Self-guided tour access codes plug-in

If your tour runs through an app, every customer needs a code to start it. Buying a batch from your app provider and then pasting them into emails one at a time is the kind of job that goes wrong quietly: two customers get the same code, somebody arrives at the trailhead with nothing, and you find out from them rather than from us.

Upload the batch once. Captainbook hands one code to each customer when their booking is confirmed, puts it in their confirmation email and on their ticket, and keeps a record of which code went to whom.

⏱️ Time needed: about 10 minutes to set up, once.
✅ Requires: Extended or above (included Legacy). Managing codes then needs the Update booking permission.
⚠️ A code that has reached a customer is never reissued to anybody else, even if the booking is cancelled. That is deliberate: once it has been emailed, it is compromised.

That is the whole setup. There is nothing to configure per booking.

Click Upload codes and pick a file with one code per line. A .csv or .txt file both work; a single-column spreadsheet export is fine, including one with quotes or a trailing comma on each line.

Nothing is written until you confirm. The preview tells you how many codes it found and lists anything it refused, with the line number:

An upload is all-or-nothing. If a single line is refused, nothing is added. This sounds stricter than it needs to be and it is the kinder behaviour: partial acceptance means the corrected file still contains the codes that went in, so uploading it again is refused as duplicates, and you are left reconciling by hand. Fix the file, upload the whole thing.

Blank lines are ignored, so a trailing newline is not an error.

The code is issued when the booking is confirmed — not when it is made. An unpaid reservation has no code yet, because it may never become a booking.

From then on it travels with every customer-facing message, in a labelled section alongside the rest of their booking details:

Two exceptions, both normal:

The “booking received” email you get when a reservation is made is an operator email and does not carry the code, for the same reason.

You can change where the code appears in Settings → Custom attributes, on the access-code field. Be careful with the customer email: switching that off means your customers stop receiving codes entirely, and every booking after it is listed under Bookings without a code with that as the reason.

By default, every experience issues codes from your pool. That is usually what you want with one pool and one app.

To narrow it, open a product and find the Access codes panel. Switching it on for the first experience is the moment to pay attention, because it does two things at once: that experience starts issuing codes, and every other experience stops. The screen warns you before it happens and asks you to confirm — you can keep all experiences or restrict to just this one.

The reverse is blocked: you cannot switch off the last remaining experience from the product page, because an empty list means “every experience” to the system, so removing the last one would switch codes back on everywhere rather than off. Do that from the pool screen instead, where the wording can explain it.

The pool screen leads with Codes ready to issue. That is the number that matters: codes that are available and not past any expiry date.

You are emailed when the pool runs dry. The alert goes to whoever uploaded the last batch — they are the person who can fix it — and it is sent once each time the pool empties, not once per booking. It says plainly that new bookings are being confirmed without a code until more are uploaded.

Bookings are never refused for want of a code. A booking confirms, the customer is emailed, and the code is simply missing from that email. We decided that holding up somebody’s booking is worse than following up with a code. It does mean the alert is load-bearing: a customer could arrive without a code if nobody acts on it.

Any booking that should have had a code and did not is listed under Bookings without a code on the pool screen, with the reason and what to do about it:

Once you have uploaded more codes, Issue codes to everyone waiting fills them in and emails the customers. It handles up to 100 bookings at a time; press it again if there are more. With an empty pool the button is not offered, because it would have nothing to issue.

Three things you will need sooner or later:

A customer says their code does not work. Find it in the codes list and use Replace. The old code is retired, a fresh one is drawn, and you tell the customer the new one. The old one is never returned to the pool.

You have a code from your provider over the phone. Type it straight into the access-code field on the booking. Captainbook records who entered it and takes that code out of the pool so it cannot also be drawn for somebody else. If the code is already with another customer it is refused rather than quietly duplicated.

A code was never used. Delete it from the codes list. This only works for codes that have not been issued; a code that has gone to a customer can be replaced but not deleted.

Every one of these is recorded against the code, so the export below shows what happened.

A retired code is shown as Used up. It is a one-way state, which is also why uncancelling a booking is safe — the code was never handed to a second customer in the meantime.

Export produces a CSV of every code in the pool: its status, the booking, customer, experience and tour date it went to, when it was issued and when it reached the customer. It is prepared in the background and arrives as a download link in your notifications, titled “Your access codes export is ready”.

This is the file to reach for when your app provider’s records and yours disagree.

⚠️ Treat the export like a password list. Every row is a working credential next to a customer name. Export files are not deleted automatically.

Archive pool takes a pool off this screen when you have finished with it — a supplier change, or a season that is over.

Codes already with customers keep working. But be aware of what archiving actually does to the screen: the pool, its code history and the Export button all leave with it, and there is currently no way to bring an archived pool back from the interface. If you might still need the history or the export, take the export first.

Managing codes needs the Update booking permission, and you have to be in the same business unit as the pool.

That is a wider group than you may expect — anyone who can edit a booking can see your unused codes in full and export them next to customer names. If you need to restrict that further, talk to us; it needs a change on our side rather than a setting you can change yourself.

Access codes are delivered as a plugin, so what gates them is whether your plan includes Plugins at all. There is no separate limit on codes, pools, uploads or exports: if you can install it, everything in this article works the same.

Codes have to be unique across your whole account, not just within one pool. If you buy overlapping batches from two providers, the second upload will tell you which lines collide.

Expiry dates are honoured but cannot yet be set. The system will not issue a code that is past its expiry, and the codes list has an Expires column — but there is no way to put a date on a code from the interface at the moment. Every code you upload is treated as not expiring. If your provider issues codes with an expiry, let us know; it is on our list.

One code per booking, not per traveller. A booking for four people gets one code, the same way one booking gets one voucher.

Nothing happens for bookings that already exist. Codes are issued at the moment a booking is confirmed, so installing the plugin does not go back and fill in bookings confirmed before that — and they will not appear under Bookings without a code either. That list is built from bookings that went through the issuing step and came out without a code; a booking confirmed before the plugin existed never went through it at all.

For those, type the code into the access-code field on each booking by hand. If you have more than a handful, tell us — a one-off backfill is something we can run for you.