Handling appointments for a whole team

One diary works beautifully for one person. The day you hire a second, it stops working, and it stops working in a specific way: two people now need to see the same page at the same time, and only one of them is holding it.

Everything below follows from that. Here is how to run appointments for a team once the diary is no longer yours alone.

One calendar, one column per person

The shape that works is a single calendar with a column for each person, side by side. Not one calendar each — that is how you end up with two clients booked into one chair. One calendar, several columns.

Each column has its own hours. Ana works Tuesday to Saturday; Marco does not do Mondays. The booking page needs to know that, or it offers Ana's Monday slots to clients who then arrive to find she is not in. Working hours are set per person, with the business's hours as the fallback for anyone who has not set their own.

Each column also has its own time off. Marco's dentist appointment blocks Marco, not the shop. Calendar is the view; Teams is how people get their own column.

Let clients choose a person — or not

Some clients want Ana and only Ana. Some want the first free slot with anyone competent. Both should be possible, and the second one is worth more than it looks.

"Anyone" is how you fill the gaps. A client with no preference, booking on a busy Saturday, gets offered a slot that fits someone's column, and the system places them with whoever is free. Without that option they see only the slots that are free for the one person they picked at random, decide you are full, and go elsewhere.

Bookify's booking page offers both: pick a person, or take the first available.

Each person does what they actually do

Not everyone offers every service. The junior does not do colour yet. Only one of you does the extensions.

If services are not assigned per person, a client books a service with someone who cannot deliver it, and you find out when they arrive. Assign services per staff member under Services and the booking page will only offer Ana for things Ana does.

Give people the view they need, not the whole business

This is where most team tools go wrong in one of two directions. Either everyone sees everything — every client's phone number, every colleague's takings — or nobody but the owner can see anything and the owner becomes a bottleneck for every question.

The middle is roles. A staff member sees their own column, their own clients, their own day. A manager sees the whole calendar and can move things around. The owner sees that plus the money and the settings. Teams has three roles for exactly this reason.

The practical effect: a stylist can check tomorrow from their phone on the bus without being able to see, or accidentally change, anything that is not theirs.

Their calendar, not just yours

Every person on the team has a phone with a calendar on it, and their life is in that calendar. If the booking system does not talk to it, they will keep their own diary alongside, and the two will disagree.

Each person should connect their own Google or Apple calendar. Then appointments land in their phone, and — the half that matters — a personal event they add to their own calendar blocks that slot on the booking page. A school run put in a phone stops a client being booked over it. Calendar sync is per person, so nobody has to share their private calendar with the business to get this.

Moving things is a drag, literally

A team day does not survive contact with reality. Someone is late, someone is off sick, a client wants to move to Thursday. Rescheduling has to be fast enough to do while standing at reception with the phone in your other hand.

Drag the appointment to the new time. Drag it to a different column to hand it to a colleague. The client gets a text with the new details; you do not have to write it. If moving it to Thursday takes more than a few seconds, it will get written on a sticky note instead, and the sticky note will not text anyone.

Bringing someone in

Inviting a new team member should give them a column, a login that shows only their own work, and their own calendar connection — and it should not require you to hand over your password.

In Bookify you add them under Staff, set what they do and when, and send an invitation. They accept, connect their own calendar, and their column is live. If they already have a Bookify login from another business, it links to that instead. Nothing about the shop's settings or money is visible to them unless you make them a manager.

What this looks like in a week

Monday, you look at one calendar and see five columns. Ana's is full until Thursday. Marco has a gap at three that "anyone" bookings will fill by Wednesday. The junior's column only shows cuts, because that is all she is assigned. Each of them checked their own day from their phone before they came in.

Nobody asked you what they were doing today. That is the goal.

If your team is a salon, hair salons walks through this shape with stylists in the columns; clinics and dentists is the same thing with practitioners.