Dive Groups is where you group divers under an instructor or guide for the life of a course or activity. Course students stay in their group; fun divers get a guide; the day's trips are then arranged on the trip sheet.
When you'd use this
- Assigning students and customers to an instructor or guide.
- Checking at a glance which courses are running, when they start and end, and who's ready to sign off.
The page at a glance
Each dive group is its own card, laid out in a grid that fills your screen, ordered by urgency (past end date first, then soonest-ending). A card shows:
- The course name at the top, with badges when something needs your eye: "Past end date", "Finishes today" / "Finishes tomorrow" (amber), "Starts today" / "Starts tomorrow" (blue), "All ready" (everyone can be signed off), or "Over capacity" (red).
- The card's colour (left edge + avatar) is the course category — the same colours as your Dive Menu — so every Beginner course looks alike at a glance, whoever teaches it.
- The instructor or guide underneath, with their role badge (Instructor, Divemaster, …), and the group's start and end dates on their own line ("Starts today · ends tomorrow", or the dates).
- One row per diver: name, progress ("Pool 1/2 · Dives 2/4"), a Move this student to… dropdown (moves only that one student to another instructor, or Remove from group — the rest of the group stays put), and a Sign off button. A diver's dates only show on their row when they differ from the group's. If a person has more than one course on the board, their row shows a "2 courses · assign separately" chip — each course is its own booking and moves on its own.
The first card, Needs an instructor, lists everyone still waiting to be assigned (soonest start first).
Finding people
- Use the Find student or instructor… box at the top — the grid narrows to matching groups as you type.
- Or use the filter chips: All, Needs an instructor, Starts today, Starts tomorrow, Finishes today, Finishes tomorrow, Past end date, Ready to sign off. Chips with nothing behind them hide themselves, so you only see the states that exist today.
Building groups
- Open Dive Groups from the sidebar.
- In the Needs an instructor card, pick an instructor from a diver's Assign dropdown — that creates (or joins) the instructor's group for that course. You can also drag a diver onto a group card.
- Drag between cards to reassign, or drop a diver back onto Needs an instructor to unassign. The dropdown on each row does the same job without dragging.
- Switch List / Calendar at the top for a timeline view by instructor.
If you assign someone who is already booked on overlapping dates, a warning box appears — "⚠️ Instructor already booked — [name] is already booked on [course] ([dates]), which overlaps these dates" — so you don't accidentally put one instructor on two trips at once. It's only a warning: choose Add anyway to go ahead (handy when you're deliberately moving people around), or Cancel to leave it. Adding more divers to the same group or fun-dive trip never warns.
Emailing instructors their assignments
Assigning someone to a dive group does not email them automatically. When you're ready, use the two buttons at the top of the page (managers only):
- Email all assigned instructors — emails every instructor who currently leads an active dive group.
- Email newly-assigned instructors — emails only the instructors you've assigned or reassigned since the last send.
Each button asks you to confirm first (these are real emails), then tells you how many instructors were emailed. An instructor with no email address on file is skipped. (Fun-dive guides aren't emailed by these buttons — they're for course dive groups.)
Splitting a course's commission between instructors
When two or more instructors teach the same course, you can split the commission between them:
- On a course's dive group, press Add instructor (in the card footer).
- Add the second instructor and set the percentages — they auto-balance to 100% (set one and the other adjusts). Every instructor needs at least 1%.
- Save split. The card footer then shows the split, e.g. "Lucas 50% · Emma 50%".
Each instructor is paid their share of that course at their own commission rate, and it flows straight through to payroll and their payslips. If a chosen instructor has no commission rate set on the Team page, the modal warns you — their share won't be paid until a rate is set. Most courses stay one instructor at 100% (unchanged) — you only add a second when a course was genuinely shared. Managers and owners only.
Capacity signals
- Caps come from your centre settings (students per instructor, divers per guide). A group over its cap shows an "Over capacity" badge. Blank/0 = no cap.
Tips
- Once assigned, each leader sees their groups in My Groups and the day's plan in My Trip Sheet.
- The Trip Sheet seeds its course groups from here — its Dive Groups panel also shows each course's start date.