--- title: "Zones, hotels and pickup times" url: https://tourcockpit.com/help/pickup-times lang: en description: "TourCockpit fills in the pickup time for a booking by itself: the hotel belongs to a zone, and each tour has one pickup time per zone. This page explains how to set that up, where the time appears, and what happens when you need a different one." --- # Zones, hotels and pickup times TourCockpit fills in the pickup time for a booking by itself: the hotel belongs to a zone, and each tour has one pickup time per zone. This page explains how to set that up, where the time appears, and what happens when you need a different one. ## How a pickup time is decided Three pieces work together. Zones are the stretches of coast the van drives through, kept in driving order. Every hotel belongs to one zone. And for every tour, the pickup times grid holds one time per zone: where the tour collects, and when. When a booking is saved with a hotel, TourCockpit follows the chain: the hotel's zone, then that tour's time for that zone, and writes the answer onto the booking. Every booking's hotel is on the list, so the chain always starts. If that tour's cell for the zone is still Not set or marked No stop, the time is simply left empty and the office sets it by hand. The answer is written onto the booking and remembered as the grid's. It follows the question: change the tour on the block, move the booking to another tour, change its hotel, or assign a vehicle of another size, and the time is answered again from the grid. A time somebody set by hand never moves. Editing the grid itself changes future bookings only. ## Setting up zones, hotels and the grid Everything lives in Reference Data (a manager screen), on three tabs: Zones, Hotels and Pickup times. 1. On the Zones tab, add your zones and put them in the order the van actually drives them, dragging a zone by its grip to where it belongs; the grid's columns follow. A zone is never deleted, only retired, and a zone that still has hotels in it cannot even be retired: its row says how many are in the way, and the way out is to move them to another zone first. 2. On the Hotels tab, give each hotel its zone. Every hotel has one: the zone is asked for when the hotel is added and cannot be emptied afterwards. The zone dropdown on each row saves the moment you change it; there is no separate save step. 3. On the Pickup times tab, start with the company's times: open Company times below the grid (a company with no grid yet sees it open) and add the times this company departs at, because the grid offers exactly those. Then fill the grid: one row per published tour, one column per zone. Every cell starts as Not set, and the line above the grid counts how many are left, so you can see when setup is done. Pick a time where the tour collects, or No stop where it does not; every change saves immediately. The row and the column under the pointer light up, so a cell in a wide grid is never read against the wrong zone. A cell has three answers. Not set is where every cell starts: nobody has decided yet, and the cell is drawn faded. No stop is a decision: this tour does not collect from that zone. Choosing a hotel in a No stop zone opens a box that names the tour and the zone and has to be dismissed, on the board and on a tour operator's own form alike, and the booking is still taken. Opening a booking that already has that hotel says nothing: the box is for a hotel somebody picks. The line under the pickup field stays underneath as the standing record. A time is the pickup. Bookings from a Not set or a No stop cell get no automatic time, and choosing either one on All vehicles clears the cell for every vehicle size too. A hotel cannot be left without a zone, because a hotel with no zone answers no pickup time, and a guest with an empty time column is what zones exist to prevent. Every door that adds a hotel asks for the zone: the Hotels tab, and the small box that opens from a booking row. ## The list of times, and who keeps it Every time picker in TourCockpit reads from one list, and the office owns it. It sits on the Pickup times tab under the grid, behind the line Company times with how many there are; Manage opens it. It holds the times this company actually departs at, and nothing else. 1. Type a time and press Add time. It is stored as HH:MM on the 24-hour clock, so 8:40, 8.40, 840 and 8:40 am are all accepted and kept as 08:40, and 8:40 pm as 20:40. 2. Or add it from the grid cell that needs it: open the cell, type the time, and choose Add 08:40 to the company's times. The time joins this list and answers that cell in one step, and every other cell offers it straight away. A time the company retired is offered as Restore instead. 3. Or from a booking, without opening this screen at all: a manager who types a time on a Not set cell's zone and ticks the box under the pickup puts that time on this list in the same step, and a retired one comes back the same way. 4. A time already on the list is refused rather than added a second time. Two spellings of one departure are not two departures. 5. Retire a time the company no longer runs. It leaves every picker and every empty grid cell straight away. Retiring is not deleting. A booking or a grid cell already holding that time keeps it, so nothing a guest was told changes. Before you retire one, the panel tells you how many grid cells still answer with it, and Restore puts it back at any point. The grid draws from this list alone. A booking is the one place you may type a time that is not on it, for an unusual private pickup: the booking takes it either way, and a manager can tick Also add it to the company's times under the field when it should become a departure the company runs. ## Prices per zone A tour has one adult price and one child price, set on the tour itself. A zone can charge more, because the far zones cost more to reach. The Prices tab holds that: the same tours down the side and the same zones across the top as the pickup grid, with two boxes in each cell. A tour sold by the vehicle has no fares a zone could raise, so its cells read Priced per vehicle instead of boxes, and it costs the same from every zone. - Leave a box empty and the tour's own price applies. That price is the grey number in the box, so you can always see what an empty cell means. - The two prices are independent. Raise the adult fare in a zone and the child fare stays at the tour's, unless you raise that too. - A tour that takes no children has its child box disabled. A zone cannot invent a fare the tour does not sell. A booking is saved with the prices its hotel's zone had at that moment, and keeps them. Editing a cell next month changes what NEW bookings cost, never what a guest has already been quoted. Changing the hotel on a booking does recompute it, because a different zone is a different price. ## Booking from the office