Tutorials

Step-by-step walkthroughs of everything you can do in Polarity. For quick answers instead, see the FAQs.

For guests and drivers

Four short walkthroughs covering everything you will do from a phone, parked at the property.

Park at a property From scanning the code to a confirmed reservation.

1 Scan the Polarity code on the signage at the space or the entrance. It opens the property's reservation page in your browser — there is nothing to install.
2 Choose how long you are staying. The available durations and their prices are set by the property and shown before you pay.
3 Add your vehicle — license plate, state, make, model and color. The plate is what identifies your vehicle on the lot, so check it carefully.
4 Enter your phone number or email address and confirm the code we send you. This is how you receive your reservation link and every notice about it.
5 Pay. Card, Apple Pay and Google Pay are all accepted.
6 Save the confirmation text or email. It contains your reservation link, an Extend button, and the buttons you will use to confirm your departure.

If the property has already invited you — through a resident or their management team — you can start from that invitation instead of the signage. The steps from there are the same.

Confirm your departure The step that closes your reservation. Skipping it is the number one cause of overstay fees.

1 Open your reservation from the confirmation email, from any text we sent you, or from your dashboard.
2 Choose "Leave now" if you are pulling out right now — your reservation closes immediately.
3 Choose "Leave at my scheduled end time" if you are staying for the whole booking — your reservation closes automatically when it ends.
4 Look for the confirmation. You will get a text and an email once the reservation is closed.

Do this as soon as you know your plan — you do not have to wait until you are back at the car. If you have booked two hours and intend to use all of it, tap “Leave at my scheduled end time” the moment you park and you are done.

Driving away is not enough on its own. Polarity cannot see that your space is empty, so until a departure is confirmed the reservation is still running, and once it and the grace period pass, an overstay fee can apply.

Extend your reservation Add more time before — or during — the grace period.

1 Open your reservation from the confirmation email, a text, or your dashboard.
2 Tap "Extend".
3 Pick how much more time you need. Prices are shown per duration.
4 Pay for the extension. Your reservation's end time moves out, and you get a fresh confirmation.

You can extend right up to your end time, and during the grace period that follows it. Extending inside the grace period stops an overstay fee from applying.

The reminder we send before your end time links straight to this flow, so the fastest route is usually to tap Extend directly from that message.

Dispute an overstay fee Check the timeline first, then send it to the property's support team.

1 Open the reservation that was charged.
2 Read the "Why this fee?" panel. It shows your record's own timeline — when you paid, when the reservation ended, whether a departure confirmation was received, when the grace period lapsed, and when the fee was charged.
3 If that timeline is wrong, tap "Dispute this fee".
4 Choose the reason that fits and add anything else the property should know.
5 Submit. You will see a confirmation on the page, and the property's support team follows up with you by email.

Your dispute goes to the property, not to Polarity — they set the rules at their location and they are the only ones who can approve a refund. A note is also added to your reservation's timeline so their staff sees your side in context.

One dispute can be submitted per overstay fee.

For residents and tenants

Set your own vehicles up once, then invite visitors whenever you need to.

Add or update a vehicle Keep your plates current so your vehicle is recognized as belonging on the property.

1 Go to Settings, then Vehicles.
2 Add a vehicle, entering its license plate, state, make, model and color.
3 Save. Repeat for any other vehicle you park at the property.
4 Come back and update this list whenever you change vehicles or plates.

The license plate is how a property distinguishes a vehicle that belongs there from one that does not. A vehicle that is not registered — or registered under an old plate — can be treated as non-compliant in a resident space.

Invite a guest to park Create a reservation invitation and let Polarity walk your visitor through the rest.

1 From your dashboard, start a new guest reservation.
2 Enter your visitor's first and last name, and their email address, phone number, or both.
3 Send it. Your visitor receives the invitation on whichever contact details you provided.
4 Your visitor opens the invitation, picks a duration, adds their vehicle and pays if your property charges visitors.
5 Track it from your dashboard, which lists the guest reservations tied to your unit.

There is no cap on how many invitations you send. What limits parking is the property's own configuration — how many spaces are available to visitors, which durations are offered, and what they cost.

