Account setup and onboarding

Overview

Getting started in Mallard Bay usually involves a few distinct steps in the dashboard:

1. Confirming your personal profile — A short form ensures your account has your name and phone before you use the rest of the product.
2. Guided outfitter setup — A step-by-step wizard helps you complete your outfitter profile, connect payments (including Stripe so you can receive payouts from guest bookings), and create your first listing with pricing and availability.
3. Joining as a team member — If you were invited to help manage an outfitter account, a dedicated flow verifies the invitation, attaches your login to that team membership, and points you to the dashboard or the mobile app depending on how you were invited.

These flows tie together core Mallard Bay ideas: your outfitter is the business record; listings are what guests book; availability controls when a listing can be booked; and payments cover money from guests (separate from Mallard Bay subscription billing). Finishing onboarding does not replace ongoing work like calendar management, guest messaging, or guest onboarding packets after bookings—those remain part of day-to-day operations.

Prerequisites

• You can sign in to the Mallard Bay admin dashboard.
• For outfitter setup, you need access to the correct outfitter (business) context. If no outfitter is selected where one is required, the product may prompt you to select one before continuing.
• For team member acceptance, you need the invitation link your organization sent you; it should include the identifiers the product expects in the URL (see below).
• Exact eligibility for the guided outfitter wizard (for example, which accounts are enrolled in this flow) is determined on the server; the dashboard assumes your outfitter is in self-onboarding until that process is marked finished.

Step-by-step usage in the dashboard

1. Confirm your info (/onboard)

When you are signed in as a non-admin user and your profile is missing a first name, the dashboard redirects you to Confirm your info before continuing. There you complete:

• First name
• Last name
• Phone number (validated as a proper phone number)

After you save, you are returned to the page you originally tried to open (the product remembers your intended destination).

Note: Admin users are not sent through this redirect in the current implementation.

2. Guided outfitter onboarding (/self-onboard/)

This is the main setup wizard for outfitters. It opens outside the standard page chrome and tracks your current step on the outfitter record so you can leave and resume.

Landing experience

• You first see a high-level overview of three areas: Set Up Your Outfitter Profile, Configure Payments & Payouts, and Create Your First Listing, with short descriptions for each.
• When you begin the outfitter profile section, you may see an optional “import from website” path that scans a site you provide to help populate setup data, with a manual alternative to skip that and continue in the forms. Progress and timing messaging in the product compares typical scans to larger sites (on the order of a few minutes, possibly longer for very large sites).

Section A — Outfitter profile

Work through, in order:

• Outfitter profile basics
• Business addresses
• Written description of your operation
• Photos and media
• Guest check-in / check-out expectations
• Cancellation policy

Section B — Payments & payouts

• Connect Stripe so payouts from guest payments can be deposited to your account.
• Configure deposit / payment plan behavior so guests can pay on terms you control for bookings through Mallard Bay.

Section C — First listing

• Listing details (structure varies by listing type in the forms).
• Listing description (what’s included, expectations, species or methods where applicable).
• Lodging (you can move past this if you do not offer lodging—use Next as the product indicates).
• Optional add-ons guests can select at checkout.
• Pricing packages (what’s included and at what price; the copy explains when to use multiple packages on one listing vs. separate listings for different seasons or locations).
• Availability for that listing (the product treats one listing as having one availability calendar in this step).

Use Back and Next to move through steps. Next on non-form steps advances by updating your saved onboarding step on the server; form steps submit through their own save behavior before moving on. A questions entry point in the wizard navigation is wired to in-product chat support.

Automatic redirect: For signed-in users in the outfitter portal, if self-onboarding is not finished, navigating elsewhere in the dashboard redirects you to /self-onboard/ until you complete it—except while you are already on self-onboarding or team-member onboarding pages. Admin users who are not impersonating an outfitter are not forced into this redirect.

3. Team member onboarding (/team-member-onboarding)

Use the link from your invitation. The URL is expected to carry query parameters, including invitation_id and team_member_id, and may include is_onboarding (boolean).

When the invitation parameters are present

1. The page loads your team member record and shows Verifying invite… while it loads.
2. It then accepts the invitation automatically if it has not already been accepted (Setting up your account… while that runs).
3. After acceptance, you see a welcome message.
   • If is_onboarding is set for an onboarding-style invite, you get messaging that your account was created and a View Dashboard control that opens the main dashboard (full page refresh is used so data reloads cleanly).
   • Otherwise, you are directed to download the mobile app via an external app link.

When invitation parameters are missing

• You still see paths to get the mobile app rather than the full auto-accept sequence above—so a broken or truncated link may strand you without verification.

Common pitfalls

• Interrupted invitation links: Team onboarding relies on invitation_id and team_member_id in the URL. If those are stripped by email clients or copy/paste, verification and auto-accept may not run as intended; ask the inviting outfitter for a fresh link.
• Expecting to browse the dashboard before finishing outfitter onboarding: Non-admin outfitter users are redirected into /self-onboard/ until the outfitter’s self-onboarding is marked finished on the server—except on excluded routes such as team-member onboarding.
• Admin accounts: Internal admins are treated differently for forced onboarding redirects; if you wear both hats, behavior may differ depending on impersonation—exact rules are not fully surfaced in the dashboard UI beyond “admins aren’t forced through the same redirects.”
• No outfitter selected: On pages that require an outfitter context, you may see a prompt to select an outfitter rather than the wizard content.
• Stripe and deposits: Until Stripe is connected and your payment preferences make sense for how you sell trips, you may be blocked from treating payouts and guest payments as fully operational—even if marketing content is drafted.
• Listing vs. calendar elsewhere: This wizard focuses on initial listing and availability setup; ongoing calendar edits and operational booking management continue from the regular dashboard tools after onboarding.

Related workflows

• Listings and availability — After onboarding, you refine listings, seasons, and calendars; availability here is the bridge between what you sell and what guests can book.
• Bookings and payments — Confirmed bookings tie guests to listings and drive deposit/balance behavior you configured during onboarding.
• Team members — Invitations grant dashboard access aligned with your organization’s roles; this is separate from guest accounts.
• Website and booking widget — Optional AI-assisted import during onboarding relates to pulling details from your existing site; public website and widget configuration remain broader ongoing topics.
• Guest onboarding — Post-booking forms, waivers, and packets for travelers are a different workflow from outfitter account onboarding.

Unknown from this codebase alone: Exact subscription or approval rules that decide whether an outfitter enters self-onboarding, the precise invitation URL format your organization emails, and any backend-only steps (such as outfitter approval states) that gate publishing or taking payments. Those are enforced outside the dashboard UI reviewed here.