# Team members, categories and who can be booked

> The difference between someone existing on your team and someone being bookable, how categories group people for pricing, and why assigning services is the step people forget.

_Last verified: 2026-09-05. Source: https://bookodile.com/docs/team-members-and-categories_

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.