Smart boat assignment

Which boat serves which booking is the invisible decision that decides how much driving your season involves. OutfitterHQ makes that decision with an engine instead of a guess.

When it runs

• At booking time — staff and online bookings both get boat suggestions from the engine: boats that fit capacity and dates, preferring ones already at or near the customer's lake (and boats that match the group's experience when you can).
• On demand from the grid — the Optimize button reviews upcoming bookings as a whole and proposes reassignments that reduce total delivery, pickup, and shuttle work across the schedule.

What it optimizes

Busy weeks aren’t just “are we sold out?” They’re a logistics puzzle: boats aren’t interchangeable once they’re at different lakes; a booking can pull boats into a place and leave them somewhere else; deliveries, pickups, and shuttles are real work. The engine’s job is to assign named boats in a way that minimizes that overhead — the deliveries, pickups, and shuttles your bookings would otherwise require — while respecting hard rules (in service, free on those dates, seats the party, carries the weight, plus any exclude rules you added under Booking form → Assignment) and soft preferences (experience match, seat fit, least trucking, plus prefer rules you drag in Prioritization). A novice group can still get an expert-only boat when nothing else fits — staff see a warning.

Boat types have a comfortable seat count and a max (2 and 3 on a canoe). The recommendation uses comfortable whenever it fits — even if that means another truck run. If squeeze would save that run, the booking form offers it as a second choice. The engine only auto-snugs the new party when comfortable seats are short. It will not silently take a boat off a trip someone already paid for. If that is the only way to take a new booking, you get a named warning and have to confirm. That booking keeps its quote; a staff-only note records that they got fewer boats than they paid for. It reasons over the access-point details you configured: where boats can be left, which lakes need staff drop-offs, and where each boat currently sits.

You stay in control

• Every suggestion comes with its reasoning — what it moves and what it saves — before you apply anything.

• Apply all, apply some, or ignore it.

• Every applied optimization run is recorded and can be reverted in one click if the real world disagrees.

• Priority configuration (Settings → Booking rules → Prioritization) lets you tell the engine which boats to prefer — already at the lake, riding an existing truck run, home base, and the tie-breakers under that. Prefer rules from Custom fields land at the bottom of that list until you drag them. Optional trucks and trailers live under Settings → Trucks & trailers: how many trucks, then each trailer’s usual boats and max boats. Leave the list blank and the engine stays on today’s per-boat trucking.

• Route restrictions (Settings → Booking rules → Route restrictions) mark access-point pairs guests can't paddle between, or should only paddle with an experienced group. The engine notes the flag on the booking's decision audit and the booking form warns the desk the moment that pair is picked. It never blocks a save — staff can still take the trip. See How to mark places guests can't travel between.

When you are signed in, How to set boat prioritization and How to optimize the grid show this outfit’s tree under the how-to — not a second Settings panel. Hitch sizes: How to set trucks and trailers.

Limits, honestly

The engine optimizes boat assignment against your configured lakes and fleet. It doesn't yet route the delivery truck itself (stop order, drive times) — the run sheet gives you the list; the ordering of the drive is yours. Trailer packing counts boats that need a dropoff that morning; it does not split the In & Out sheet into multiple trailer rows, and it will not squeeze a load unless that avoids another trip. Different trailer sizes pack largest-first. Seat squeeze is stricter: it will not auto-pack people tighter just to save a hitch. Overnight Optimize will not drop a hull from a paid booking.