Plan Guest Arrivals and Departures for Shuttles

Five guests land on Thursday, three more on Friday, one is leaving before she has arrived according to the spreadsheet, and the shuttle company wants to know by tomorrow how many seats to send. That is the moment an event stops being fun. Arrivals and Departures Board reads the arrival and departure dates on your guest list and shows who comes and goes on every day, how many people that is, and which guests have a problem with their dates.

It deals in dates, not times. Flight numbers and landing times go in each guest's notes, and the tool carries them into the exports so your driver sees them. That keeps the board simple and the paperwork honest.

Where the dates come from

The board shares its data with Guest List Tracker. Each guest has an Arrival and a Departure date there, and the board has a table of the same fields at the bottom of the page, with one pair of date pickers per guest. Change a date in either place and the other updates. Declined guests are left out of the board, so a no-show never takes a seat in your count.

If your guest list arrived as a spreadsheet, import it into the tracker first, then use the board to fill gaps. The board does not guess from the event dates; a blank stays blank until somebody enters it.

Reading the board

Three cards sit at the top: Arrivals, Departures and the busiest arrival day with its count. Below them is one section per date that has any movement, in date order, with "Arriving" and "Leaving" lines that list names. Two details matter when you size a vehicle:

• The cards count guests. The day headings count people, because a guest with a plus-one is two seats. A day card that says 5 can sit under a heading that says 6.
• The lists show names only. The notes, the organisation and the party size appear in the CSV and the PDF.

Under the cards, a status list warns about two data problems. "Needs a stay but has no travel dates" lists guests who are marked as needing a room but are missing an arrival or a departure. "Departs before arriving" lists guests whose departure date is earlier than their arrival, which is nearly always a typo in the year or the month.

A worked example: a three-day retreat with ten names

Take a retreat in mid-November. Nine guests are in play and one has declined. Ana Costa arrives on the 12th with a plus-one, notes "LH 402 lands 14:20". Ben Wright, Chloe Dubois (notes "train 16:05"), Femi Adeyemi and Hiro Sato also arrive on the 12th. Dev Rao, Elena Petrova, who brings two guests, and Greta Lund arrive on the 13th. Ines Duarte has her dates the wrong way round: arriving the 14th and leaving the 13th.

The board shows 9 arrivals, 8 departures and the 12th as the busiest arrival day with 5 guests. The 12th section reads "Arriving (6)", because Ana's plus-one makes six people. The 13th reads "Arriving (5)" for Dev, Elena with her two guests, and Greta, and "Leaving (1)" for Ines. The 15th has the biggest departure, "Leaving (5)". The status list tells you two things you can act on today: Hiro Sato needs a stay but has no departure date, and Ines Duarte departs before arriving.

For the shuttle company, the numbers translate directly. Six people on the 12th is one run of an eight-seat van if flights line up, or two if the landing times are far apart, and the notes in the CSV show whether they are. Five people on the 15th is a second van. You can answer "how many seats" with evidence.

Steps

1. In Guest List Tracker, make sure each guest who needs transport has an arrival date, a departure date and a plus-one count. Put the flight number and time in Notes, for example "LH 402 lands 14:20".
2. Open Arrivals and Departures Board. Read the status list first and fix any guest it names.
3. Go through each day. Count people from the headings, not from the cards.
4. Press CSV for a spreadsheet with Date, Movement, Guest, Organisation, Party size and Notes, ready to sort by time once you have times, or PDF for a printable pickup sheet with one section per date, notes in brackets and "+2" beside a guest with two plus-ones.
5. Send the sheet to the transport company and the hotel, and keep the saved project so you can rebuild it after changes.
6. Re-run the exports after late changes. Copy gives the same lists as text for a message.

The CSV and PDF downloads count as one usage each. The board is a Professional Tool, with 10 trial uses a day before a day pass or plan applies, and copying is not metered. Use Save project at the bottom to keep the data, because the project is erased when the tab closes.

Common mistakes

Entering the same date for arrival and departure when the guest actually stays overnight. Forgetting plus-ones, which is how a van built for six ends up carrying seven. Putting times in the date fields, which accept dates only. Using the board as a booking system: it plans, it does not book flights or vehicles. Leaving declined guests in the guest list with dates and wondering why a total looks different; they are excluded from the board, so check status first. Sending the driver the cards instead of the PDF, and losing the notes.

Where it fits with rooms and itineraries

Once travel dates are right, Rooming List Planner can create room bookings from every guest who needs a stay and has both dates, and the Travel Itinerary Planner helps an individual traveller plan the trip itself. For an overview of the other planning tools, see event tools.

Summary

Put dates and notes into the guest list, let the board turn them into a day-by-day view, fix the two warnings it raises and send the PDF to the people who drive. Arrivals and Departures Board gives you seat counts you can defend.

Open Arrivals and Departures Board→

Would times and pickup points on the board itself save you work? Tell us about your next shuttle plan on the contact page.