Team members, categories and who can be booked

Being on your team and being bookable are two different things, and the gap between them explains most "why can't customers book them?" questions.

Three things have to line up

For a customer to be offered a time with someone:

1. They are active. Deactivated people keep their history and disappear from the booking page. Deactivating also takes their sign-in away, so it is the answer for someone who has left rather than for someone who is simply not taking bookings this month.
2. They are listed as a service provider. This is a property of their role, not of them. Someone on the front desk exists on your team and takes no bookings.
3. They are assigned to the service. Assignment is per service, and it is the step most often missed. Someone can be active, bookable, and still invisible because no service names them.

There is a fourth, and it only applies to a service that needs a room, a chair or a machine: something that service needs has to be open to them. A resource is open to anyone by default, so this is usually already true. It stops being true the moment you keep a chair for one person — then whoever the chair is not kept for is not offered for a service that only that chair can serve. Each person's page carries a Where they work card that says which case they are in, and warns when they have been shut out of a service altogether. It is read-only: the setting lives on the resource, at who can be booked here, and the whole picture is in sharing rooms, chairs and equipment.

Categories group people

A category groups team members — Junior and Senior, for example. Categories do two jobs, and a third if you use the leaderboard:

• Pricing. A service priced per category stores one price per category rather than one per person, so a new hire is priced the moment you put them in a group.
• Showing customers what they are choosing between, if you want that. There is a setting that puts the category on your booking page beside each person's name. It is off by default — some businesses want the distinction visible, others very much do not.
• A fair competition, with the Leaderboard add-on: a revenue competition can give each category its own winner, so people at different price levels never compete with each other. See The leaderboard.

Categories are always called categories. If you have seen "tier" anywhere, that is an older word for the same thing.

People without a category

Having no category is fine, unless a service is priced per category. Then that person cannot be priced, and rather than showing them and failing at the last step, the booking page leaves them out of the picker.

That is the fix for a person mysteriously missing from your booking page: check whether they are in a category, and whether their category has a price for that service.

"Anyone" bookings

If a customer does not choose a person, Bookodile picks from everyone eligible for that service. Eligible means active, bookable, assigned, and — for per-person or per-category pricing — actually priced.

When nobody is eligible, the day comes back empty and the page says so, offering an alternative where one genuinely exists.

A short bio on the booking page

Each team member can have a bio of up to 200 characters. They write their own in Settings → Profile, under Your card on the booking page, and whoever manages the team can write anyone's in their form under Employees, below the phone number. Both show a preview of the card as customers see it. On your booking page, when a customer chooses who serves them, a person with a bio has a small arrow beside their name; tapping it opens the bio under their card, and tapping the card itself still picks them. Someone without a bio shows no arrow, so nobody's card looks empty.

People pick a person they can picture: a barbershop's senior barber might write "Fifteen years in, mostly fades and beard work", and a gym's coach "Strength and mobility; I used to row for the national team". Photos on that step are shown large, as rounded squares, for the same reason — a little smaller on a phone, where each person's price and time also move under their name, so a long name still has room.

Each person's own hours

Team members have their own working hours, which narrow the business's rather than extend them. Someone rostered 10:00–14:00 in a shop open 09:00–18:00 is bookable for those four hours only.

Worked example

A salon with three stylists and a receptionist.

The receptionist has a role that is not listed as a service provider. They can see the calendar and take bookings for other people; no customer is ever offered a slot with them.

The three stylists are in two categories: one Senior, two Junior. The colour service is priced per category — €60 Senior, €40 Junior — and all three are assigned to it. A fourth stylist joins, is put in Junior, and is priced correctly without anyone editing the service.

Limits

• Assignment is per service. There is no "assign to everything" that keeps applying as you add services.
• A person can be in one category at a time.
• A bio is per branch. Someone who works at two branches has one at each; Settings → Profile shows a card for each branch.
• Deactivating someone does not cancel their bookings. Existing appointments stay; they simply stop being offered new ones.
• Deactivating someone does take their sign-in away. If they could sign in to Bookodile, they no longer can until you switch them back on.
• Deactivating someone shows what it takes with them first. Before it happens you see any services that nobody else can take — including ones where someone else is assigned but has no price set, with a link to set it — the services where only one person would be left, their upcoming bookings, and on the free plan how many booking spots you would have.
• Switching someone back on counts like adding them. On the free plan, a person who would take you past the limit is turned down with the same way through as a new team member: start your 14 free days, or start the plan.
• Categories are per branch, like everything else about a roster.
• Where a person works is set on the resource, not on them. Their page shows it and cannot change it — one setting with two places to edit it is how two screens start disagreeing.
• Someone who signs in keeps their own phone number. You see it on their page but cannot change it there; they update it on their own profile, and it changes for every business they work for. Their name on your booking page is still yours to set. For someone who does not sign in, you edit both.