Found under Org Settings — click your outfitter name in the top left, select Settings, then navigate to the Org Settings tab.
The Guide Assignment Mode setting controls how guide assignments are handled when you add a guide to a trip. There are three options:
Always Direct Booking — All assignments are confirmed immediately. The guide is on the trip, no questions asked.
Always Request Booking — All assignments are confirmed only after the guide accepts. Every guide will receive an email and SMS notification with their assignment request and must confirm in the app before the assignment is locked in.
By Guide's Preference — Assignment behavior depends on the individual guide's own availability and acceptance settings.
When Always Request Booking or By Guide's Preference is selected, two additional settings appear:
Response Window — The amount of time a guide has to respond to an assignment request before it auto-expires. If the guide doesn't respond or declines, the outfitter is notified to find another guide.
Trip Proximity Guard Window — A safety buffer before the trip starts. If the trip is starting within this window, the auto-expiry won't fire. Instead, you'll receive a "Trip Approaching" notification and the assignment stays pending so nothing falls through the cracks last minute.
Assignment requests may occasionally land in spam. If a guide isn't seeing their SMS notifications, have them check their spam folder and mark the number as not spam so future messages come through.
Always click Update at the bottom of the page to save your changes.
When Always Request Booking or By Guide's Preference is selected, two new notifications are activated:
Guide Assignment Requested — Sent to the guide when they've been assigned and need to respond.
Guide Assignment Request Expired — Sent to the guide when their response window has closed without a reply.
Both notifications are on by default and can be sent via Email & SMS. You can customize the templates or adjust the delivery method from your notification settings.
What to do when a request expires
If a guide doesn't respond to your request or trip invite before the response window closes, the assignment expires and you'll be prompted to find another guide.
From the guide dropdown — on either the Trip Detail or the Assignment Calendar — you can:
Send a fresh request (re-invite) — hit Clear, then reselect the same guide to send them a new request.
Assign them anyway — if you know the guide is available and willing, choose Assign this guide anyway to skip the request step and confirm them immediately.
Pick a different guide — select another guide from the dropdown instead.
If requests or trip invite are expiring sooner than you'd like, you can lengthen the Response Window in Org Settings.