--- title: "Notifications between the office and the tour operators" url: https://tourcockpit.com/help/notifications lang: en description: "When a tour operator books, changes or cancels through the portal, the office is told, and so it is when a manager does the same while viewing that operator's portal. What the office does itself tells the office nothing. When the office changes one of that operator's bookings, the operator is told. Each of those messages arrives in two places at once: as a WhatsApp nudge on the phone, and as an item in the inbox inside TourCockpit, where it can be opened, marked as read, or brought back as unread. This page explains both directions, who receives what, and how the inbox works." --- # Notifications between the office and the tour operators When a tour operator books, changes or cancels through the portal, the office is told, and so it is when a manager does the same while viewing that operator's portal. What the office does itself tells the office nothing. When the office changes one of that operator's bookings, the operator is told. Each of those messages arrives in two places at once: as a WhatsApp nudge on the phone, and as an item in the inbox inside TourCockpit, where it can be opened, marked as read, or brought back as unread. This page explains both directions, who receives what, and how the inbox works. ## Why does TourCockpit send notifications? A booking has two sides. The reseller sold the seat and holds the guest; the office runs the day and knows the routes. Every time one side changes something, the other needs to know, and before TourCockpit that was a phone call or a message someone had to remember to send. Notifications make that call by themselves, in both directions, at the moment the change is saved. Each of those notifications travels two ways at once. A WhatsApp message reaches the person's phone, wherever they are, or an email for someone in the office who picked it. An item lands in their Inbox inside TourCockpit, reachable from every screen, where it stays until they deal with it. The WhatsApp message is the nudge; the inbox is the record. A notification is about one specific booking, and it always names who made the change. Nobody is ever told about their own change: the reseller does not hear about what their own desk did, and a manager who acted in a reseller's portal is left out of the message their colleagues get. Two Inbox items are not about a booking: an invitation nobody has taken up, which reaches whoever sent it, and a reseller asking to sell your tours, which reaches whoever is set to receive those requests. Both arrive by email rather than on WhatsApp. ## What does the office hear about? Everything a reseller does to a booking through their portal: a new booking, a change to one, and a cancellation. A manager working in View their portal counts as that reseller, so a booking they move to another departure there, or cancel there, is told too. A desk cannot move a booking from its own portal. The message names the reseller, the tour, the day and the person who did it. - A new booking: the reseller, the tour, how many people (and the child seat, when one was requested) and the day. - A changed booking: the reseller, the tour, the day and what the party is now. On a cash booking it also carries To collect with the figure as it now stands, because a desk correcting forty to sixty is exactly the change the office has to act on before the bus leaves. - A moved booking: the reseller, the tour and the day it moved to, and on WhatsApp the pickup there. A drop inside the same departure only changes the order and sends nothing. - A cancelled booking: the reseller, the tour and the day it was on. Nothing the office does itself is sent to the office: a colleague's move or cancellation on the board or on the Bookings screen, a cancellation put back from the Activity Log, a party, a hotel, a pickup time. There are dozens a day, and a message for each would bury what the resellers did. What the office does to a reseller's booking is what the reseller hears about, in the next section. Owners and managers also receive a summary of the week that ended, every Monday morning: the guests, the departures, the money and the desks that sold most. It is described on the Financials page. ## What does a tour operator hear about? What the office does to that operator's own bookings, and nothing about anyone else's. Five moments: - The booking was changed: the office edited the party or the hotel, or assigned a booking to this operator. - The pickup time was set, changed or cleared: the message names the tour, the day, the time it was, and the time it now is, so you can re-tell the guest without opening the booking. A time that was never set reads as not set, and a cleared one says that no pickup time is set. Clearing a time is news too, because the guest has to be told. - The booking was moved to another day: whether the office moved that one booking or moved the whole departure to another day. The message names the new day and the pickup on it. - The booking was cancelled. A booking the office reassigns to another operator leaves your list the same way, as a cancellation, because for your desk that is what happened. - The booking is back: a cancelled booking of yours that the office puts back from the Activity Log reaches you as a new booking, because for your desk that is what it is. Office-only details never notify: staff initials, the lunch marker, payment, cash, the reference and the note can change all day without a message leaving the building. A reseller hears about what their guest can see. The pickup time is the reason this direction exists. The operator sold the seat, the office knows the route, and the time used to travel by phone. Now it reaches the desk the moment the office saves it. How the time itself is decided is explained in Zones, hotels and pickup times. ## Who receives them, and who does not? The two directions follow different rules, on purpose. - The office side is chosen, person by person. On the Team screen, the Notifications grid below the people shows who receives what at this company: tick Reseller bookings for anyone who should be told, and the same boxes are under Edit on the person's row. Anyone with the box ticked is told. When nobody has it ticked, the Owners are told instead, so a reseller's booking is never missed, and the grid says so. Each person picks on their own My profile whether it reaches them on WhatsApp or by email; WhatsApp needs a number, so somebody without one gets it by email. Every item is also in their inbox. - The operator side is on unless the reseller turns it off. Every active user of the reseller that owns the booking is told, whether or not they entered a number, because this is their own sold seat changing rather than somebody