License plate management

Desks Professional and above

License plate management lets you collect and maintain the vehicles your employees bring to the office, and require a license plate for the parking areas where it matters. Instead of keeping plates in spreadsheets, you can enforce them area by area, look up who a vehicle belongs to in seconds, and hand accurate data to your garage operator, barrier system or security team.

1. Before you start
2. Require a license plate for a parking area
3. What employees see when booking
4. Manage license plates on behalf of users
5. Import and export license plates in bulk
6. Find out who a license plate belongs to
7. See license plates in the bookings list and export
8. FAQs

1. Before you start

Who is it for?
License plate management is available on the Desks Professional and Enterprise plans, on web and in the mobile app. Admins configure it; employees save their vehicles and pick one when booking.

A few principles that shape how you set this up:

• License plates are stored on the user profile, not on individual bookings. Each employee can save several vehicles (license plate and vehicle name) and mark one as their default.
• The requirement is configured per parking area. Employees are only asked for a plate in the areas where you switch it on. Every other parking area stays exactly as it is.
• In the mobile app, the Vehicles section on the employee profile is available to all employees. On web, it only appears for employees who can see at least one parking area that requires a license plate. Employees who already saved a vehicle keep the section on web, so they can view or remove it.
• The default plate is what automations use. Quick book and auto-booking apply it without asking, so scheduled bookings keep working in plate-required areas.
• A license plate can be on only one active parking booking at a time.

2. Require a license plate for a parking area

Enforce license plates only where your garage, barrier system or security team actually needs them.

1. Go to Admin > Workplace > Floors & spaces and select the relevant office.
2. Open the parking area you want to configure.
3. Under Vehicle license plate management, switch on Require a license plate.
4. Save your changes.

From now on, anyone booking a spot in that area is asked to confirm a license plate, and their default plate is used for automated bookings.

⚠️ Note: The requirement only affects new bookings. Existing bookings without a license plate stay unchanged.

💡 Tip: Repeat this per area. An underground garage with a barrier can require plates while an open surface lot does not.

💡 Tip: Want employees to save their vehicles before you enforce plates? Switch the requirement on for a parking area that employees can see. A restricted area works as long as it isn't hidden from users without access. They see the area and the Vehicles section on web, but still can't book it.

3. What employees see when booking

Knowing the employee flow makes it easier to answer questions after you switch the requirement on. The flow is the same on web and in the mobile app.

• Parking areas that require a license plate are marked on the floor plan and in the advanced booking panel, so employees see the requirement before they reach the confirmation step.
• Employees save their vehicles in the Vehicles section of their own profile and mark one as the default. They can add, edit or delete vehicles there at any time.
• When booking a spot in a plate-required area, they see the message This parking spot requires a vehicle license plate, and their default vehicle is preselected in the Vehicle field. They can confirm it, switch to another saved vehicle, or add a new plate directly in the booking flow. New plates are saved to their profile automatically.
• Quick book and auto-booking use the default plate without any extra step, so employees with recurring parking bookings are not interrupted.
• Managers and group managers can book parking for the people they manage. If the colleague has saved vehicles, the booker picks one in the Vehicle field. If the colleague has none, a message asks them to have the employee or an admin add one first.

💡 Tip: When rolling this out, remind employees to keep their default plate current if they switch to a rental, pool or company car. Their automated bookings will otherwise carry the wrong vehicle.

4. Manage license plates on behalf of users

You can maintain license plates for colleagues. This is useful for shared company vehicles, for people who rarely open their profile, or when a plate was entered incorrectly.

1. Go to Admin > User management: Users.
2. Select the user you want to update.
3. Open their Vehicles section.
4. Add, edit or remove a plate, and set which one is the default.

License plates are also visible and editable in the user side sheet, so you can correct a plate without leaving the view you are working in.

The user list also has With license plate and Without license plate filters, and the search box matches license plates as well as names. Use these to see who still needs to add a vehicle before you switch the requirement on.

5. Import and export license plates in bulk

If you already keep vehicle data elsewhere, for example in a list from your garage operator, you don't have to enter every plate by hand. License plates are part of the user list, so you manage them in bulk the same way you manage other user data.

Export license plates:

1. Go to Admin > User management: Users.
2. Click Export CSV.
3. Select Export all users, or Export users with current filters and sorting applied to export only the filtered results.

The CSV file includes the saved license plates per user. Learn more in Exports.

Import license plates:

Add or update license plates for many users at once by uploading the edited CSV file via the CSV user upload on the same page. Enter the plates in the License plates column and separate multiple plates with a semicolon, for example B ER 007; M UC 123. For all steps, see Adding, updating and deleting users with CSV upload.

💡 Tip: Export the user list first and use it as your template. This way the column structure matches what the import expects.

6. Find out who a license plate belongs to

When an unknown car is blocking a spot or a colleague is stuck at the barrier, you no longer have to ask around.

1. Search for the license plate in deskbird.
2. The matching vehicle shows you which user it belongs to.
3. From there you can see that person's parking bookings and get in touch.

This is the fastest way to answer "whose car is this?" and to check whether a vehicle in the garage actually has a valid booking for the day.

7. See license plates in the bookings list and export

The bookings list includes a License plate column, so you can see at a glance which vehicles are expected in your parking areas.

When you export bookings via Admin > Bookings > Export bookings to .xlsx, the file also contains the license plate and the vehicle name for each parking booking. This way you can hand a complete daily list to your garage operator or security team without extra work.

Use both to review parking bookings for a given day, spot missing or duplicated plates, and share accurate vehicle information.

8. FAQs