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.
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.

Categories group people

A category groups team members — Junior and Senior, for example. Categories do two jobs:

• 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.

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.

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.
• Deactivating someone does not cancel their bookings. Existing appointments stay; they simply stop being offered new ones.
• Categories are per branch, like everything else about a roster.