Tell your visitor to confirm their departure. They will get the same reminders you would, but a guest who has never used Polarity before often does not realize that driving away is not the same as ending the reservation.

For property managers

Start here when you are setting a property up. Work through these in order — pricing first, then enforcement, then people.

Getting started — set up reservations and pricing Decide what you offer, to whom, and at what price.

1 Go to Settings, then Reservation & pricing.
2 Turn parking reservations on for the property.
3 Add a pricing tier for each duration you want to offer, and set its price. You can price resident-invited guests separately from visitors who arrive off the street.
4 Set a tier's price to zero if you want registration without charging for it — it is offered as a free reservation.
5 Optionally enable surge pricing, setting the trigger volume, the window, the increment and a maximum price cap.
6 Set the reminder lead time, which controls how far ahead of the end time guests are reminded to extend or confirm departure.
7 Save, then scan your own signage and walk the booking flow end to end as a guest would.

Under Settings → Parking space allocation you also set how many spaces are available. When the property is at capacity, guests are told so rather than being sold a reservation for a space that does not exist.

Configure enforcement — grace period, overstay fee and towing Set how far a reservation is allowed to run over, and what happens next.

1 Go to Settings, then Enforcement.
2 Set the grace period — how long after a reservation ends someone can still confirm departure or extend before a fee applies. The standard is 15 minutes.
3 Decide "Fee before tow". On, an overstay fee applies before a vehicle becomes eligible for towing. Off, it becomes eligible as soon as the grace period lapses.
4 Choose your fee amount strategy — a flat amount you set, or an amount matching the reservation that was booked — and set the amount if you chose a flat fee.
5 Choose your towing policy — your primary partner first, or all partners at once for whoever responds first.
6 Optionally configure business hours, if reservations are only required during part of the day.
7 Save. Changes apply to reservations from that point on, and are recorded in the property's activity log.

The escalation this produces, in order: reservation ends → grace period starts and the guest is texted → grace period lapses → overstay fee is charged (if Fee before tow is on) → that fee period lapses → the vehicle becomes eligible for a tow request your team makes.

A tow is always requested by your team and carried out by an independent towing company. Nothing tows automatically.

Invite your team, your residents and your towing partners Get everyone who needs access into the property.

1 Invite your own staff under Settings, then Members.
2 Invite residents and tenants from the Tenants section. For a new building, use the CSV import — download the sample file first to get the columns right.
3 Let the automatic reminders do the chasing. Unaccepted resident invitations are reminded for you.
4 Invite towing companies under Settings, then Towing partners. Once one accepts, they get their own dashboard and receive your tow requests there.
5 Mark one towing partner as primary if you want requests offered to them before anyone else.

Set your property's support contact while you are in settings. It is the address every guest is shown — in fee messages, in dispute notifications, and in the automatic reply when a guest texts us. Leave it blank and guests get sent to Polarity's general support instead, which adds a hop to every question.

Read your reports Occupancy, enforcement activity, and what happened on any single reservation.

1 Open Reporting from your property's navigation.
2 Use Occupancy to see how full the property has been over time.
3 Use Enforcement to see escalation activity — grace periods, overstay fees and tow requests.
4 Use the non-compliant reservations view to see which reservations ran past their end time.
5 For a single case, open the reservation itself. Its timeline lists every event and every message sent, plus any comments your staff added.

Portfolio accounts — an owner or manager with several properties under one roof — additionally get revenue and revenue split reporting across the whole portfolio, alongside the same occupancy and enforcement views.

If you need a figure a report will not give you, tell us what you are trying to produce at support@polarityparking.com — that feedback is how reporting gets prioritized.

Refund an overstay fee When a guest was right, close it out in a couple of clicks.

1 Open the reservation that was charged. Its timeline shows the full history, including any dispute the guest submitted and the reason they gave.
2 Find the overstay fee on the reservation and issue the refund.
3 Stop there — the guest is texted and emailed automatically with the refunded amount, so no follow-up message is needed.

Refunds are yours to approve. Polarity operates the payment platform on your behalf and does not refund on your behalf, which is why every guest dispute lands with your team rather than ours.

Something not covered here?

Guests and residents: contact your property's support team — their details are on your reservation and in every message we send you. Property managers: reach us at support@polarityparking.com.

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