements, invoices listings, and accounting books. Taking payments used to be a full time job. Nowadays not any more.

If you’re already using Cobot, you can use Authorize.net, Stripe, Adyen or Payone to process payments. And if your preferred processor is still not in this list, reach us at support@cobot.me and we’ll find a way to help.

Direct Debit

Direct debit is broadly used to pay supplier’s invoices, and is one of the most secure and fast methods to get paid. It is also the preferred method of payment in the UK.

As with credit cards you need a merchant account to be able to take funds to your account. Your coworkers just need to fill in a form authorizing you to deduct from their bank account the amounts due every month. The merchant takes care of communicating the due amount to your customer’s bank, and the bank transfer is processed automatically without requiring any confirmation from the customer. Payments take from 3 to 6 work days to be effective, but note that neither weekends nor bank holidays are considered work days - payments over Easter can take a long while.

Our new UK parter, GoCardLess, is great at Direct Debit processing! Note that different countries have different Direct Debit standards - but this may be content for another post… If you have a Cobot space and want to offer direct debit payments now, ping us and we’ll investigate which are the options.

PayPal

PayPal is a global leader in online payments and a fast and secure way for your customers to pay online. PayPal works with all major debit and credit cards as well. You don’t even need a PayPal account to pay with it! And the commissions are quite low.

Another advantage is that PayPal is widely extended in the retail sector in the USA - they even offer a card reader for your iPad or smartphone free of charge.

The downside of PayPal is that variable amounts can’t be automatically processed by PayPal. If you are charging a fixed amount to your members every month PayPal is a perfect fit. However if you have variable charges (i.e. you charge a monthly fee and have additional services like drinks or equipement that vary from one month to the other) your coworkers will need to manually confirm their payments every month.

Which payment methods are you offering your coworkers?

Which is your favorite PSP?

Gocardless integration

Tue, 21 May 2013 10:51:30 +0200

We are happy to announce that Cobot now integrates with Gocardless. Gocardless is able to charge extremely low fees (1% transaction value, max £2) by using direct debit instead of credit cards.

At the moment Gocardless is only available in the U.K. but we’ve heard they will be expanding to Europe soon.

To start using Gocardless go to Setup -> Payment Methods -> Add Payment Method and select Gocardless.

Custom booking calendar prices per plan

Tue, 14 May 2013 21:24:43 +0200

You can now charge members different rates for booking resources. To set it up add/edit a plan, click on the booking credits tab and enter a price per hour for the resource.

A few smaller improvements

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:53:36 +0200

While we are all waiting for the next big new feature (it is in the works) here are some smaller improvements we recently added:

Payment methods can be hidden from the public now just like plans.
You can enter multiple billing addresses per member
The name of the tax displayed on invoices can be customized
When using apps the Confirm/Reject page now appear only once instead of every time you log in
Resources can be made bookable only by admins but visible by everyone
In addition to a tax rate your space can have a retention rate, which is used in some countries like Spain
Improved display of remaining booking credits. Works for admins, too, now.

As always many of these were influenced by customers talking to us, so if you have something you need just let us know and we’ll see what we can do. Thanks!

GCUC 2013 - A juicy conference

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 23:33:00 +0100

At the beginning of the month I flew to Austin to attend the Global Coworking Unconference Conference, GCUC. This year’s event was my first and it was a great week during I got to learn a lot and meet many of people.

Liz Elam is the magician behind GCUC. She runs Link Coworking in Austin, organizes GCUC, and even drives a coworking car. She is really into it, and GCUC is filled with all of her high energy and passion. It was a very good conference, or, as Liz would say, a juicy conference. Many thanks to Liz, Amber, and Lindsey for making it happen. I am already looking forward to next year’s GCUC!

GCUC was a bit longer than two days for me. Alex Hillman (of IndyHall and a thousand more things), honored his Community Builder title and organized something more than a place to sleep at Kimber Modern. We made a home out of it, and some of us even made their own coworking corner in the kitchen. That’s what happens when you put a group of coworking space managers in a kitchen with huge windows and give them some post-its - they work together and think about the values that move them, their concerns, and their plans and resolutions for the future.

