When setting trip dates in Brindlechute, on a new booking or a draft, you can preview guide availability for the selected dates and times. This is useful while you're talking with a client by phone or email:
A client asks for a specific guide — Check whether that guide is free, already booked, or not eligible for the experience.
A client isn't sure how many people are coming — See how many guides are free on a given day. For example, if two guides are available and each guide can take two clients, you can accommodate up to four people.
Select a date to see guide availability right away. To apply the dates, you'll also need to set the number of persons.
Guide availability appears in the date window, below the calendar. The window is titled Select Dates when you first add an experience, and Edit Dates when you reopen dates that are already set.
Check Guide Availability
Create a new booking, or open a draft
New booking — Click New booking in the left sidebar and fill out the client details. In the Itinerary builder, under Trip 1, click Add experience and select the experience.
Draft booking — Click Bookings in the left sidebar, select Drafts, then click the draft booking.
Open the date window — On a new booking, the Select Dates window opens on its own after you add the experience. On a draft, click Edit (top right), then click the trip date on the experience row to open Edit Dates. You can pick different dates or ranges to compare availability.
Choose the dates — Click a single day on the calendar, or click a start day and an end day for a multi-day trip. For a fixed-day experience, the trip length shows next to Customize start and end days, such as 3 fixed days (+1 before, +1 after). To run it over a longer range, see Stretch a Fixed-Day Experience Across More Days. The Start date and End date fields fill in at the top of the window, and Guide availability appears below.
Set the number of persons — In the Persons field, enter how many people the trip is for. It starts at 0 and shows "This field should be at least 1" until you set it. Select stays disabled until then.
Choose the time — Under Time & duration, click a time window next to each date. A ⚠ on a time window, and a "No guides available" warning beside the section title, mean no eligible guide is free for that slot. This section doesn't appear for full-day experiences.
Review guide availability — The Guide availability section shows each guide's status for every selected date. Each selected date gets its own column.
Find the guide — Look for the guide in the grouped list, or click the Guide column header to sort by name. If guide ranking is turned on for your organization, a Rank column appears and the list is sorted by rank by default. See Set Guide Priority for Automatic Guide Assignment.
Apply the dates — Click Select. Per-unit details or Group details opens automatically under the experience, where guides are assigned. See Understanding Per-Unit Details When Creating or Editing a Booking or Understanding Group Details When Booking a Fixed-Day Experience. To start over, click Clear dates.
Reading the Guide Availability Grid
Each date column header shows the date, the time window (All day for full-day experiences), and a count such as 5 eligible of 5 available: 5 guides are free for that date and time, and 5 of them are qualified for the experience. When no eligible guide is free, the header turns red and reads like No eligible guides of 6 available.
Guides are sorted into groups, and each group can be collapsed:
Available every selected day — Eligible guides who are free on every selected date.
Available some days — Eligible guides who are free on some selected dates but not others. This only appears on multi-day trips.
Not available — Eligible guides with a conflict on every selected date. The cell shows the reason, such as Booked.
Not eligible for this trip — Guides who aren't qualified for this experience. They're labeled Ineligible, and their date cells still show whether they're free.
Each guide has an Eligible or Ineligible label under their name. If guide ranking is on, their rank appears beside their name.
Each date cell shows one of these:
Available (green) — Free for the full trip window.
Partly available (yellow) — A ✓ lists the times the guide is free, and an ✕ lists the times that conflict. The guide doesn't count as available for that date.
Booked (gray) — The guide is already on another trip that day.
Blocked (gray) — The guide has blocked that day on their calendar.
A guide only counts as available when they're free for the entire trip window. For example, if a trip runs 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM, a guide with another trip from 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM that day shows as not available.
Buffer Days
If a fixed-day experience has buffer days before or after the activity days, they widen the trip's date range, shown as with buffer days under the date fields. They don't affect guide availability, so the grid only shows the activity days.
Experiences Without a Set Time
If the experience has no time and duration configured, the trip is treated as an all-day block. The Time & duration section doesn't appear, and availability is checked against the full day.
Bookings With More Than One Trip
A booking starts with Trip 1 already created, so a single-trip booking needs no extra step. Use Add a trip only when the same booking covers more than one trip—for example, a trip today and a second trip on the same date next year. Each trip has its own dates, persons, and experiences, so check guide availability separately for each one.
Note: The availability grid is view-only. Clicking a guide's cell doesn't assign them. After you click Select, assign guides in Per-unit details or Group details, where each unit starts as Unassigned, or AI-assigned if Guide Priority and Assignment is turned on.