Availability and saturation

Saturation measures how much of the inventory is already occupied over a time period. The saturation view helps sales managers see which displays are available to sell and which are already committed.

What counts toward saturation

Only proposals in the Reserved or Booked stage count toward a display’s occupancy. Proposals still in earlier stages — Inquiry or Negotiations — do not affect the saturation numbers.

The timeline distinguishes two levels of commitment:

Reserved

The display is held for a deal that has reached the Reserved stage. The capacity is spoken for but not yet confirmed.

Booked

The display is part of a deal that has reached the Booked stage or beyond. The capacity is confirmed.

Free

The remaining capacity that is neither reserved nor booked.

Both levels are drawn on the timeline, but they do not carry the same weight elsewhere: the availability checks described below count Booked capacity only.

Displays sold through a custom proposal type do not appear in the saturation timeline and do not count toward occupancy; see service and custom proposals.

Reading the timeline

The saturation view shows one row per display. Each row contains a horizontal bar that spans the selected date range, color-coded to show the proportion of capacity that is free, reserved, and booked.

You can switch the timeline scale between week, month, and year granularity. The scale controls how the time axis is divided visually; the underlying data does not change.

Filters

The saturation view supports the following filters:

  • Inventory type — all, digital, or printed.

  • Date range — the period to display. The default is today plus thirty days.

  • Search text — matches against display name, GID, or address.

  • Format — one or more format labels.

  • Criteria — classification labels applied to displays.

  • Face — the face (side) identifier.

  • Display state — active, inactive, or archived. Archived displays are excluded by default.

  • Saturation state — free or saturated. Use this to show only displays that have available capacity, or only displays that are fully occupied.

  • Custom fields — any custom fields defined on the display entity type.

How availability affects the inventory picker

When you add displays to a proposal, the inventory picker hides displays that are already fully booked for the requested period and parameters. Partly booked displays still appear — the picker removes a display only once its booked capacity reaches one hundred percent.

Only Booked proposals occupy capacity for this purpose. A display held by a Reserved proposal is offered in the picker as available, even though the saturation timeline shows the reservation.

The same check runs twice more, and both times it can reject:

  • When a proposal is saved, each display in each period is re-checked. A proposal that includes a fully booked display is rejected with a validation error on that price line.

  • When a deal moves to Reserved or Booked, the proposal’s displays are checked again. The transition is rejected if any of them has become fully booked in the meantime.

Both rejections apply regardless of role. An open proposal also carries an occupancy warning when one of its displays has become busy since the proposal was written.

See terminology for how overbooking is defined.

Exports

Spreadsheet (XLSX)

The saturation view can be exported to an XLSX file. The export respects the current filters — only the displays visible in the filtered view are included. Before exporting, you can select which columns to include.

Archived displays are excluded from the export by default. To include them, add the archived state to the display-state filter before exporting.

Presentation (PPTX)

The saturation view can be exported as a presentation file when the saturation-state filter is set to Free. The presentation export button appears only when this filter is active, because the presentation is designed to showcase available inventory.

The presentation uses a template configured for the organization and display type. It may include display photos pulled from CityScreen Play for digital displays.