With nine panels about various topics, the first official day of GCUC was a great opportunity for new coworking space managers to learn, as well as for more seasoned managers to hear what’s new. The hottest topics were those about community building and funding/profitability, as well as the entry of business centers, real estate firms, and big companies like Jones Lang Lasalle into the market, many of whom were panelists in the conference. It was surprising to see so many vendors as well, in fact many more than I had seen before at the Coworking Spain and Coworking Europe conferences in 2012. The variety of profiles (space managers, people interested in opening new spaces, vendors, big companies, real state firms, business centers, universities, public institution, press…) made me realize that coworking must be getting there.

However, the coworking unconference on the second day of the event was where the magic happened. The great thing about unconferences is that they are organized from the bottom up and there are no speakers, panelists or moderators. Is there anything you’d like to talk about? Suggest a time slot and a discussion corner and meet with other people who are interested. This means that anything can happen. You can write a letter to Yahoo in the morning, talk with a huge group about software tools to manage coworking spaces (from billing tools like Cobot to cool door locking apps) before lunch, and spend the afternoon talking about women in coworking spaces and making plans to improve the Coworking Wiki.

But GCUC 2013 was so much more than this. Not only did we have time to talk about values, space, and community, to discuss how to attract more members to spaces, how Cobot can adapt to each space’s needs or how we see work in 20 years, but also to eat, drink, dance, harlem shake, play games, and enjoy SXSW. You’ll find some of these moments captured here.

The goal was to put faces, voices, and ideas to names, and to get to know the people with whom I work everyday better: the people behind this great thing called coworking. Mission accomplished.

After such a long post the least I can do is to use a few more lines to say a big thank you to everybody I met in Austin. You made it meaningful and you made it fun. I am looking forward to seeing you again! A special thanks go to all of you who are either using Cobot or tried it in the past and approached me to share your insights - or even helped other space managers get started!

And if you missed it, be sure to make it next year. It’s juicy.

Cristina

Pics by Deskmag

Invoicing Current Charges

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 09:47:56 +0100

Cobot usually generates an invoice for each coworker once a month, collecting fees for booking conference rooms, day passes and any extra charges. In addition you can create a free-form invoice any time.

Starting today you can create an invoice based on the current charges of a member. For example, if someone booked a meeting room today you can send an invoice for that at any time instead of having to wait until the end of the month.

To do that go to the coworker and click on Invoice current charges in the invoicing box. On the following page you can select the charges you want to invoice:

Clicking the Send Invoice button will generate the invoice and email it to to the member.

Stripe and Adyen Payment Processing

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 09:35:22 +0100

We are happy to announce that Cobot now integrates with two more payment processors:

Stripe is available in the U.S. and Canada and is well known for its easy and fast sign-up process. Definitely recommended if you are lucky enough to be located in the right place.

Adyen is available almost worldwide and supports numerous payment methods depending on the country you are in, which allows them to offer very competitive rates.

To use any of them log in to Cobot and go to Setup -> Payment Methods -> Add Payment Method.

RFID integration: member check-in using swipe cards

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 10:31:00 +0100

Adding to the recent deployment of our new wifi integration we are happy to release our RFID check-in system.

This system allows a coworking space to give each member a card and when they come into the space have them check in by swiping it. This gives the space the same benefits as the wifi integration such as automatically using the day passes of members with a limited plan and getting attendance statistics.

Here’s what it looks like using a USB card reader attached to a laptop:

You will need an old PC and a USB card reader which you can buy easily from most electronics stores for $50 or less.

We have created a page with detailed instructions on how to set up your own swipe card system.

Space of the Month - co.up

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 23:12:00 +0100

Did you know that we run a coworking space? Well, we do! Actually, the space existed before Cobot.

