Room and Equipment Booking

TimelyChurch includes a room and equipment booking system that integrates directly with your events. Reserve rooms for services and meetings, book equipment like projectors and sound systems, and let the system automatically check for scheduling conflicts.

Room Booking

Assigning a Room to an Event

1. When creating or editing an event, find the Room dropdown.
2. Select a room from the list of active rooms configured for your church.
3. If your event has both a start time and end time, a room booking is automatically created when you save the event.

Note: The room dropdown shows each room's name and capacity (e.g., "Fellowship Hall (capacity: 150)"). This helps you choose the right space for your expected attendance.

Automatic Conflict Detection

TimelyChurch automatically checks for scheduling conflicts when you assign a room:

• If the selected room already has a booking that overlaps with your event's time, you will see an error: "The selected room has a booking conflict at this time."
• Conflict detection accounts for setup and teardown time configured on room bookings, so buffer time is included.
• When editing an event, the system excludes the event's own existing booking from the conflict check so it does not flag itself.

Room Booking Details

Each room booking tracks:

When a room is assigned through an event, the booking status is automatically set to Confirmed.

Room Properties

Each room in TimelyChurch can have the following properties:

• Name -- The room's display name.
• Capacity -- Maximum number of people.
• Building -- Which building the room is in.
• Floor -- Which floor.
• Setup/Arrangement -- The room's default layout:
  • Sanctuary Seating
  • Classroom Style
  • Fellowship Tables
  • U-Shape (Discussion)
  • Prayer Circle
  • Stage Presentation
  • Theater Style
  • Boardroom
  • Youth Lounge Setup
  • Nursery Setup
  • Flexible / Open Space
• Amenities -- Available equipment and features:
  • Projector, Screen, Whiteboard
  • Sound System, Microphone, Piano
  • Tables, Chairs
  • Kitchen Access, Nursery View
  • Handicap Accessible, Air Conditioning
• Color -- A color for calendar display.

Room Notes, Photos, and Attachments

In addition to bookings, each room has its own activity log, photo gallery, and document store. These help facility teams track maintenance, share setup diagrams, and store rental contracts in one place.

Room Notes -- A timestamped log of activity for the room (e.g., "AC repair scheduled," "New piano installed").

• View the list of notes for a room.
• Add a note. A note can have one or more photos attached.
• Delete a note. Deleting a note removes its attached photos as well.

Room Photos -- A standalone gallery of room images (separate from note photos). Useful for setup diagrams, "as-built" reference shots, or marketing photos.

• Upload photos to the gallery.

Room Attachments -- Documents tied to the room such as floor plans, equipment manuals, vendor contracts, or insurance certificates.

• Upload documents to keep with the room.

Tip: Use room notes for time-sensitive activity (repairs, inspections), the photo gallery for visual reference, and attachments for permanent reference documents.

Room Booking with Recurring Events

When creating recurring events with a room assigned:

• Each generated occurrence gets its own room booking.
• Conflict detection runs for each occurrence individually.
• If a specific occurrence has a room conflict, that occurrence is skipped while the rest are created. The summary message tells you how many were skipped due to conflicts.

Changing or Removing a Room

• Changing a room: Edit the event, select a different room, and save. The old booking is replaced with a new one.
• Removing a room: Edit the event, clear the room selection, and save. The room booking is deleted.

Equipment and Resource Booking

TimelyChurch also supports booking equipment and resources for events.

Available Resource Categories

Resources are organized into categories:

Resource Properties

Each resource has:

• Name -- What the resource is.
• Description -- Details about the resource.
• Category -- From the categories above.
• Quantity -- How many units are available. This enables partial booking (e.g., 10 folding tables, and an event books 4).
• Location -- Where the resource is stored.
• Bookable -- Whether the resource can be reserved.
• Requires Approval -- Whether bookings need admin approval before being confirmed.

Booking Resources for an Event

From the event detail page, you can book resources:

1. Navigate to the event's detail view.
2. Resource bookings appear in the event's overview, showing which resources are assigned.
3. Each booking tracks the resource, quantity, time range, status, and any notes.

Resource Booking Statuses

Availability Checking

The system tracks resource availability by quantity:

• If a resource has a quantity of 10, and 6 are already booked for an overlapping time, only 4 remain available.
• Booking requests that exceed available quantity are flagged as conflicts.

Tip: Resources with the Requires Approval flag give administrators a chance to review bookings before they are confirmed, which is useful for high-value or limited equipment.