> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.rescueconsole.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Shared transport
> Offering space on your transport runs to the rescues you are linked with, asking them for space, and answering the asks that come in.
A run with room in the van is worth sharing. **Shared transport** is where you publish the space on your own runs, see the space your partners have published, and ask for it.
Open it from **Shared transport** at the top of the [Transports](/animals/transports) list. Anyone whose role can **See** Animals can read it; publishing, asking and answering need **Change** on Animals.
## Who sees what
**Only the rescues you are linked with**, and only what you publish.
There is no list of the other organizations on the platform, by design: a partnership starts with an invitation to an email address you already have, under **Settings → Partner rescues**. A board of every rescue's routes and dates would be that list by another name, so there is no board.
That cuts both ways. Your published space reaches your partners and nobody else, and the way to reach more rescues is to link with more of them.
## Space you are offering
**Offer space on a run** publishes what is spare on one of your runs.
| Field | What it means |
| ------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Which run** | One of your runs that is being planned or is confirmed. A cancelled or completed run is refused. |
| **How many crates you can take** | Small, medium, large, extra large. |
| **Keeping some for your own animals** | Optional. Crates out of the numbers above that your partners cannot ask for until a day you choose. |
| **Held until** | The last day those crates are yours. After it they are ordinary space. |
| **Books close on** | The last day anybody may ask, so the arranging can be finished. |
| **Anything they should know** | Crates provided, a stop in Charlotte, no cats this time. |
Space is counted in **crates**, not animals: two extra large dogs and eight cats are not the same van. Everything on this page asks in crates, so what is offered and what is asked for can be compared rather than guessed at.
Every rescue you are linked with is told on the bell when you publish, and again if you close it or change the details.
Each offer shows what you published, what has been taken by the bookings you have accepted, and what is left. **Close it** stops anybody else asking without cancelling what is already agreed; **Open it again** puts it back.
### Keeping some of it, and closing the book
Two dates, and they answer different questions.
**Held until** is about who may have a crate. A shelter offering transport usually needs some of the van for its own animals and does not know yet which ones. Hold those crates back and your partners are offered what is left; the day after **Held until** the hold ends and they become ordinary space, which is what "if it has not been taken up by a date it chooses, the space goes to whoever wants it" means. Your own card keeps saying what was held, so the number changing is never a mystery.
**Books close on** is about when the arranging stops: paperwork bought, crates counted, drivers told. A transport on Friday the 26th might close its book on Wednesday the 24th. After that day nobody may ask, and everything already accepted stands.
Both are optional. Three things are refused, each because it cannot mean anything:
* Holding back more crates than you are offering.
* A hold with no end date.
* A hold that ends after the book closes, or a book that closes after the run itself.
### When the run changes underneath
What your partners see is a **copy** of the run's name, date and two ends, taken when you published. Your partners cannot read your records, so there is nothing else it could be.
That copy can go out of date. Move the run to the following Saturday and the offer still says the third, so the offer tells you:
> **The run has changed since you published it.** It now says Atlanta GA → Boston MA on 2026-10-10. Your partners still see Atlanta GA → Boston MA on 2026-10-03.
**Publish the new details** brings the offer up to date and tells everybody holding space on it. Until you do, your partners see what you published, which is the honest answer rather than a date that changed under a booking.
If the run itself is deleted, the offer says so and asks you to cancel it.
## Answering an ask
An ask appears on the offer it is for: who asked, how many crates, which animals if they said, and any note.
* **Yes, there is room** holds the crates and tells them.
* **Turn it down** says no and tells them.
* The box beside the buttons is a word back, and it goes with either answer.
The fit is checked **again** at that moment, because two partners can both ask for the last large crate while both asks are unanswered. If the first ask takes it, accepting the second is refused and says what is left. Nothing is held until you say yes.
## What a seat costs
A transport does not have **a** price. A cat spay is a flat rate, a dog neuter changes with the sex and the size, a vaccine or a microchip is an add-on, and a run to a house rather than a vet is priced by the mile. So what you publish is a **list of services**, and the price of a seat is the sum of the lines whoever books picks for their animals.
It is at **What a seat costs**, from the link at the top of Shared transport.
| Field | What it means |
| ---------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **What it is called** | What a partner reads when they pick it: "Cat spay", "Rabies vaccine", "Ride, per mile". |
| **What sort of thing it is** | Surgery, vaccine, test, microchip, the ride itself, or something else. |
| **How it is priced** | A flat price, or a price per mile. |
| **Dollars** | What it costs. Zero is allowed, for a service you do not charge for but want on the sheet. |
| **Which animals it is for** | Species, sex and size. Leave one blank for any. |
| **Anything a partner should know** | Includes the cone. Cats only, and not in July. |
A price that changes with the animal is written as **several lines**: a dog neuter at three sizes is three lines, each narrowed to one size. Nothing is worked out automatically from an animal record; the criteria decide which lines are **offered** for an animal, and a person picks.
