Start free

Outfitters and guided recreation

Everybody signs before they get on the water.

A van of fourteen arrives at eight in the morning and four of them have not signed. Two are sixteen and their mother is at the hotel. The guide needs to know who is cleared, now, on a phone, at a boat ramp with one bar.

Two paddlers in buoyancy aids holding kayak paddles at a lakeside hire counter, talking to a member of staff who is holding a clipboard with a form on it. Kayaks are drawn up on the shore behind them.

Where it goes wrong

Not a feature list. These are the three moments this exists for.

The four who did not sign

You find out at the ramp. Somebody stands at the van with a clipboard while thirteen people wait, and the trip leaves twenty minutes late — every single day, all season.

The sixteen-year-old whose parent is not here

A minor's waiver needs a guardian, and the guardian is at the hotel or at work. Chasing that at the counter is the worst possible moment to discover it.

The paper you cannot find in March

Something happened in July. The waiver is in a box, or it is not, and either way nobody can prove the person read it before they signed.

What happens instead

1

Text it when they book

The link goes out with the confirmation. Most people sign on the sofa the night before, which is the whole trick — the queue at eight in the morning is people who did not get a text.

2

A QR at the counter for walk-ups

One code, printed once, taped to the desk. It opens the same waiver on their own phone. Nothing to install and nothing to hand round.

3

See who is missing before you leave

Not a spreadsheet you check. A list of who has signed and who has not, for today, on the phone in the guide's pocket.

Two documents, in your account the moment you name your trade

Setup asks what you do. Answer "outfitters and guided recreation" and these are waiting as drafts, in your words, with the blanks marked and the points a lawyer settles flagged for one. Edit them, or paste what you already use.

waiver

Participant Waiver and Release

A starter, not legal advice: the wording is yours to change and your attorney's to check. A note left in the text holds the document at send until somebody has.

consent

Guardian Consent for a Minor

A starter, not legal advice: the wording is yours to change and your attorney's to check. A note left in the text holds the document at send until somebody has.

Start free Or have one drafted for you

Guardians are judged on the day of the activity

Not the day they signed. Somebody who turns eighteen between booking and the trip was a minor when the waiver was signed and is an adult on the water, and the wrong one of those is a child filed as an adult with nobody's signature behind them. A blank date of birth is refused rather than assumed.

Who this is for

If you are on this list, the words above are your words.

Canoe, kayak, raft and tubing outfitters

Paddleboard and surf schools

Zipline and aerial parks

Ropes courses and climbing gyms

Trampoline parks and adventure parks

Escape rooms and axe throwing

Ski and snowboard schools

Scuba and snorkel operators

Horseback riding stables

Fishing, hunting and charter guides

Questions

Does a waiver signed on a phone actually hold up?

Under E-SIGN and UETA an electronic signature has the same effect as one on paper, provided you can show the person intended to sign, agreed to sign electronically, and saw the document they signed. That last part is where most tools are thin and it is what this one is built around: the text is fingerprinted into the record, so a change afterwards is detectable rather than arguable.

What if somebody has no phone?

Sign it at the counter on yours. The evidence records where the signature was taken from, which is honest and is also what you want — a signature taken at your desk should not look like one taken at home.

Can I keep using my current waiver wording?

Yes. Paste it in. We do not rewrite it and we are not a law firm — the wording is yours and your attorney's.