Setting up your company

What we prepare with you

A new cruise company is added to Riverdesk by the Riverdesk team. We create the company and invite its first owner. We then work with you to enter:

• The vessel: its cabins, each with a number and deck, grouped into categories such as Standard, Superior and Suites, with the most adults and guests each category takes.
• The weekly route: the stops in order with their days (for example Luxor, Esna, Edfu, Kom Ombo, Aswan), and the itineraries sold on it, such as 4 nights from Luxor or 3 nights from Aswan.
• Seasons, rates and policies: prices per season and category, child bands, cancellation penalties, and deposit and balance rules.
• Channels: each agency or platform that sells for you, with its contract.

Riverdesk then builds 18 months of departures from the route. From that moment the office can sell.

Rates can be changed on screen at any time (Rates). New routes, itineraries, seasons and policies are set up with the Riverdesk team for now.

Settings to check before the first booking

Open Settings (owners only can change them):

Setting	What it does	Usual value
Company name, default language	Shown on documents; the language new staff start in	Your trading name; Arabic
Checkout hold	How long a channel's cabins are held while its customer pays online	30 minutes
Option hold	How long an agency's option is held before it expires	72 hours
Alternative offer valid	How long an agency has to accept another date you offered	48 hours
Unpaid booking held	How long a direct (prepaid) booking keeps its cabins while waiting for the deposit	24 hours
Answer requests within	Your promise to agencies on on-request contracts	6 hours
Grace after the deadline	Extra time before an unanswered request expires	2 hours
Assign cabins	Days before departure when cabin numbers are assigned automatically	7 days
Allotment release	Days before departure when an agency's unused allotment returns to sale	21 days
Keep passports	Days after the cruise before passport numbers are erased	90 days
Emergency phone, voucher note	Printed on every voucher: boarding point, check-in time, what to bring	Your details
Operations email	Where the nightly outage pack is sent	A shared office inbox

Changes apply to new holds, requests and contracts. Existing ones keep their times.

Bringing your existing bookings

Your existing future bookings are imported from a spreadsheet. See Going live.