Our coworking space is called co.up and we have 55 full-, part-time, and basic members, aside from the many others who just drop in once in a while. We started on the 5th floor of an old industrial building in Kreuzberg, a popular district of Berlin, and expanded to the 3rd floor last summer. Most of us work in software and web development, but there are also recruiters, marketers, translators… We also host a large number of (mostly tech-related) events, like user groups (Ruby, JavaScript, PHP, CouchDB, iOS), workshops (Rails Girls, OpenTechSchool, BeMyApp), and parties. We provide the space for free if the event gives back to the community and there is no admission cost involved, so we have events in the space nearly every day.

Aleks, our community manager, takes care of the space and us by helping new members get started, managing the events calendar, invoices and payments of the space, making sure we know what is going on in our community (events, meet-ups, and drink-ups), replenishing our Club Mate reserve, and keeping an eye on all the tiny details that would otherwise go unseen.

However, every human needs a break from time to time and the temptation of escaping somewhere warm while it snows in Berlin is… irresistible. Aleks booked a holiday and the space needed a caretaker. My work at Cobot is not a full day, so Aleks briefed me, created a list of tasks and contacts in Basecamp, handed me the keys and… I took over the management of the space for January.

Luckily for me, software needs no break.

The first day, just as I walked through the door I had that feeling again: “Ok, I paid attention to what Aleks told me, and I have been here many, many times. I have done this before. I know where things are and how this works. But what the hell am I supposed to do first?!” Viva Basecamp! The task list was there, so all I had to do was follow instructions.

I mentioned before that most of us are kind of technical at co.up, and so we tend to think technically when it comes to problem solving. One could say that we believe in the power of software. Personally, I believe more than anything in the power of clicks. The tasks list was just 4 clicks from my desktop. 3 clicks, considering that most times I already have my browser open.

There are many more things in co.up that we solve with a few clicks:

Thanks to an Arduino hack any coworker of the space can open our door in 1 click. I easily manage all my contacts using Streak, a complement to Gmail made by the Desk.com guys. We use Desk.com to manage the support queries you send us. We share documents using Dropbox, use Skype to talk online, and send our newsletter with Mailchimp. We also have a Facebook page and a Twitter Account. And a Cobot space. All in one click.

What I like the most about online applications is how easy it is to access them, and how fast it is to use them. For example, I love Streak, not just because it looks nice or they have a friendly support team (although this is important, too!), but mostly because it eliminates the feeling of jumping between many windows to save a contact. I tried other CRM tools before but always had to jump from my email to the new contact profile and copy-paste data. Instead, Streak lets me save contact details from Gmail to a form. From the same window in which I am reading the email. No friction. The details from this form are saved in a database that I can explore, edit, share, and export. The only thing Streak can’t do is answer the email for me, but hey, that’s the fun part, and my job after all.

As I see it, when you’re in charge of a coworking space your mission is to make people feel comfortable so that they can work at their best. This has been discussed thousands of times and an image is worth a thousand words, so just a tag line: for people to be comfortable, there are certain conditions that need to be met. Your job as a community manager is to help your coworkers with these needs. All the other stuff is secondary.

Some of you have already heard this story: I first heard about Cobot while helping my friends at Workether to find a tool that would save them time running their space - the time that was lost in invoicing and collecting money, and dealing with calendars, spreadsheets, and forms. I had worked in billing myself and later on in billing software, so my friend from school trusted me for this (outsourcing is another great example of how to get rid of boring tasks). After trying the app as a potential customer, I had the feeling that it would work for them, and I wanted to help other people get the best out of it, too.

After a year helping other spaces, I know what Cobot is useful for and what it can do. I understand how it understands data and I can translate plain English to its language fast - because I use it everyday to help new users get started or answer questions. I hear users saying that it works for them, and hear our team talking wonders about new features that I will then try to mention to our users. But the truth is that I had never used Cobot myself in a real scenario of my real world until this month. Now I can say that I have been convinced of its magic.