else's activity. Each of them can turn Changes to your bookings off on their own My profile, and then nothing reaches them, the inbox included. - A reseller is only ever told about their own bookings. Who receives the message is decided by the booking's operator alone, never by the tour or the day, so two agencies on the same departure never hear about each other. - Nobody is told about their own action. A desk that changes its own booking notifies the office, not itself. A manager working inside a reseller's portal counts as that reseller for the reseller's side, the office is told as if the desk had done it, and the manager is left out of it and named as the person who acted. ## What does the WhatsApp message say? One short message per moment, sent by TourCockpit to the person's own number. It names the reseller, the tour, the day, what changed and who did it, and it ends with a button that opens that booking on the board, on its own day even after a move. At a reseller's desk, whose portal has no past days, a booking whose day has passed opens on today instead, in the Past list of your own bookings. A message sent before this button came in opens the board on the booking's day instead. The message reaches each person in the language they chose, wherever WhatsApp has approved that wording in it, and in English until it has. The date and the child seat inside it are always the reader's own, so a Spanish reader sees 6 de junio de 2026 rather than an English date, and the party is written the way the board writes it, AD 2 · CH 1 · INF 0, which reads the same in every language. WhatsApp is the nudge, not the record. If a message is delayed or never arrives, nothing in TourCockpit shows an error to you or your colleagues; the item is still in the inbox, which is the place to check. Delivery problems are watched on TourCockpit's side. ## Where is the inbox, and what is in it? The bell. On a desktop screen it floats at the top right of every page, with the word Inbox beside it; on a phone or tablet it sits in the top bar, the bell alone. The red badge on it counts your unread items exactly up to 99, and reads 99+ beyond. Press the bell and the Inbox opens. On a desktop it is a panel at the right edge, and the board makes room for it instead of hiding behind it. On a phone it fills the screen, and Close at the top takes you back to where you were. On a desktop, Esc, the cross or the bell closes it. It opens on Unread, what still needs a look; All shows the last 100 items. Items are listed newest first under Today, Yesterday and Earlier. Each one is a sentence in your language, for example Pickup for NORTE desde sur on Sat 12 Sept: 08:40 to 09:10, followed by the tour, who did it and how long ago, and a Cancelled tag when the booking has been cancelled since. Unread items are bold. Tap anywhere on an item to open the booking on the board, on its own day and already open (for an operator, the booking opens on its day, in the line of their own bookings, or on today in the Past list when its day has passed); on the invitation item it opens Team instead, or My Team at a reseller's desk, and on a reseller's request it opens that request, ready to decide. A booking cancelled since lands in its tour, crossed out, with who cancelled it and when. On a desktop the inbox stays open beside what you opened, with that item marked; on a phone it takes the screen, and Back to inbox at the top returns you to the list where you left it. The dot at the right of each item flips it between read and unread without going anywhere. Opening the panel marks nothing as read. Read state is yours to set: opening an item counts as reading it, Mark as read clears one you need not act on, Mark as unread brings back one you saw but cannot deal with yet, and Mark all as read at the bottom clears everything at once, for the day you first open an inbox with months of history in it. An item you read stays on the Unread list until you switch lists, so nothing jumps away under your finger. When nothing is left unread, the inbox says You are all caught up. Read state is saved with the item, not remembered by the browser: close the laptop, come back tomorrow, and the same items are still unread. And your inbox is yours alone. A manager sees every reseller's activity because every one of those messages was addressed to them; a reseller sees only what was sent to their desk. ## What is the small message in the corner? While you are working in TourCockpit, a new item announces itself shortly after it arrives with a small Inbox message at the bottom right of the screen, offering Open and Dismiss. It fades by itself after a few seconds, it never announces something you did yourself, and each item announces itself once. - Open takes you to the booking on the board, on the day it is on now, even if it has moved since, with the booking open, and marks the item as read. A booking cancelled since shows in its tour, crossed out, with who cancelled it and when; one deleted since says so in one line at the top of the board. - Dismiss marks it as read too: you saw it and chose to wave it away. - Letting it fade marks nothing. You may have been looking at the board or away from the desk, so the badge keeps the count for you. ## Where do I read what changed in TourCockpit? What's new at the foot of the side menu lists the new features and improvements, newest first, with those for your side of the work only: the office reads the office's, a tour operator reads the operators'. On a phone it is the same line in the menu. - Each change has its title, the day it shipped, a screenshot or the help video that shows it, and a few sentences. The New pill means it was added to this list in the last fourteen days, which can be later than the day it shipped: a change written up a few weeks afterwards still carries the pill when it arrives here. - When the change is on a screen you use, the button at the foot opens that screen. - On a phone, the list fills the screen. Tap a change to read it, swipe left or right for the next or the previous one, and All takes you back to the list. - Every change has its own address, so a link to it opens it directly. All changes opens the public What's new page, the whole record. It also reaches you by email, once a week: on Monday morning, at eight o'clock where you are, carrying the same changes as the list and only the ones added to it in the seven days before, newest first. Up to ten travel in the email, with a line saying how many more are waiting on the page. A week in which nothing was added to the list sends no email at all. To stop it, choose Off under What's new in the Notifications card of My profile and press Save; Email brings it back. When you work for more than one company, each has its own card, and the email keeps coming while any of them has it on.