How to Track Contractor or Team Availability for Events and Projects in Airtable

You’ve just joined a team where part of your role is managing a group of contractors, and the system you’ve inherited for tracking their availability feels outdated.

Every week, someone circulates a spreadsheet with a list of upcoming dates, leaving empty cells for contractors to manually mark “Yes” or “No” next to each one. It technically gets the job done, but it’s clunky, time-consuming, and quickly becomes chaotic as the number of contractors and events grows.

You want a smoother, more scalable way for contractors to submit their availability and for you to see it instantly, without sorting through endless rows in a spreadsheet.

So how do you build this in Airtable?

How to Structure Your tables

Remember, in Airtable, you create a table for every entity type that has a one-to-many, many-to-one, or many-to-many relationship with others.

This approach keeps your data structured, makes relationships between records clear, and allows you to link information without duplication.

Here’s how to set up your base for tracking contractor availability.

Events Table

Each record in this table represents one event you’re managing. It holds all the key information about what’s happening and when.

Example fields: Event Name, Date, Location, Assigned Contractors (linked to Contractors), Availability Responses (linked to Availability).

Contractors Table

Each record represents a single contractor on your team. This table helps you track who they are and what events they’re connected to.

Example fields: Contractor Name, Email, Availability Responses (linked to Availability), Upcoming Events (lookup from Availability).

Availability Table

Each record represents one contractor’s response to one event. This is the bridge between the Events and Contractors tables.

Example fields: Contractor (linked to Contractors), Event (linked to Events), Availability (Single Select: Yes, No, Maybe, Not Responded), Submitted Date (Created Time), Notes (optional).

With this setup, each contractor’s response links neatly to both their profile and the event, giving you a clear view of who’s available and for what.

How Contractors Submit Availability

There are two easy ways to collect responses from contractors: using a form or an interface.

Option 1: Form

Set up a form linked to the Availability table. Include fields for Event, Contractor, Availability, and Notes.

Each submission will automatically create a new record in the Availability table. You can also pre-fill the Contractor and Event fields using personalized links so contractors don’t have to select them manually.

This method is simple, fast to set up, and ideal if your contractors don’t have Airtable accounts.

Option 2: Interface

If your contractors have access to Airtable, you can build an Interface instead. Show them a filtered list of their assigned events and let them update their Availability field directly.

It gives them a clean, dashboard-style experience while keeping all updates in one place.