I was curious to see how I would get on with it on a day-to-day basis. I wanted to see how much time I would have to spend using Cobot each day and whether I would find many things that needed to change. I spent a lot of time logged in to Cobot as part of my job, but it is usually testing a specific functionality or working with the Setup section mainly - not with the Management part - so the experience was different. I wanted to see if I had the feeling of something taking too long or too many clicks, and see if the workflow I had in mind made real sense. I was also looking for new favorite and least favorite features, layout defects, and documentation gaps.

The first thing that annoyed me was the realization that I wouldn’t spend enough time inside of Cobot to actually have a chance to take a look at all this. I actually only used it to confirm new members (2 clicks, as Cobot already takes care of people’s administration details - like their postal code or their credit card expiration date or their VAT number - when they sign up to enter our wifi), to charge for services (4 clicks) and to check a ticket for a broken bulb in the 3rd floor (reported by a member and again emailed by Cobot, 2 clicks and a visit to the shop).

During this month, contact details have been updated, meeting rooms have been booked, invoices have been created and payments have been received, but I haven’t seen much of this process. Cobot couldn’t do everything for me (I carried crates full of bottles, answered emails, and scanned letters for coworkers) but because I didn’t have to take care of the most repetitive part of the job, I could make sure we didn’t run out of drinks, post Twitter and Facebook updates to remind people to come work with us, and what’s more important, I had time to do my work, meet real people sitting close - coworkers, visitors, and friends - and enjoy coffees, cheesecakes, breakfasts, and beers with them.

New wifi integration replaces RADIUS

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 17:12:00 +0100

We recently released the next generation of our wifi integration. The feature formerly known as RADIUS allows coworking spaces to restrict access to their wifi by requiring members to log in in order to get internet access. In addition it automatically checks people in on Cobot which generates statics about attendance and uses up day passes.

While our old RADIUS implementation worked okay we were never really happy with it. First of all, the technical implementation was much more complex than we would have liked, requiring the use of an OpenVPN gateway, us running our own RADIUS server etc. This resulted in a less than optimal experience for our customers, i.e. they had to contact us to get activated and the process on their side involved filling out 5 screens of forms. In addition, development on this feature was rather difficult, resulting in only a few improvements over time. One annoyance for example that we were never able to fix was the lack of specific error messages - when members were unable to log in the error message would not tell them why - it could be a system error, missing day passes, a not-yet-confirmed membership - you never knew.

Our second generation solution to the problem we simply call wifi integration - we are getting rid of RADIUS as well as OpenVPN. Instead we have developed our own version of the Pfsense captive portal software that now talks directly to our API. This also means that anyone not wanting to use a Pfsense router can write their own/adapt an existing captive portal to work with Cobot.

This feature is now open to everyone without contacting us. Setup has become simpler, we need to support less infrastructure, resulting in fewer errors and we can finally give users specific error messages should there be a problem.

If you are using our old RADIUS feature: we will leave it running for a while but plan to shut it down at some point in the future. Please upgrade to the new system whenever is convenient for you. Your coworkers will thank you. If you have any questions about the migration please contact support.

You can read about our wifi integration in our guides section.

Expiring guest accounts

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 16:56:32 +0100

For space using our wifi integration feature, you can now set an expiry date for guest accounts.

This allows you for example to give the organizers of an event a guest account that they can use during the event. After that it expires automatically and you don’t have to worry about it anymore.

Here comes 2013

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 12:31:00 +0100

Dear Friends,

Never too late to say Happy New Year! 2012 has been good for coworking. Let 2013 be great.

During the last year, with more than 2000 coworking spaces around the world, the movement started to take the next level. The results from the last Global Coworking Survey, conducted by the people at Deskmag, showed that coworkers are also feeling the benefits of coworking - many report that they share knowledge and collaborate with others in their space and most of them plan to stay where they are in the new year. Everything indicates that more spaces will be started this year, and that those that opened in the last couple of years will get bigger, open new locations, and be more profitable. Good times for coworking.

