Feature · Guest passes
Digital guest parking passes, tied to the plate
A digital guest parking pass is a record, not an object. It names the car by its plate, the apartment that invited it and the exact minute it ends. Here is how GuestPark creates one, what the resident and the guest see, and how the rules apply to every pass.
The short answer
A digital guest parking pass replaces the hang tag with a record tied to the guest car’s license plate. In GuestPark a resident scans the lobby QR sign or opens the community link, picks the apartment once, lets the phone camera read the plate, chooses a visit length that shows its exact end time, and the pass is sent to the apartment. Patrol checks the plate, not the dashboard.
Why the pass should live on the plate
A hang tag tries to answer one question: is this car allowed here? It answers badly. The tag does not say which car, which apartment or until when, and it can move between cars, sit in a glove box for a month, or be copied on a home printer.
A pass tied to the plate cannot be lent, because it describes one car. It ends on its own at the time printed on it. It can be checked at 2 AM by anyone authorized, and it leaves a record that answers the question everyone asks after a dispute: was this guest registered, by whom, and for how long?
How a resident registers a guest
- Scan the lobby sign, or open the community link. The first time, the resident chooses the building and the apartment and enters the apartment’s private passcode. The phone remembers, so the next visit starts at the plate.
- Point at the plate. The camera reads it, and the resident confirms it. A recent guest can be chosen with one tap, and the plate can always be typed instead.
- Choose the visit. Each length on offer shows its exact end time in the community’s own time zone, so nobody has to do the arithmetic for a 48 hour visit that starts at 7:40 PM. New communities offer lengths from two hours to three days.
- The pass arrives. It goes to the apartment by email, and by text where texting is set up for the community, and to the guest too if the resident adds their number or address.
All of it is designed for a phone in one hand at the front door: large targets, plain words, and the resident’s own language. English, Português and Español are built in.
What the pass shows
- The plate and its state, set in the style of a real plate, with zeros slashed so nobody confuses 0 and O.
- The apartment being visited, and the building when the community has more than one.
- The exact time the pass ends, with a live countdown on the pass page and in the confirmation email.
- The visitor space, when the pass began as a request from a space sign.
- A short pass code the guest can read out if anyone asks.
The guest does not need an account to see any of it. The pass is a page on the phone, and the resident can share it by text or email.
The limits every pass obeys
The leasing office sets the limits once, and they apply to every pass from every source. When a pass would break a limit, the resident is told plainly which one and why, instead of receiving a pass that patrol will later reject.
| Limit | What the resident sees when it applies |
|---|---|
| Guests at once | The apartment already has the most guests allowed on site. Ending one visit frees a place. |
| Passes per 30 days | How many passes the apartment has used in the rolling window, shown in My passes. |
| Days per car in any 30 | This car has been a guest on too many days recently, counted across every apartment. |
| Longest stay | A visit, extensions included, cannot run past it. |
| Overnight | Depending on the rule: allowed, sent to the office for approval, or not available. |
| Capacity | Every visitor space is in use, so no new pass is issued for a space that does not exist. |
Extending, ending and fixing a visit
My passes is the resident’s view of every guest on site: the plate, the time left and how much of each limit is used. One tap extends a visit, inside the longest stay the community allows, and one tap ends it early so the place counts toward a new guest. Extensions count toward the longest stay, so a visit cannot be stretched indefinitely one extension at a time.
Plates are the hard part of any parking record. GuestPark stores them as letters and digits only, so ABC 1234 and abc-1234 are the same car. A temporary paper tag is registered as written, with the make and color so patrol can match it. And because patrol checks for near matches, a single wrong character is a question to resolve, not a reason to tow.
What the leasing office sees
Every pass appears in the console as it is created, with the apartment, the plate, the times and how it began. The office can ban a plate that should never receive one and issue longer permits for vehicles that need them. When a resident calls about a tow, the answer is in the activity record instead of on a clipboard.
If your community wants a second look at certain visits, turn on office approval for every pass or only for passes longer than a set number of hours. Those passes wait until someone in the office approves them.
Moving from hang tags
The switch goes best with a short overlap: import apartments, send invitations, print the lobby and space signs, brief patrol, then honor old tags for a week while every car is registered. Our guide on running guest parking without hang tags has the full rollout checklist, and the Orlando walkthrough shows a complete configuration.
Questions
- How long does it take a resident to register a guest?
- Under a minute for most visits. After the first visit the phone remembers the apartment, so the resident starts at the plate.
- Does the guest need to download anything?
- No. The pass is a web page. The resident can share it, and a guest who asked from a visitor space is already looking at it.
- What if the resident types the plate wrong?
- The camera reading avoids most typos. When one slips through, patrol sees the car as a near match to the registered plate and holds it for a second look instead of towing.
- Can a pass be extended?
- Yes, from My passes, up to the longest stay the community allows. Extensions count toward that limit.
- What happens to a pass when it ends?
- It stops being valid at the time shown on it. The community’s grace period, 15 minutes unless the office changes it, protects a guest who is walking to the car.
See it on your own layout.
Tell us about your buildings, visitor spaces and rules, and we will walk you through GuestPark set up the way your community would use it.