I'm running a hair salon with 5 hairdressers. Each of them have been assigned to different services. Now a serious problem occurred when I wanted to change services per employee, every single employee suddenly became available again while they were fully booked for two months.
What I did was actually very simple. Because we just started with a new team we wanted to see how many new clients versus returning clients would be booked. Unfortunately we had to decide to limit "new client bookings" and "kids treatments". So we assigned them to only 2 of our 5 employees.
As I have worked with a lot of different scheduling software, It's very common to finetune services to get the exact right balance between services without it opening up all the spots that had already been booked.
I'm afraid when we want to assign or switch services again between employee, their spots will become available again and we will have double bookings again.
The way we solved this issue now is to block all the spots that were already booked per employee, per day, but at the same time when somebody cancels their appointment it won't become available online as we blocked those times. This means that we loose about 20% of our sales.
Hopefully you guys are able to fix this. I really believe it's a bug in the system.
Another question I have is if families and friends are able to book 3 chairs at the same time. We often have mothers or group of friends who like to book together at the same time for their haircut. Unfortunately we haven't found a system that has this option.
I am not sure if I understood the use case quite well.
If you change the services employees have - remove the assigned services until then and assign them new ones - this isn't possible , you can't remove the assigned services if they have booked appointments for those services in the future. So I am not sure how to reproduce the use case ?
Another question I have is if families and friends are able to book 3 chairs at the same time. We often have mothers or group of friends who like to book together at the same time for their haircut. Unfortunately we haven't found a system that has this option.
Someone can book for more people in Amelia but using Group appointments only, so if you have a Maximum capacity for a service to be 3, someone can book for themselves and in the option Bringing anyone with you choose 2 persons. But this will be counted as a group appointment in Amelia with one employee - and information for only customer (the one that books an appointment) would be asked for in the booking process.
Thanks for your quick response. However, it should not be a problem to change services right? Services might change over time. So in my situation, for future bookings, I want to limit bookings for any new clients to only 2 employees. So when I deleted the "new client services" for some of our employees , suddenly their spots that were already booked became available again, resulting in double bookings.
If you are saying that "you can't remove the assigned services if they have booked appointments for those services in the future", then it will never be possible to change assigned services which is a huge bummer for professional salons. Isn't it possible to change assigned services while keeping previous bookings. Simply keep the bookings an employee has and change the service from that point in time?
If not, I really need to start looking for another plugin, because this is crucial in a business where you constantly have to look for the right balance between new customers vs monthly returning customers in order to make sure we are fully booked every month. For your understanding, when you have too many new clients coming in every month, there will be no spots available for returning clients the next month. This results in fewer returning clients. Vice e versa it works similar. Too many returning clients, and you won't have any spots for new clients. So in order to find the right balance it's a must to change the assigned services and see what works best.
I hope this helps you understand my problem a bit clearer as most salon software works like this.
I hope there is a solution tot his situation. If not, please explain to me what's the best option to change assigned services without having previously booked spots become available again. Keep in mind that clients will book 4 to 6 months in advance.
Unfortunately, the services can't be removed from assigned services for one employee in Amelia if there are booked appointments for that service. You would need to change the service in those appointments or cancel them if you don't want to have that assigned service for that employee anymore.
But you can change the availability of the assigned services for employees, if that could help your use case. So, under the Work hours tab in the Employee modal, you can choose to which services the work hours apply to, if you leave the Services field empty it will mean that it is applied to all services, but when you choose some services they will be the only available for those work hours. So, this way you will have the services assigned to the employees but they will not be available for booking for them on the front-end.
Or you can try if disabling the option Show service on site that you will find in each service modal (when you create/edit them) would help. This would mean that this service won't be available for booking on the front-end for any employee.
If you have any further questions or concerns feel free to ask,
Hi,
I'm running a hair salon with 5 hairdressers. Each of them have been assigned to different services. Now a serious problem occurred when I wanted to change services per employee, every single employee suddenly became available again while they were fully booked for two months.