Collaboration and knowledge sharing are the values that are helping the community of coworking managers to improve their spaces; and the many coworking meet-ups that happened in 2012 all around the world served as a platform to exchange ideas and stories. We made it to GCUC, Coworking Spain and Coworking Europe, where we had a great time and we came back from each of them with a long list of to-dos - from decoration for our space to new features for cobot.

We keep an eye on conferences for this year like the ones planned in Slovenia and Spain, and of course on JellyWeek and look forward to know more about GCUC 2013, Coworking Days and the rest of get-togethers and global activities taking place in 2013. The list will get longer and longer, but this is the fuel that keep us moving.

In between real-life-meetings we like to keep in touch and hear other space managers’ stories. During last year we had the great opportunity to have long talks with Felena from Hera Hub, Ky and Roz from CoInside and Eric from Mutinerie. They shared with us their first challenges as coworking managers and their vision of the future of coworking. Be sure to read the interviews today if you missed our newsletters, and let us know if you want to share your story as well.

We haven’t stopped improving Cobot either. 2012 has been intense: We did a complete redesign, we added features (such as the events calendar, the custom fields, custom tax rates and billing dates, pay for others or the customizable home pages).

We have also translated Cobot to four languages (French, Spanish, Japanese, and Brazilian Portuguese) thanks to your participation in our translation project (where you can, by the way, help us with other languages as Italian or German - contact us), we connected Cobot with more third party services (mainly payment systems like Adyen), launched our network plans for those space that are growing and expanding, like Hera Hub… and since we like to keep moving we keep working in new updates that we will announce and release during the next weeks.

All this wouldn’t be possible without you! Cobot users, space managers, coworkers, contributors using our API; the curators behind Coworking Weekly, CoworkingWiki, all the conferences and events, and all those starting projects that work towards a better coworking community, such as the Coworking Visa Coworking Visa or the CoPass.

You gave us the motivation and feedback we need to do better every day. We want to say a big Thank You and make a wish for 2013: to hear even more from you.

Cheers, and Happy Coworking!

Cristina

Event Management

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 17:00:00 +0100

We are happy to relase our latest feature: the event calendar.

All event management happens in a calendar similar to the booking calendar you already know. As the admin of a space you can add events. Your members can then see these on Cobot and RSVP with a click of a button.

Optionally you can charge for an event - the amount will be added to the member’s next invoice on Cobot.

This feature comes as what we call a Cobot App, which means in order to use it you have to install it once. To do that go to http://events.apps.cobot.me and log in. After that you will be redirected to your space on Cobot and the app is installed (under the Manage tab).

Please let us know what you think.

Resources with capacity

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 18:59:46 +0100

Resources with capacity

We just added a feature to the booking calendar: resources now have a capacity field. If the capacity is greater than one multiple people can book a resource at the same time.

The main use case is for coworking spaces who want to have their members book a desk before they come in: instead of having to add every desk in the space as a separate resource they can now add one Desk resource with a capacity according to the number of desks they have.

To start using this log into cobot and go to the admin section of your space. Click Setup, then on _Booking Calendar and add a resource.

Custom fields

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 18:18:11 +0100

We just added another feature: custom fields. Until now Cobot could store basic details like address and email for each member. In addition we provided questionnaires to ask coworkers for additional information.

Now admins can define custom fields to store any member data. This can be phone numbers, websites, twitter handles or whatever is interesting to the space.

To set up custom fields go to Setup -> Custom fields and add a few fields:

After setting up the fields you can fill in the data for each member. Go to a member’s page and follow the ‘More fields’ button.

Space of the Month: Interview with Eric van den Broek from Mutinerie

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 17:14:00 +0200

Location: Paris, France | Size: 400 sqm | Desk Seats: 70 | Event Capacity: Up to 120 guests

What is your vision of coworking?

We believe in a very simple model. Our motto is “Libres Ensemble” (“free together”). We think that independent workers can be divided into three main subcategories: The Creators (designers, developers…), the Communicators (bloggers, journalists…) and the Managers(entrepreneurs, consultants…). They can work alone, but these three types need each other.

