Support
Get help with Parkista
Stuck or have a question? Email us at support@parkista.co.uk — we aim to respond within 24 hours.
Frequently asked questions
How is Parkista structured?
Parkista models your estate in three levels. A Site is the building or address you manage. Within a Site you create one or more Car Parks. Within a Car Park you create the individual Parking Spaces. Vehicles are held separately in the Vehicle Register and linked to a Site, so a contractor's van can be authorised without being tied to one particular bay.
How do I set up a site?
Log in as an Admin, click Manage Offices and then click New. Give the site a name that is unique across your account — most Facilities Managers use the building name, for example Temple Quay. If you manage several buildings, create one site for each.
How do I create a car park?
Log in as an Admin, click Manage Locations and then click New. Select the Site the car park belongs to, choose Car Park as the Location Type, name it and click Save. A site can have as many car parks as you need — for example Basement, Surface and Visitor.
How do I add parking spaces?
Log in as an Admin, click Manage Resources and then click New. Select the Car Park you want to add the space to, choose Parking Space as the Resource Type, give the space a name that matches the bay marking on the ground, and click Save. Repeat for each bay you control.
Can I upload a plan of the car park?
Yes. Open the Car Park under Manage Locations and select the Floor Plan tab, then upload your plan. Once a plan is in place your users and your security team pick a bay from the layout rather than from a list, which removes most of the confusion about which space is which.
How do I give my security provider access?
Log in as an Admin, click Manage Users and click New to create an account for each member of the security team who needs it. Give them Admin rights on the sites they look after so they can take booking requests, add vehicles and run lookups. You keep your own view across every site, so delegating the day-to-day work does not mean losing oversight of it.
Our security team takes booking requests by phone. Can they book for someone else?
Yes. A user with Admin rights can book a space on behalf of another person, including someone who does not have an account yet — a visitor or a contractor, for example. The booking is recorded against the driver and their vehicle, so a lookup later returns the right answer regardless of who entered it.
What is the Vehicle Register?
The Vehicle Register is your authorised-vehicle list — the whitelist — for a site. Each entry holds the registration, the driver, their company, and the make and colour of the vehicle. Add a vehicle by clicking Vehicle Register and then Add Vehicle. Because your security team maintains it as part of their normal work, it stays current instead of drifting out of date the way a spreadsheet does.
How do I check whether a vehicle is authorised?
Click Lookup and type the registration, or use the search box on the Vehicle Register. Parkista returns the driver, their company, the vehicle and any booking for today, so whoever is on patrol can tell in seconds whether a car belongs there. It works on a phone, standing in the car park.
How do I send an up-to-date whitelist to our enforcement company?
Open the Vehicle Register and click Export Whitelist. Parkista produces the current authorised-vehicle list for that site, which you can pass straight to the company that manages your parking charge notices. Exporting takes seconds, so it is realistic to do it as often as your contract requires rather than once a quarter.
Can Parkista send the whitelist to our enforcement company automatically?
Not yet — today it is the manual Export Whitelist button described above. An overnight send is the next thing we are building: Parkista will produce each site's authorised-vehicle list every night and send it to the addresses you nominate for that site, in the same format as the export you would have sent by hand, with a copy to you so you can see what went out. If this is how your enforcement contract works, tell us at sales@parkista.co.uk and we will let you know when it lands.
Can our enforcement company query Parkista directly instead of working from a file?
Not yet, but it is planned. A read-only query API will let their systems check a registration against the live record, or pull the current list for a site, rather than waiting for a file — with credentials you issue per contractor, scoped to the sites you choose, and revocable by you at any time. If your enforcement provider has a system that could consume it, contact us at sales@parkista.co.uk — we would rather design it against a real one.
Does Parkista issue parking fines or read number plates?
No. Parkista is not an ANPR system and does not issue parking charge notices. It sits alongside whichever enforcement provider you already use: Parkista holds the authoritative record of who is allowed to park, and your enforcement company acts on it. If you have no enforcement provider, Parkista still gives your security team a way to identify vehicles on patrol.
Can I manage more than one site from one account?
Yes. Create a site for each building and Parkista will show you occupancy across all of them from one dashboard. This is how most managing agents use it — the on-site team works within their own site, while the Facilities Manager sees the whole portfolio.
Can drivers be reminded about their booking?
Yes. Each user can turn on a daily email of their booked spaces from their account page. It is off by default, so nobody receives mail they have not asked for.
Does Parkista support Single Sign On (SSO) and SCIM?
Yes. Parkista supports SSO and SCIM for Microsoft Entra tenants, which is usually how the client-side staff sign in. Contractors and security staff who are not in your directory can be given ordinary Parkista accounts alongside it. If you need another identity provider such as Google Workspace, contact us at sales@parkista.co.uk and we will develop it with you.
A vehicle registration is personal data. How does Parkista handle that?
Registrations, driver names and company names are held as personal data under UK GDPR, with PowSoft Ltd acting as processor and you as controller. Data is held in the UK, access is restricted to the users you create, and entries can be deleted from the Vehicle Register at any time. Our Privacy Policy sets out retention and your rights in full, and we are happy to complete a supplier assessment if your procurement team needs one.
Does my security team need to install anything?
No. Parkista runs in the browser on any phone, tablet or PC, so a guard can use it on the device they already carry. There is nothing to install on site and no gatehouse PC to maintain. Mobile apps are also available for iOS and Android.
Your data
Deleting your account and data
Parkista is workplace software. Your account is created and managed by the organisation you work for, so how you request deletion depends on which you are.
If you use Parkista at work
Ask your Parkista administrator to remove your account. They manage the accounts for your organisation and can do this for you. If you're not sure who that is, email us at support@parkista.co.uk and we'll point you in the right direction — we can't remove an account on your behalf without your organisation's agreement.
If you're the account holder
To close your organisation's account and delete its data, email support@parkista.co.uk from the address registered on the account. We'll confirm the request with you and complete the deletion within 30 days.
What gets deleted
User accounts and personal details, bookings, vehicle records and authorised-vehicle registers, and your site configuration. We may keep limited records where the law requires it — for example for tax or accounting purposes — as described in our Privacy Policy.