A discounted TNR rate is a **line**, not a tick box: add "Cat spay (TNR)" beside "Cat spay" at its own price. There is no TNR flag on an animal in RescueConsole - the nearest thing is the Return to Field outcome, which is where an animal ends up rather than something true of it while it is being driven.
**Stop offering it** takes a line out of what partners see and keeps it on your own screen, under **No longer offered**: a price list that changed in July is a thing somebody looks up in October. Removing a line is safe too, because every booking keeps its own copy of what it was quoted.
### Picking the services when you ask
A partner’s offer carries their list. In **Ask for space**, **What you are asking them to do** adds a line at a time:
* **The service**, from their list, with what it costs.
* **Who it is for**: one of the animals you named, or **The whole run** for something that is not about one animal, which is what the mileage usually is.
* **Miles**, when the line is priced by the mile. A per-mile line with no miles is refused rather than quoted at nothing.
The running total is on screen before you press, and the lines and the sum appear on the ask itself - the same way on both sides, because the rescue driving is the one being paid and the rescue asking is the one paying.
The prices come from **their** list, at the moment you ask, and the booking keeps a copy. Changing a price afterwards never changes what an earlier booking was quoted, in either direction.
Paying is not built yet: what a booking comes to is recorded, and money changes hands however the two rescues already arrange it.
## Space your partners are offering
Each card is a partner's published space, soonest first, with what is free of what they offered.
**Ask for space** sends an ask:
| Field | What it means |
| ----------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **How many crates you need** | Each size says how many are free, which is what is left after their own hold. Asking for more than that is refused, and so is asking at all once the book has closed. |
| **Who is riding** | Optional. Search your own animals; each one can carry the crate size it needs. The names travel with the ask, because the rescue driving cannot see your records. |
| **Anything they should know** | Both are crate trained; we can meet you at the exit. |
Under the card, each ask of yours says where it stands: **Waiting for an answer**, **You have space**, **Turned down** or **Withdrawn**, with the word they sent back. **Withdraw** takes back an ask nobody has answered; **Give it back** releases space you were given, and the rescue driving is told the crates are free again.
## Space you hold elsewhere
A partner can close an offer after you have space on it, and a closed offer is not shown to anybody. What you were given still stands, so it moves to **Space you hold elsewhere** with the journey it is on, and **Give it back** still works from there.
## Carrying a change of custody
Moving an animal to another rescue is two things: the **transfer**, which is who has the animal, and the **transport**, which is how it gets there. Recorded apart, the same move is entered twice and the two records disagree about who has the animal - which is the worst thing a shelter system can be unsure of.
So an animal on a booking can name the [transfer](/animals/transfers) the ride is carrying out. Pick the animal in **Who is riding**, and if you have already offered it to a rescue, that offer can ride with it.
What is refused, and why:
| Refused | Because |
| -------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| A transfer that is not yours | The animals on your booking are yours, so the offer has to be one you made. |
| A transfer of a different animal | Otherwise the run sheet says one animal and the custody record says another. |
| A transfer that is accepted, declined or withdrawn | It is settled, and the logistics of a settled move are history. |
The rescue driving reads it on the seat: **Biscuit · dog · large crate · transferring to Second Chance Shelter**. It does not have to be going to them - a van can carry an animal from one rescue to a third.
**Accepting the transfer is what marks the animal arrived.** The receiving rescue accepts when the animal is with them, which is why their screen says which van is bringing it and asks before accepting one that has not arrived yet. Nothing here moves an animal on its own.
## Transport you are looking for
The other half of the same page: post what you need moved and every partner is told.
| Field | What it means |
| -------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **From**, **To** | Where the animals are and where they need to be, in your own words. |
| **Any time from**, **Needed by** | A window. A request for one exact date matches almost nothing; leave **Needed by** blank for a single day. |
| **How many crates you need** | As everywhere else on this page. |
**Sorted** closes a request that has been answered, by transport or otherwise. **Withdraw** takes it down. Either way it stops being shown to your partners.
## Transport your partners are looking for
What your partners have asked for, with one hint: **You have published space in that window**, naming your own offers whose date falls between their first and last day.
That hint is **dates only**. Two rescues' words for one road are not comparable, and a hint that pretended otherwise would send somebody to read a run that goes nowhere near.
## What arrives on the bell
| When | Who is told |
| --------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------- |
| You publish space | Every rescue you are linked with |
| You change or close a published offer | Everybody holding space on it |
| Somebody asks for space on your run | You |
| You answer an ask | The rescue that asked |
| Somebody gives space back | You |
| A run you hold space on is three days out, then a day out | Your organization admins |
Those notices are the same bell, and the same nightly email, as a partnership or a transfer.
That last one is the only notice here that nobody sets off: a confirmed run reminds everybody riding on it twice on its own, three days before and the day before. [Reminders before it happens](/animals/transports#reminders-before-it-happens) says who else is told.