For us, coworking is the way to bring them together and make something good take place. This is why we wanted to keep the space open to anyone.

How did you come across the idea of opening a coworking space? What issues did you have at the beginning and how did you solve them?

We thought of coworking independently of each other. One day we realized we all had the same problem and were thinking of a similar solution. We had entrepreneurial ideas, but couldn’t find a space that would fit our expectations. We carried on with other projects, and I moved to Berlin to do an internship.

During this time we also met the people from Betahaus, Utopic_us, Cowo360, and IndyHall, and they were a great inspiration for us. Two years ago, we decided we wanted to start our own space.

Being a freelancer in France is not so recognized as in the United States or Germany. Many people in France still thinks in terms of corporations, and even if it is not said out loud, people still think like this and their behaviour is affected by this belief. The mentality may not be the best for being a freelancer, but the situation is evolving in the right direction. Due to the financial crisis people are being pushed to find their own solutions, and this is a good moment to form a community. So we started creating one.

We worked on the concept, met other people. After three months we visited a space and the owner told us we could have it. They told us we could move in almost immediately, and the first month was for free! There was obviously something wrong with the place. We started working there until one day the police came and started changing the locks.

In two days we were back to where we started. This is how we built the core of Mutinerie: we did not have a space but the people were still with us, and many of them still are. We knew we were able to gather people together so we started looking for a better place. It took some time but we already had the community and a well-known blog. We started building the community without the space. We would organize events, do coworking in our flats, update the blog… In this phase of the project we spoke with more than 300 people, and they told others about our space.

So what does a day in your life typically look like? How do you run your space?

We are all working on this project full-time. We have a lot of events, around four per week, so we have to organize, move the furniture in the space, host the attendees, etc. We also take care of the financial aspects, communication, maintenance of the space, and plan improvements.

Cobot helps with this. We wanted to give a lot of flexibility to our coworkers, and it is hard and time consuming to do everything manually, that is, check members in, send invoices, etc. We could have chosen a simpler system, but cobot is flexible, the invoicing is pleasant, and the other options in the market were not so good at that time. Of course, cobot is not perfect and there are a lot of things that can be improved; being partially open-source could be a solution for this. We started to work with the API and are trying to build some additional apps, but unfortunately we are not developers.

What advice would you give to someone considering running a coworking space, and what are your wishes for the future of coworking?

There is a lot of advice in the web, which is cool, but you also have to find your own way. We at Mutinerie have a strong identity, and I like this very much. We have the pirates, the atmosphere, most of our furniture is recycled… We tried to do it our way, still listening to advice, for sure, but we wanted to have our own spirit. This is something we admire in spaces like Betahaus or Utopic_US, that they have an identity. We all want to work together, but we are all different and we should build different spaces.

We have no doubt that coworking is going to expand a lot more, and we think it is going to be more structured. A problem I see is that many spaces are run by people who don’t make a profit, and this may affect their motivation. We have to avoid burning out; we need to find the right balance, be fair, and offer great service, but at the same time we should be more structured and make sure that our spaces are financially sustainable. I hope the big players are going to keep the spirit and values and expand the concept in the right way. If it gets bigger, we may lose some things on the way, but we need to make sure we keep the original spirit. Coworking is here to stay. We are not amateurs anymore.

This is Mutinerie’s cobot space. Do you want one? Sign up for a free trial today!

Coworking Days

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 16:58:00 +0200

Our friend Jaime Aranda, from WorkInCompany — the first coworking space in Sevilla, Spain — shared with us this amazing idea they had to give visibility to coworking.

CoworkingDays is a two-day event during which you just have to open the doors of your space or bring it to the streets.

Coworking is here to stay. The number of spaces grows every day as an answer to a growing demand. Independent professionals are the future and coworking plays a role in their growth and development; each of them represents an initiative, a little company that starts up strong, full of innovative ideas.

