Team Management and a Dedicated Waiting List: Two Features That Keep Your Salon Running Smoothly

Running a grooming salon is not a solo sport -- even if you started out alone. The moment you bring on a second pair of hands, you need a way to track who is doing what. And when your calendar is full, you need a system that remembers the clients you could not fit in today so you can call them back tomorrow.

Check-in DOG now ships with two features built exactly for these situations: Team Member Management and a dedicated Waiting List page.

Managing your team

Until now, the person in charge and assistant fields on appointments pulled from user accounts attached to your salon. That worked, but it meant every staff member needed a Check-in DOG login -- overkill if all you need is a name in a dropdown.

The new Team section under Settings takes a simpler approach. You add team members by entering a first name and a last name. That is it. No email, no password, no invitation flow. Just the names of the people who work in your salon.

Once your team is set up, those names appear automatically in the appointment form:

• Person in charge -- the primary groomer for the session.
• Assistant 1 -- an optional first helper.
• Assistant 2 -- an optional second helper.

This gives you clean, structured records of who worked on every appointment. Over time, you can see patterns -- who handles the most sessions, which groomer tends to work with which breeds, and how to balance the load across your team.

Getting started

1. Go to Settings > Team.
2. Click New and enter the first and last name of each team member.
3. That is it. Your team members are now available in every appointment form.

You can edit or remove team members at any time. If you remove someone, any appointments they were assigned to will simply show the field as empty -- no data is lost.

A dedicated waiting list page

The waiting list toggle on appointments has been available since day one. You flag an appointment as "waiting list" when a client wants to come in but there is no slot available. The problem was that these waiting appointments lived mixed in with all your other appointments, and the only way to see them was to apply a filter.

Now there is a better way. The new Waiting List page sits in the Business navigation group, right after Appointments. Open it and you see every waiting list appointment, sorted by creation date -- oldest first.

This order matters. The client who has been waiting the longest should be the first one you call when a cancellation opens up. The page makes that obvious at a glance.

From the waiting list page, you can click any appointment to edit it. Assign a date and time, turn off the waiting list toggle, and the appointment moves back to your regular calendar. The client gets their slot, and you fill a gap that would otherwise have been dead time.

Why a separate page matters

Filters are useful, but they require you to remember to use them. A dedicated page in your navigation is always visible. It is a constant, gentle reminder that there are people waiting to hear from you. That reminder can be the difference between a full calendar and empty slots.

Better together

These two features work hand in hand. When a slot opens up, you check the waiting list page, pick the longest-waiting client, and create or update the appointment with the right team member assigned. Everything is tracked, everyone is accounted for, and no client falls through the cracks.

Small features, big impact. That is the Check-in DOG philosophy.