What I did was actually very simple. Because we just started with a new team we wanted to see how many new clients versus returning clients would be booked. Unfortunately we had to decide to limit "new client bookings" and "kids treatments". So we assigned them to only 2 of our 5 employees.
As I have worked with a lot of different scheduling software, It's very common to finetune services to get the exact right balance between services without it opening up all the spots that had already been booked.
I'm afraid when we want to assign or switch services again between employee, their spots will become available again and we will have double bookings again.
The way we solved this issue now is to block all the spots that were already booked per employee, per day, but at the same time when somebody cancels their appointment it won't become available online as we blocked those times. This means that we loose about 20% of our sales.
Hopefully you guys are able to fix this. I really believe it's a bug in the system.
Another question I have is if families and friends are able to book 3 chairs at the same time. We often have mothers or group of friends who like to book together at the same time for their haircut. Unfortunately we haven't found a system that has this option.
Thanks for this great plugin and all the help.
Regards,
Joep.
Hello Joep Daverveld,
Thank you for your purchase.
I am not sure if I understood the use case quite well.
If you change the services employees have - remove the assigned services until then and assign them new ones - this isn't possible , you can't remove the assigned services if they have booked appointments for those services in the future. So I am not sure how to reproduce the use case ?
Another question I have is if families and friends are able to book 3 chairs at the same time. We often have mothers or group of friends who like to book together at the same time for their haircut. Unfortunately we haven't found a system that has this option.
Someone can book for more people in Amelia but using Group appointments only, so if you have a Maximum capacity for a service to be 3, someone can book for themselves and in the option Bringing anyone with you choose 2 persons. But this will be counted as a group appointment in Amelia with one employee - and information for only customer (the one that books an appointment) would be asked for in the booking process.Hi Marija,
Thanks for your quick response. However, it should not be a problem to change services right? Services might change over time. So in my situation, for future bookings, I want to limit bookings for any new clients to only 2 employees. So when I deleted the "new client services" for some of our employees , suddenly their spots that were already booked became available again, resulting in double bookings.
If you are saying that "you can't remove the assigned services if they have booked appointments for those services in the future", then it will never be possible to change assigned services which is a huge bummer for professional salons. Isn't it possible to change assigned services while keeping previous bookings. Simply keep the bookings an employee has and change the service from that point in time?
If not, I really need to start looking for another plugin, because this is crucial in a business where you constantly have to look for the right balance between new customers vs monthly returning customers in order to make sure we are fully booked every month. For your understanding, when you have too many new clients coming in every month, there will be no spots available for returning clients the next month. This results in fewer returning clients. Vice e versa it works similar. Too many returning clients, and you won't have any spots for new clients. So in order to find the right balance it's a must to change the assigned services and see what works best.
I hope this helps you understand my problem a bit clearer as most salon software works like this.
I hope there is a solution tot his situation.
If not, please explain to me what's the best option to change assigned services without having previously booked spots become available again. Keep in mind that clients will book 4 to 6 months in advance.
Thanks for the help and the effort.
Regards,
Joep.
Hello Joep Daverveld,
You are welcome.
Unfortunately, the services can't be removed from assigned services for one employee in Amelia if there are booked appointments for that service. You would need to change the service in those appointments or cancel them if you don't want to have that assigned service for that employee anymore.
But you can change the availability of the assigned services for employees, if that could help your use case. So, under the Work hours tab in the Employee modal, you can choose to which services the work hours apply to, if you leave the Services field empty it will mean that it is applied to all services, but when you choose some services they will be the only available for those work hours. So, this way you will have the services assigned to the employees but they will not be available for booking for them on the front-end.
Or you can try if disabling the option Show service on site that you will find in each service modal (when you create/edit them) would help. This would mean that this service won't be available for booking on the front-end for any employee.
If you have any further questions or concerns feel free to ask,