01 First available, without starving the new starter
Let customers pick their person and the senior chair books out three weeks while everybody else has gaps. New customers see the first available date, decide you are busy, and go elsewhere — you have lost the booking to your own booking page rather than to a competitor.
Offer the choice, but lead with first available. And say what “first available” means: least-booked that day, a fixed order, or by priority. “Spread the work” and “protect the senior chair” are both legitimate answers, and they are not the same answer.
02 Two people cannot take the same slot
This sounds obvious and is the thing most booking software gets slightly wrong under load. Two customers pressing the button in the same second is not a rare event on a busy Saturday; it is a Saturday.
The write is serialised per person per day, the availability is re-checked inside the transaction rather than before it, and the database itself refuses an overlap. The second customer gets a clear “that slot has gone” instead of a booking you find at nine.
03 Commission, without a spreadsheet on Monday
Set a percentage per person, or a default for the shop. It is calculated from what was actually paid rather than what was quoted, so a discount, a part-payment or a refund all move it correctly.
A refund reverses the commission proportionally rather than leaving a figure somebody has to remember to correct.
04 More than one address
Staff are assigned to the locations they work at, and the booking page only offers a person where they actually are that day. A customer choosing the wrong branch is a wasted journey and a bad review, and it is entirely preventable.
The calendar filters by location, so a manager covering two sites is not reading one merged diary.
Questions
- How many staff can we have?
- That is a plan limit rather than a technical one, and you are told which limit and what it is before the action rather than after it. Nothing is silently dropped.
- Can a staff member manage their own hours?
- If you give them that permission. Permissions are per module — someone can be allowed to edit their own schedule without being able to see the money.
- Can two people be booked at once for one job?
- Yes, for services that need it. Capacity is a property of the service rather than an assumption that one appointment means one person.
- Does everybody need their own login?
- No. A team can run from one account and the diary still separates who is doing what. Logins matter when you want people to see only their own work.
