Overnight school trip checklist

A month or more out

Everything in this section works on the free plan. You need Pro to publish an overnight trip and to add hotels and rooms.

• Build the roster from the spreadsheet you already have. Add a gender column if rooms or buses are split by gender, and mark parents who travel with you as adult travelers.
• Put the health questions on your permission form: emergency contacts, allergies, dietary restrictions, medical notes, the over-the-counter medicines a family allows, and behavioral or other notes. The answers import with the roster, and parents can update them later.
• Invite your chaperones by email and give each one a group. You can limit a chaperone to their group, so they see and count only their own students.

Rooms

• Add each hotel, then its rooms with a capacity. Mark rooms Girls, Boys or Mixed. A room left unmarked never mixes boys and girls, or students and adults.
• Decide how roommates are chosen: students start a room and everyone in it accepts, they take an open bed, they pair instantly, or families send wishes and you place everyone.
• Set when room signup opens and closes, then send families their links. Families can't break the rules you set, and you can still move anyone yourself.
• Decide which chaperone does the bed check for which rooms.

Buses and count-off numbers

• Put every traveler on a bus. Seat the staff too, so the bus total is the number of people actually on it.
• Number each bus 1 to N in an order you choose. Have students say their number as they board.
• Run one practice count-off in the parking lot before you leave so the chaperones know the routine.

Families

• Share the trip code so parents can link to their own child, or print each student a ticket with a parent code on it.
• Upload the itinerary, packing list and hotel confirmation to Documents, and choose who can see each one.
• When you post an announcement families need, turn on "Also share with parents & guardians". Parents get it by email as well as in the app.

The week before

• Print luggage tags and fill in who a finder should contact. A stranger who scans the QR code on a lost bag sees that contact and nothing about whose bag it is.
• Have every chaperone open the trip in the app once on Wi-Fi. After that the roster, emergency contacts and schedule work with no signal.
• Ask students, chaperones and parents to allow notifications.

On the trip

• Take attendance at each stop. Every chaperone marks students on their own phone and everyone sees the same count.
• If a student goes home early or is at the nurse, mark them away from the group so the count stops expecting them.
• Do the bed check from your phone by marking each room as checked. It works in a hotel basement with no signal.
• When plans change, send a meeting point. Everyone on the trip gets a notification that opens the spot on a map.

After you get home

• Health information and emergency contacts are deleted 30 days after the trip ends. If your school keeps a copy, export it first with Include health details switched on.
• Going again next year? Reuse the trip for new dates for free, or duplicate it on Pro to keep both copies.

Common questions

Does an overnight trip cost money on The Trip Binder?

Publishing an overnight trip and adding hotels and rooms need the Pro plan, $149.99 a year for the organizer. You can build the rest of the trip for free first. Chaperones and families never pay.

What counts as an overnight trip?

A trip that comes home on a later day than it leaves. Leave at 5 a.m. and get home at midnight, and it is still a day trip.

Can parents choose their child's roommates?

Yes, if you turn on room signup. Parents and students choose inside the rules you set: room gender, room size and the signup deadline. A choice that breaks a rule is refused, and you can still move anyone yourself.