> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.mtnmanager.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Getting Started
> Set up your resort in MtnManager — add your lifts and runs, set your operating hours, publish conditions to your website, and get your team on board.
MtnManager is the single source of truth for your mountain. Your team updates runs, lifts, snow, and hours in one place, and that data flows straight out to your website, your app, and your signage — everything your guests see.
This guide walks through first-time setup. Plan on about an hour or two, most of it spent configuring your runs and lifts.
## Step 1 — Create your account
Sign up at [mtnmanager.com](https://start.mtnmanager.com/signup), where you'll pick a **domain** — a short name for your resort that becomes your dashboard address:
```text theme={null}
https://your-resort.mtnmanager.com
```
Choose carefully; this is where you and your staff sign in from now on. Confirm the verification email we send you, and you're in.
If someone at your resort already has an account, don't sign up again — ask them to [invite you](#step-6-invite-your-team) instead, so you land in the right account.
## Step 2 — Configure your resort
Go to **Settings → General** and fill in the basics. These affect how everything else behaves, so it's worth doing first.
| Setting | Why it matters |
| ------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Time Zone** | Drives scheduling, timestamps, and automations. |
| **Unit Preference** | Imperial or metric, for recording measurements. Guests can still toggle units on public displays. |
| **Region** | Sets the style of difficulty icons for your part of the world. |
| **GPS Coordinates** | Your resort's latitude and longitude. Required for weather and for webcam daylight detection. |
### Choose your features
Under **Settings → Features**, switch on only what your resort actually tracks.
Anything you turn off disappears from the dashboard and from your public report, so your team isn't filling in fields you don't wish to use. If you don't track base depth, for instance, turn it off and it stops appearing entirely.
### Set up areas (optional)
If your mountain is split into distinct parts — e.g. "Lower Mountain" and "Upper Mountain" — create them under **Settings → Areas**. Areas group your runs, lifts, and snow reports so guests can find things, and they let you make bulk updates.
Create areas **before** adding runs and lifts. Assigning them later means editing each one individually.
## Step 3 — Add your lifts and runs
Head to **Lifts** and **Runs**. On each page you can add items one at a time with **Create Lift** / **Create Run**, or load them all at once with **Import CSV**.
Fastest if you already have your trail list in a spreadsheet. Paste CSV data using these columns:
```text Runs theme={null}
name,number,difficulty,area_slug,snowmaking,night_skiing,acres
```
```text Lifts theme={null}
name,number,lift_type,high_speed,bubble,heated,capacity_per_hour,area_slug
```
* **difficulty** — `beginner`, `intermediate`, `advanced`, `expert`, or `terrain_park`
* **lift\_type** — `gondola`, `tram`, `six_pack`, `eight_pack`, `quad`, `triple`, `double`, `magic_carpet`, `t_bar`, `platter`, `rope_tow`, `funicular`, or `other`
* **area\_slug** — the slug of one of your areas; the import dialog lists the valid values
* Everything except **name**, **difficulty**, and **lift\_type** is optional — leave the value empty to skip it
Only `name` and the type/difficulty column are required, but the extras are worth filling in: capacity feeds your uphill capacity total, and snowmaking and night skiing show up on your public report.
Use **Create Run** or **Create Lift** and fill in the form. Beyond the name, you can set a trail or lift number, an area, difficulty or lift type, length, acreage, vertical rise, hourly capacity, and flags like high speed, heated, snowmaking, or night skiing.
You can add terrain parks, parking lots, summer trails, and amenities the same way, if those are part of your planned usage of MtnManager.
## Step 4 — Set your operating hours
Under **Hours**, create a **New Schedule**: pick the days of the week, the opening and closing times, and the date range it's effective for (for example, Dec 15 – Mar 31). Add as many schedules as you need — weekends and holidays often differ from midweek.
For one-off changes, use **New Override**: pick a date and either set custom hours or mark the resort **Closed**, with an optional reason.
Lifts and amenities can carry their own hours too, if they don't match the resort's.
**For a lift**, open it from the **Lifts** page and add schedules and overrides in the **Operating Hours** section of its detail page. Once a lift has its own hours, you can also have it open and close automatically alongside them.
**For an amenity**, first turn on **Operating hours** when creating or editing it on the **Amenities** page. It then appears in the dropdown beside the title on the **Hours** page, where you can switch from **Resort** to that amenity and set its schedule.
## Step 5 — Record snow conditions
On the **Snow** page, use **Manage Reports** to choose whether you track one report for the whole mountain or a separate report per area.
Then keep it current:
* **Record Snow** logs new snowfall and base depth with a timestamp. MtnManager calculates overnight, 24-hour, 48-hour, 7-day, and season totals for you.
* Each report also carries a optional **surface condition** (powder, packed powder, spring, etc).
## Step 6 — Invite your team
Go to **Users → Invite User** and add each staff member with their name, email, and role. They'll get an email to set a password and sign in.
MtnManager comes with roles for common jobs — Owner, Administrator, Manager, Lift Operator, Grooming Operator, Ski Patrol, and Parking Attendant — and you can build **Custom** roles under **Users → Roles** if none quite fits. A lift operator, for instance, can only edit lift status and wait times.
Using Okta, Microsoft Entra, or Google Workspace? Turn on [Single Sign-On](/guides/sso) and staff accounts can be created automatically on first sign-in.
## Step 7 — Publish to your website
Everything you've entered is already live on the public API — time to get it in front of guests. Open the **Developer** page in your dashboard and pick an approach:
Configure a snow report, hours, or trail map widget in the visual builder, preview it, and paste two lines of HTML into your site.
Our API returns your whole mountain as JSON — status, snow, lifts, runs, hours, and weather — ready for your developers to build with.
## Starting a new season
At the start of each season, use **Start New Season** (in the season control in the header, or under Settings). It clears last season's data such as snow measurements and old operating hours.
You can also set your current season to **winter**, **summer**, or **closed** at any time, from the same season control.
### Summer mode
Switching to summer turns MtnManager into a summer operations tool: the winter-only pages — Snow, Runs, and Terrain Parks — step aside, and **Summer Trails** takes their place. Lifts, Hours, Parking Lots, Amenities, and News carry on unchanged.
## What's next
Open runs at first chair and close lifts at end of day automatically, tied to your operating hours or a schedule of your own.
The MtnManager app for iOS and Android lets your team update status from the lift shack or the groomer, without a laptop.
Trace your runs and lifts on your map image and embed it live on your site.
Build custom forms for inspections and reports, with a permanent record of every submission.
Put live mountain cams on your site, branded and served from the edge.
Feed readings from your own weather station into MtnManager.
Let staff sign in with your existing identity provider.
Every endpoint, with example responses.
## Need help?
Contact [support@mtnmanager.com](mailto:support@mtnmanager.com) — we're happy to walk through setup with you.