Coworking is entrepreneurship and thus its growth needs to be supported. Each coworking space is a project accelerator, each community is an idea development team with huge potential. Vertical collaboration between professionals is a takeoff ramp for those who are just beginning. The traditional atelier and Bauhaus reappear in a model where entrepreneurs and professionals share knowledge that directly reverses them, as shipping rejuvenating experiences or business premises.

Spaces prepared to get people ready to work constructively and are looking for new models. The perfect place to unlock the initiative and show to the young (and not so young) that the rules have changed. Communities that educate in a new way of working, to create another reality. Certainly, these are environments in which it is possible to create new jobs. Is there something better than teaching someone how to provide for themselves, to end youth unemployment? The reality is new and different tools, and coworking is the technique to communicate and convey how to use them.

Despite being an increasingly present reality for freelancers, entrepreneurs, and independent professionals, coworking is not yet as well-known as it should be. There is confusion about the concept and a growing opportunism around the term which subtracts from its true value. It is necessary to unite the creative community of coworking spaces, together sending a clear message to everyone, showing the great potential and the reason for this movement; a philosophy, or more than that: a lifestyle.

The CoworkingDay is a global action supported by thousands of existing coworking spaces. A call to join forces and coordinate actions in order to achieve presence in the media for two days, generating enough content to convey the potential of coworking.

Main ideas to convey: Globality, mobility, CoworkingVisa, global market opportunities. Locally creating professional / entrepreneur / business networking, a local economy. Entrepreneurship, acceleration, entrepreneurial community, dynamism, entrepreneurial mindset Creativity, design thinking, new ways of doing, experimentation, innovation Employment, self-employment, social activities, opportunities for the unemployed Community, do-it-with-others, collaboration, synergies, opportunities

How you do this will be convening for two days of action: an open day and a day of urban actions / outside spaces. Both actions will reach not only people who already know something of coworking but also those who have not had any contact yet. Everything will be coordinated with a common web and social networks, and news releases will be local, national, and international.

The first opportunity arises for mid-September. Then, with some lessons learned, we can start working on the next CoworkingDays in the second half of January. The idea aims to generate informative biannual coordinated actions to the fullest extent possible, which serves to give visibility to coworking itself, spaces, coworkers, and communities involved in this new way of doing.

The goal To be as noisy as possible

The content Not as important as the coordination. We all know how to give a talk about coworking, show people what we do, and show our spaces.

The difference We are all doing it on the same date, and we are telling the world about it.

The tools You just need to write an agenda, some lines with the times and the activities - Friday 14th September, Saturday 15th September, it does not need to be both days, and it does not have to be for a whole day. Send it together with pictures and links please!

How do I jump in? Friend CoworkingDays in Facebook Follow @CoworkingDays in Twitter Check out http://coworkingday.net

Please make sure to leave us a comment if you plan to join this initiative, we’d love to hear about your ideas for Coworking Days!

And remember! If you join this action, you’ll be able to save money and time using cobot to manage your space… while you cowork ;).

Finally: Change a member's invoice day

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 17:41:03 +0200

This has probably been the most and longest requested feature but today we are finally rolling it out. Admins can now change the date when the invoices for their members are sent.

We have an entry to the Invoices dropdown on the member page:

Which leads you to this form:

Introducing Services

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 17:56:01 +0200

Today we are releasing an addition to our one time charges called services. Services let you create a list of things you often want to charge for. This way you don’t have to remember the price and put in a description every time yo want to charge somone, but can just select it from the list.

You can find services on the Add Charge page for a member.

Pay for other members

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 16:11:39 +0200

We just rolled out a new feature that we call Pay for other members. It pretty much does what it says: you can assign a member John to pay for another member Max. From then on John will pay for everything we would normally charge Max, which means all one time charges, bookings and other fees will appear on John’s invoice instead of on Max’.

One use case is that a coworking space has a number of coworkers who are being paid for by their company. Cobot supports this now by adding the company as a member, all the employees as separate members and then assign the company account to pay for all the employees.

To enable this, as admin, go to a member, open the Invoicing dropdown menu and select Pay for other members. In the following form select a name, click the button and you are done.