Scheduling
Manage guide availability, assign guides to tours, and build your weekly schedule — all from one calendar view. Guides submit when they can work; owners and managers build the schedule in minutes.
Key concepts
Time slots
Guides mark availability on time slots (e.g. "Morning", "Afternoon"), not on individual tours. The system matches slots to tours automatically.
Guide assignment
Owners and managers assign guides to tours with a ranked order. The system shows who is available and flags overlapping assignments.
City scoping
Each city has its own schedule, time slots, and freeze dates. Managers only see cities assigned to them.
For guides
As a guide, you use the schedule to submit your availability, confirm upcoming tours, and request shift handovers when you can't cover a tour.
Submitting availability
Open the Schedule page. When you are logged in as a guide, you will see the availability view by default.
Navigate to the right week
Use the arrows at the top to move between weeks. The current week is selected by default.
Tap a time slot to mark availability
The calendar shows your company's configured time slots (e.g. "Morning 9–12", "Afternoon 14–18"). Tap a slot on any day to toggle your availability for that slot. A filled tile means you are available.
Repeat for each day you can work
Select all slots across the week when you are available. Your manager sees this in real time when building the schedule.
Freeze date: Each city has a freeze date. You cannot change your availability for days on or before the freeze date. If you try, you will see an error message with the cutoff date.
Confirming upcoming tours
When your company has tour confirmations enabled, you will be asked to confirm tours assigned to you. This lets your manager know that you have seen the assignment and will be there.
Confirm or decline
On your assigned tours, use the confirmation toggle to let your manager know you can cover the tour. A green indicator means confirmed; red means not yet confirmed.
Shift takeover
If you can't cover an assigned tour, you can request a shift takeover. Another guide who is available for that time slot will be notified and can accept the handover. The swap happens inside TourDash — no need to coordinate on WhatsApp.
For owners & managers
Owners and managers use the schedule to build the weekly plan: create tours, assign guides, and monitor coverage. You have access to both the assignment view and the availability view.
The schedule view
The Schedule page shows a weekly calendar grid with 7 columns (Monday to Sunday). At the top you will find navigation arrows, a city selector, and a mode toggle.
Assignment mode
The default view. Shows all tours for the week as colored tiles. Click a tour to open the guide assignment sidebar.
Availability mode
Toggle to see the same view your guides see — time slots with availability indicators for each guide. Useful for reviewing coverage.
Assigning guides to tours
Click a tour tile
Each tour appears as a colored tile showing the tour name, language flag, and start time. Click a tile to select it. The selected day's date will be highlighted in the header.
Review available guides
A sidebar opens on the right showing all guides for that city. Each guide has a status indicator:
- Available — marked this time slot as available
- Overlap — already assigned to another tour at this time
- No data — hasn't submitted availability for this slot
Click a guide to assign
Click a guide's name to assign them to the tour. They appear on the tour tile with their initials and color. Guides are ranked in the order they are assigned (1st, 2nd, etc.).
Filter to available only
Use the "Only available" toggle in the sidebar to hide guides who haven't submitted availability for this time slot. This is useful for quickly finding who can cover.
Creating tours
You can create new tours directly from the schedule view.
Click an empty area on the calendar
Click on an empty spot in the schedule grid for the day and approximate time you want. A dialog opens to configure the new tour.
Configure the tour
Select the tour type, language, and start time. You can also mark the tour as private. If you need the same tour every day of the week, enable "Create for each day" to generate it across all seven days at once.
Tour appears on the schedule
The new tour immediately appears as a tile on the calendar. You can now assign guides to it.
Availability freeze dates
Each city has a freeze date that prevents guides from changing their availability for days on or before that date. This gives managers a stable picture of who is available once the schedule has been finalized.
When a guide tries to toggle availability for a day that falls on or before the freeze date, TourDash blocks the change and shows an error with the cutoff date. Days after the freeze date remain editable.
Freeze dates are set per city. Owners can update the freeze date for each city in the company settings. As you finalize the schedule for the coming days, advance the freeze date to lock availability in place.
Multi-city scheduling
If your company operates in more than one city, each city has its own schedule, time slots, guides, and freeze dates. Everything is managed from the same page.
City selector
Use the city dropdown at the top of the schedule to switch between cities. The calendar, tours, and available guides update to reflect the selected city.
Manager scoping
Managers are assigned to specific cities. They only see the cities in their scope in the city dropdown. Owners see all cities.
Independent schedules
Each city's time slots, freeze dates, and tour configurations are fully independent. A guide's availability in one city does not affect another.
Shift takeover
When a guide can't cover their assigned tour, TourDash provides a built-in handover system so the replacement can be found and notified without any back-and-forth messaging.
Guide requests a takeover
The assigned guide initiates a shift takeover request from their tour view.
Available guide is notified
Another guide who has availability for that time slot receives a notification and can accept or decline the takeover.
Assignment updates automatically
Once accepted, the schedule updates and the new guide sees all the tour details. No manual intervention from the manager is needed.
Tips
- Use the "Only available" toggle in the assignment sidebar to focus on guides who have submitted availability for the selected time slot.
- Advance the freeze date as you finalize each week's schedule to prevent last-minute availability changes.
- Use "Create for each day" when setting up a recurring tour to save time.
- Managers scoped to a specific city can build and manage that city's schedule independently while owners retain the full picture.