Creating a variant configuration

When two boats are almost identical but differ in one or two areas — a different electrical panel, a different engine setup, a different layout detail — you usually want them to share most of their configuration but differ in specific sections.

Copying a configuration — or importing the same template a second time — doesn’t create fresh checklists for the new configuration. Its Pre check-in, Check-in, Check-out, and Manual each point at the exact same checklist as the original, so editing anything in either configuration changes both. This is on top of, and separate from, sharing at the section level: two configurations can also share an individual section even when their checklists themselves are genuinely different. Simply copying a configuration isn’t enough on its own to diverge either way.

This page walks through the correct approach.

The scenario

You have two boats of the same model and build year. They share most equipment, but their electrical panels are slightly different. You want:

• Shared sections (safety, galley, deck, manual, etc.) to stay in sync across both boats.
• The Electrical panel section to be independent, so you can edit one without affecting the other.

The recipe

Two different things can be shared

There are two distinct sharing mechanisms at play, and step 1 below triggers both:

• A shared checklist. Copying a configuration (or re-importing the same template) doesn’t create a new checklist per phase — the new configuration’s Pre check-in, Check-in, Check-out, and Manual each point at the exact same checklist as the original. Every section and every structural change (adding, removing, reordering sections) is shared, not just item-level edits.
• A shared section. Independently of the above, an individual section can be reused across genuinely different checklists too — this is the mechanism described in How sharing works.

Step 5 below only splits out the one section you want independent. Everything else — including the checklist itself — stays shared, which is exactly what you want for the sections that should stay in sync.

1. Start from the existing configuration for the first boat. Either copy it, or import the same template again, to create a second configuration.
2. Assign the new configuration to the second boat at Settings > Bookings > Configurations.
3. Open the new configuration’s Checklists tab.
4. Identify which sections need to differ between the two boats.
5. For each differing section, in the new configuration:
   • Add an independent copy of that section (for example, by importing the section and then editing the local copy, or by creating a new section and adding the items).
   • Remove the original shared section from the new configuration. Otherwise both the shared version and the copy will appear in the checklist.
6. Edit the copied section freely. Changes now only affect the new configuration.

Leave untouched any sections that should stay in sync (safety equipment, galley, manuals, etc.). Editing them in either configuration will still update both — which is the behaviour you want.

Tip

The shorter the list of diverging sections, the easier your fleet is to maintain. If two boats only differ in one panel, only that one section needs to be independent — everything else can keep benefiting from automatic sync.

Troubleshooting

I edited my second boat’s checklist and it changed the first boat’s too

This happens when the two configurations share the same checklist, the same section, or both. Copying a configuration (or importing the same template twice) does not automatically make either independent.

The fix is to create an independent copy of the section in question — follow the recipe above, specifically step 5, for the section that you want to diverge.

I already made edits that affected both boats. How do I undo them?

Revert the section back to the desired shared state first, so both boats show the correct content again. Then follow the recipe to split out an independent copy. Future edits on the copy will only affect the new configuration.

How do I know which sections are shared?

Every section header has a Used in X configurations pill at the top right. If the number is 1, that section is local to this configuration and you can edit it freely. If it’s 2 or more, edits will propagate to every configuration that uses the section. See Checking if a section is shared.

Copying the whole configuration didn’t help — edits still affected both

This is to be expected - that’s the core gotcha. Copying a configuration duplicates the container, but its checklists are not duplicated — the copy points at the exact same checklist (and therefore the same sections) as the original. To actually diverge, the copy has to happen at the section level, not the configuration level.