On the board's booking row, start typing the hotel. As soon as the hotel is recognised, the pickup field fills itself with the grid's answer for that tour and zone. You can always pick or type a different time; a time you set yourself always wins, and the board marks it with a small dot next to the time (Set by hand, will not follow the tour). - Under the hotel, a line names the hotel's zone and what the grid answers for this tour from it, or that the tour does not stop there, or that the cell is not set yet. It appears once the hotel is recognised; a name that is no hotel on your list shows nothing. A manager can click the zone to open that very cell on the Pickup times tab, in a tab of its own, so the booking you are typing stays where it is. - When that cell is still Not set and a manager types a time by hand, a box appears under it: Use 09:15 for every future NORTE desde norte pickup from Esquinzo. It starts unticked, so the time stays on this booking alone. Ticked, the save writes the time into the cell's All vehicles answer first, puts it on the company's times when it is not there yet, and then saves the booking, which follows the grid from then on. If another manager answered the cell in the meantime, nothing is saved and the form says what the grid holds now. Bookings already taken keep their times, and the cell is set back on the Pickup times tab. - A time you typed is never overwritten, not by the grid, not by a tour change, not by editing the booking later. Ticking the box above is the one way out of that, and it is deliberate: the time is then the grid's own answer rather than this booking's, so the row carries no hand-set dot and a move to another tour asks that tour's grid again. - The grid offers only the times on the company's own list, which the office keeps under Company times on the Pickup times tab. On a booking you may still type any time at all, for example an unusual private pickup. - Moving a booking to another tour answers a grid time again from the new tour's grid; a hand-set time travels unchanged. After a move, glance at the pickup column. - Saving a booking for another reason (the lunch marker, a room number, the party) leaves its time exactly as it was. Only a change to its hotel makes the grid answer again, because the zone is now a different one. Clearing the pickup field on a booking whose hotel resolves does not leave it empty: the grid's answer fills it back in. Every booking's hotel is on the list, so the one way a booking genuinely has no time is that the tour's cell for its zone is Not set or No stop. ## In the tour operator portal A tour operator never sets a pickup time; only the office knows the routes. On the booking form the pickup time is shown as a fact, right under the hotel field. - The moment the operator picks a hotel with a known zone and time, the line reads the resolved time, for example "Pickup at 09:00". That is the same answer the booking will be saved with. - While the answer is being looked up, the line briefly reads that it is checking. - If the office has not set that tour's time for the hotel's zone yet, the line says the office will set the pickup time. The booking still goes through. - If the office has marked the zone No stop for that tour, picking the hotel opens a box naming the tour and the zone, for example TREKKING PICO DE LA ZARZA does not collect from Corralejo, which has to be dismissed before the form goes on. Opening a booking that already has that hotel is quiet; the box is for a hotel the operator picks. The line underneath says this tour does not collect from this hotel's zone, and the office will arrange the pickup. The hotel stays chosen and the booking still goes through. In the operator's own bookings, a booking whose time the office has not set yet shows Set by office until it is filled in. When the office sets it, the operator is told the new time, in their inbox and on WhatsApp when they have it on. ## Correcting the tour on a placed block It happens: the block was placed as one tour, the bookings were taken at that tour's times, and the tour turns out to be the other one. Change the tour in the block header and the pickup times are answered again from the new tour's grid, on every booking whose time came from the grid. 1. In the block header on the board, pick the right tour in the tour select. The block re-renders under the new tour. 2. Read the line that appears under the header: Pickup times updated: N, and, when some were set by hand, Set by hand, left alone: M. That line is the whole check; nothing needs re-reading row by row. 3. Look at the rows with the dot: those are the hand-set times, and they are yours to change if the new tour needs it. The same line reads Priced for the new tour: N when bookings changed price. Correcting the tour in the header prices every booking on the block at the new tour from its own zone, exactly as moving each booking there would. If a new price would be lower than the cash the driver collects on a booking, the change is refused with those guests named, and nothing moves until their cash is corrected. Every operator with a booking whose time moved is told, with the old and the new time, in their inbox and on WhatsApp when they have it on. A booking whose time did not change sends nothing. ## When the vehicle changes the time The 19-seat bus collects earlier than the vans, because loading more people takes longer. The grid carries a tab per vehicle size: All vehicles is the standard table, and a size tab holds only the cells where that size collects at a different time. Every cell you leave empty follows All vehicles. A departure resolves against the size it is planned or assigned for. Plan a day as 0/19 and operators booking it are quoted the bus times straight away. Assign the bus in the FURGO select of a day already booked and the grid-sourced times move by themselves, the same Pickup times updated line appears, and every desk with a booking on it is told. Saving the block without changing the vehicle changes nothing. A time somebody set by hand never moves, whatever is driving. The board marks those rows with the dot, so you can see at a glance which ones you still have to look at yourself. On a size tab, an empty cell reads Same as all vehicles: clearing an override hands the cell back to the standard table. ## Changing the grid later Editing a grid cell changes future bookings only. Every booking already taken keeps the time the guest was told, even when it is saved again later for another reason. Renaming a zone keeps all its hotels and times. A zone can only be retired once it is empty, and retiring it then hides it from new choices without changing anything that already exists. Every pickup-time change on a booking is recorded in the history, with who changed it and when, so a moved time can always be traced on the Activity screen or in the booking's own history.