Resources
A resource is anything that has to be available for a booking to happen — a guide, a boat, a vehicle, a kayak, a pair of snowshoes, a meeting room. When you attach resources to a schedule, Captainbook only lets customers book when there's a resource free to serve them, and it automatically closes slots when your resources are already committed.
Think of resources as your real-world capacity. Availability on your calendar is the promise; resources are what actually delivers it.
Resource categories
When you create a resource, you pick a category. The category tells Captainbook what kind of thing it is and how it behaves:
Category | What it is |
Guide | A person who runs your experiences. Guides can be given access to your workspace to receive notifications and see their own schedule. |
Asset | A bookable unit with a capacity, like a boat, a van, or a table. Assets are consumed by the bookings assigned to them. |
Equipment | Gear you hand out, like helmets, bikes, or wetsuits. Equipment doesn't use a per-unit capacity. |
Auxiliary | An optional add-on drawn from a shared pool, attached on top of a booking (for example a rental item or an extra unit). |
Resource settings
Every resource has a few core settings.
Name
A clear label you'll recognise on your schedules and calendar (e.g. "Blue Zodiac", "Maria", "Kayak #3").
Type
A free-text description of what the resource is. It can be anything that fits your operation — vehicle, equipment, gear, and so on.
Category
Guide, Asset, Equipment, or Auxiliary (see above). This is chosen when you create the resource.
Capacity
How many travellers this resource can serve at once. Captainbook warns you if a schedule's capacity is larger than the combined capacity of the resources assigned to it, so you don't oversell what you can actually deliver. (Equipment doesn't use capacity.)
Prep time (minutes)
The number of minutes this resource needs before a booking to get ready — setup, loading, briefing. During this window the resource is considered busy, so nearby slots are closed and availability is reduced. Leave it blank for none.
Cool-off time (minutes)
The number of minutes this resource needs after a booking before it can be used again — cleaning, travel, recovery. Like prep time, this closes nearby slots and reduces availability. Leave it blank for none.
Workspace access
Turn on "This resource needs access to my workspace" if the resource is a person who should log in, receive notifications, and see their schedule. You can attach an existing user or invite a new one by email.
Assigning resources to schedules
A resource becomes useful once you attach it to your experiences' schedules. For each schedule a resource serves, you can fine-tune:
Capacity — how many travellers this resource covers for that specific schedule.
Prep and Cool-off — per-schedule overrides of the resource's default buffers. A value here wins over the resource-level default; enter 0 to switch a buffer off for that schedule only; leave it blank to inherit the resource's default.
Each schedule row saves on its own — edit the values and click Update for that line. An Unsaved marker appears while you have pending changes, and flips to a green Saved once the row is stored.
How prep and cool-off change availability
This is the important part. When a resource is booked, Captainbook treats it as occupied not just for the booking itself, but for its prep time before and cool-off time after:
Booked window = prep → booking → cool-off
Any slot that falls inside that padded window is automatically closed for that resource, because it physically can't be in two places (or two states) at once.
Examples
A boat with a 30-minute cool-off finishes a 10:00–11:00 tour. It's occupied until 11:30, so an 11:15 departure that needs the same boat won't be offered.
A guide with 15 minutes of prep who has to brief and set up before a 09:00 tour is considered busy from 08:45, so an 08:50 slot needing that guide closes.
Buffers are always in minutes, and they only ever reduce availability around real bookings — an empty calendar is never affected.
Tips
Start conservative. Even a small cool-off (cleaning or turnaround) prevents impossible back-to-back bookings.
Use per-schedule overrides when the same resource behaves differently across experiences — for example a longer cool-off on a muddy tour than on a city walk.
Setting a buffer to 0 on a schedule is a deliberate "no buffer here," which is different from leaving it blank (inherit the default).
Turning a buffer on or changing it recalculates the affected slots automatically; you don't need to touch your calendar.