TourCockpit runs a tour company's day around a handful of ideas: tours in a catalog, tours placed on days, bookings that fill their seats, and one board that shows it all. This page explains those ideas once, in plain words, so every other page makes sense.
What is the difference between a tour, a tour instance and a booking?
A Tour is a type of trip in your catalog: the route, the languages it is offered in, the prices. It exists once, with no date attached. Only a Published tour can be placed on a day.
When a tour is placed on a date it becomes a tour instance: this tour, running on this day, with its own guide, van and length. The same tour can run twice on the same day as two separate instances, each with its own seats.
People reserve seats on an instance as bookings. A booking is one party: the hotel, the pickup time, who to call, how they paid, and its passengers, counted as AD (adults), CH (children) and INF (infants). Everyone in the party occupies a seat, infants included, so the seat count always matches what the van has to carry.
The chain in one line: a Tour from the catalog becomes a tour instance when it is placed on a day; bookings fill its seats; each booking's party is its passengers, counted AD/CH/INF.
Who can do what? The four roles
Every account has one role, and the screens it can open follow from it.
Staff run the day: the board, bookings, and Tour Planning. They do not see the setup screens or anything about money beyond the payments on the board.
Managers do everything staff do, and also own the setup: the Tours catalog, Reference Data, Driver Availability, the Financials report, and inviting people from the Team screen.
The Owner does everything a manager does and is the only role that sees the commercial terms with tour operators and the month-end settlement.
An Operator is an outside reseller with its own sign-in. Operators see a deliberately narrow portal: which days have seats to sell, and their own bookings only. They never see the office's screens or another operator's guests.
Managers invite office colleagues from the Team screen, and an operator's own people invite each other inside the operator portal, so nobody shares an account. How signing in works, including the first sign-in from an invite, has its own page.
How does a day flow, morning to night?
The days are planned ahead. On Tour Planning the office decides which tours run on which dates, a week or a month at a glance, creating a tour instance for each. A tour can also be added to a single day straight on the board with + Add tour.
Bookings arrive all day. The office types them in on the board with + Add booking as they come in by phone and email, and tour operators book their own guests through the portal. Every booking is checked the same way: seats left, the booking cutoff, the price. The pickup time fills itself in from the hotel's zone.
The board is the single picture of the day. One block per tour running, with its GUIA, FURGO and LARGO or CORTO in the header, one row per booking, and the day's totals. Editing happens right there: change a row, move a party to another tour, mark a guide off sick.
The day closes on paper or on a phone. The board prints, exports to PDF and XLS, and shares as an image, so the drivers and the office all leave with the same picture.
Month end adds itself up. The Financials screen builds the monthly totals (cash per guide, days worked, tours by length) from what the board already recorded. Nobody types the month in again.
Live exampleThe real screen with sample data. Nothing here touches your bookings.
A real day on the board, with sample data: three tours, each block with its GUIA and FURGO, one row per booking, and the party counted AD / CH / INF:
Atlántico ToursMonday, 1 June 2026
3 tours · 18 pax · 3 vans
SUR desde sur
6/8
GUIA: NURIALARGOFURGO: Mercedes 4742
HOTEL
NOME/HAB
AD
CH
INF
CASH
CONTACTO
T.O.
REF
08:30
Hotel Miralonda
Room 3122
2
0
0
-
🇬🇧
-
-
-
Bellamar Reisen
-
MT
09:00
Playa Verena Resort
Lindqvist
2
0
0
-
🇮🇹
-
TKT
-
Tramonta Viaggi
-
VG
09:45
Hotel Tresvientos
M. Murray
2
0
0
-
🇬🇧
-
80
+44 7700 900112
Alvento Travel
@
MT
TOT.
6
NORTE desde sur
6/8
GUIA: TOMASLARGOFURGO: Mercedes 4741
HOTEL
NOME/HAB
AD
CH
INF
CASH
CONTACTO
T.O.
REF
08:30
Hotel Tresvientos
Room 28
2
0
0
-
🇩🇪
-
-
-
Bellamar Reisen
-
SM
09:00
Playa Verena Resort
Eva Ross
1
0
0
-
🇬🇧
-
-
-
Web direct
-
SM
09:45
Hotel Valmarena
Room 325
2
1
0
S1 — Booster seat, 15-25 kg
🇬🇧
100
-
Direct
Reception
VG
TOT.
6
PRIVADO
6/8
GUIA: IVANCORTOFURGO: Mercedes 5030
HOTEL
NOME/HAB
AD
CH
INF
CASH
CONTACTO
T.O.
REF
09:00
Hotel Miralonda
S. Mendoca
6
0
0
-
🇬🇧
-
-
+34 600 111 222
Web direct
-
MT
TOT.
6
Every change along the way is recorded with who made it and when, so the Activity Log can always answer "who cancelled this?" and "what changed on Tuesday?".
Why do some words stay the same in every language?
The office ran its day from a spreadsheet long before TourCockpit, and the sheet's own vocabulary is what everyone says out loud, over the radio and on the phone. Those words stay exactly as they are in every language, on purpose, so the screen reads like the sheet it replaced.
GUIA is the guide leading the tour, named in each block's header.
CHOFER is the optional second crew member who only drives, on days when the guide should not do both jobs.
FURGO is the van assigned to the tour. Its seat count is what the tour can carry.
LARGO and CORTO are the two tour lengths, full and short.
T.O. is the tour operator a booking came through.
AD, CH and INF count the party: adults, children, infants.
If a label on the board looks untranslated, it is one of these. It is not a gap; changing it would break the one vocabulary the whole office already shares.