Where members come from
There are three ways someone becomes a member of a Group:
Public booking form. When a prospect books through
/g/{slug}, they and every party member are attached automatically. Primary booker gets the Trip; everyone in the party gets a Contact + Group Member row.Manual add on the Members tab. The + Add member picker searches your Contacts. If the person isn't a contact yet, add them from the picker's inline + New contact link. They're attached with Member role.
Waitlist join. When a group's status is Waitlist (or a specific option is sold-out with waitlist enabled), the submitter is attached as a member with Waitlist role.
The three roles
Member
The default. Everyone starts here. They see the group's public content, get broadcast emails, join the community chat as a participant, and their payment status feeds the Group's Financials rollup.
Leader
One per group, max. Also called Group Lead. Gets a private Lead Dashboard on the portal + moderation powers on the community chat. Everything else is identical to Member.
Waitlist
Same as Member but tagged as "waiting for a spot." Filtered out of the roster on the Members tab by default (toggle Show waitlist to see them). When a spot opens up, promote them to Member from the member row menu.
Promoting or demoting
Change a member's role from the Role dropdown on their member row. Promoting to Leader automatically demotes any existing leader — Trips enforces the "one lead" invariant in a transaction.
When Trips auto-create
The moment a public booking submission is converted (either automatically at submit time or manually from the Submissions tab), Trips creates a fresh Trip for the primary booker with:
Name — the group name, e.g. "Amalfi Coast small group". Rename per-booking if you want.
Dates — copied from the Group's default start/end dates.
Trip status — the org's default (usually Quote Sent).
Destinations — copied from the Group's destination list, ordered.
Travelers — the primary booker plus every other party member listed on the submission (each becomes a Contact if they weren't already).
Invoice — a Supplier Invoice with a line item per chosen option + any add-ons, matching the deposit/final schedule you configured.
The Trip is attached to the Group via a many-to-many pivot (trip_group_trip) so the Group's Trips tab lists it and the Financials rollup includes its invoice.
Removing a member
Remove from the member row menu. What happens:
The membership row is hard-deleted. No soft-delete — the row is gone.
The attached Trip is NOT deleted. If the removal was a mistake, the Trip still exists — you can re-add the person as a member from the Members tab and Trips will re-attach.
The Contact stays. Contacts are agency-wide; group membership was just an association.
Any invoice payments they've made stay untouched. The Trip's invoice keeps its history.
What Group Leads can do
The Leader flag unlocks these capabilities on the client portal side — the agent-side Members / Financials / Booking Page views are unchanged:
Lead Dashboard — private tab on the portal group page. Shows the full roster with each member's payment status (Paid / Partial / Unpaid pill) and "days behind deposit" nudge. Amounts are never shown — this surface is deliberately dollar-free.
Chat moderation — Leads can delete member messages in community chat (never agent messages). Members can only delete their own.
Group Lead landing page — if the Lead isn't personally traveling on any cohort trip, they still get a portal entry point: a virtual trip-shaped landing at
/portal/{slug}/groups/{group_id}/lead. Covered in Client portal: Hosted Trips.
Frequently asked
Can a group have more than one leader?
No — one leader per group, enforced by the model. If two people are co-organizing, pick one as the flag-holder for the portal dashboard; the other stays a Member and can still see the community chat.
What happens if I demote the leader to a member?
Their is_lead flag flips off. They lose the Lead Dashboard tab on their next portal visit and can no longer delete member messages in chat. They stay in the group as a normal member.
A member booked twice — same person, two submissions. What now?
Only one Group Member row exists (unique on group + contact). But you'll see two Submissions on the Submissions tab and possibly two Trips (if both got auto-converted). Manually delete the duplicate Submission or cancel the extra Trip's invoice.
Can I export the member roster to CSV?
The Rooming tab has an Export button (Excel + CSV) that includes every member with their room assignment, sharing info, and contact details — that's the closest thing today. A pure member-roster export is on the roadmap.
Related
Related guides
Groups in Trips — what they are, when to use them
Groups are Trips' primitive for hosted cohorts — cruise groups, escorted tours, themed trips, corporate incentives. This article explains what a Group is, when to reach for one instead of individual Trips, and how the pieces fit together.
Group financials — sales, commission, and per-member payment tracking
How the Financials tab on a Group rolls up sales, commissions, and per-member payment status across every attached Trip's invoices. The three sub-tabs (Overview, Per member, Commission), how "days behind deposit" is calculated, and how the numbers flow into your regular Sales and Commission reports.
Creating a Group — statuses, destinations, and settings
A field-by-field tour of the New Group form and the Settings tab: the five status states (Draft / Open / Sold out / Waitlist / Archived), the destinations list that feeds every member's Trip, roommate matching, and the archive workflow.