Add someone to your team
Creating the record for a new stylist, the two switches that decide whether anyone can book them, and how many people your plan covers.
3 min readUpdated August 22, 2026Owners · Managers
Someone starts on Tuesday. Before their first client sits down they need a record, and the record is what the calendar, the till and payroll all read from — so it's worth the two minutes it takes.
Go to Settings → Staff. On a one-chair plan this reads My profile instead, and holds you and nobody else.
Making the record
- 1
Press Add staff. A panel opens from the right with the whole form in it — there is no multi-step wizard and nothing to come back and finish.
- 2
Fill in First name. It's the only field the form insists on; everything else can wait, including the surname.
- 3
Add an Email if — and only if — you're going to invite them to sign in. It's the address the invitation goes to, and it's what binds their login back to this record later.
- 4
Under Employment, set the Type and a Start date if you want the record to say when they joined. The Type list offers the forms your country actually files — W-2 employee or 1099 contractor in the United States, T4 employee or T4A contractor in Canada — plus Other for the arrangement that's neither. It's the field year-end paperwork is built from, so pick the one their accountant would.
- 5
Under Booking, decide the two switches. Service provider puts them on the calendar and makes them bookable at all. Bookable online decides separately whether the public booking page offers them.
- 6
Press Add staff.
They land in the list as Active straight away. Nothing is sent to them, because adding somebody to your team and giving them a login to your business are two different decisions — see inviting them to log in.
The two switches that matter
Almost every "why can't I book them?" comes down to the Booking pair, and they aren't the same question.
Service provider is about the calendar at all. Untick it for a receptionist or a bookkeeper and they keep a full record, keep a login if they have one, and simply never appear as a column to book into.
Bookable online is narrower: it decides whether your public page offers them to clients. Plenty of salons want a new stylist taking booked-by-the-desk work for a month before they're offered to strangers, and this is how you do that without hiding them from your own team.
Ticking Service provider isn't quite enough on its own. A stylist with no working hours has no time to be booked into, so they show as an empty column — correct, and confusing if you weren't expecting it.
How many people you can have
The seat count is a plan limit rather than a permission, and it counts one specific thing: staff who are Active. Solo covers one person, Starter five, Growth fifteen, and Scale doesn't count at all.
Someone you've terminated isn't holding a seat, so a summer hire who leaves in September frees theirs up for the autumn. Nor is someone you've set to Inactive, which is the one to use for a stylist who is coming back. When the plan is full, the product says so at the moment you press Add staff, and tells you which plan has room, rather than letting you fill the whole form in first.
Two counts feed that number, not one — the people on your staff list and the people who hold a login — because they're not the same population. You own the salon without appearing on the staff list, and a bookkeeper can have a login without ever being on it. Giving a login to somebody already on your staff list costs nothing extra: they were already one person.
Common questions
Do they need an email address?
Only if you're going to give them a login. Most of the staff list has a dash in the email column, and that's normal — a chair-renter who never signs in still needs to be bookable, and the record works fine without one.
How many people does my plan cover?
Solo covers one person, Starter five, Growth fifteen, and Scale doesn't count. A seat is somebody Active, so anyone you've terminated — or set to Inactive while they're away — stops taking one up, and their replacement doesn't need a plan change.
I don't have a Staff item in my menu.
On a one-chair plan it's called My profile instead, because a team of one is you looking at yourself. Same screen, same fields — it just doesn't offer to add anyone else.
Why isn't the new person on the calendar?
Two things have to be true: Service provider ticked, and working hours set. A staff member with no hours has nowhere to be booked into, even though they'll appear in the list looking perfectly fine.
Can I add someone who's starting next month?
Yes. Fill in the Start date and leave their hours until they arrive — the date is a record for you rather than a switch, so nothing turns on or off when it passes.
Related articles
- Invite them to log inStaff · Handing someone a sign-in — the invitation, the seven days it lives for, what the person on the other end sees, and how to chase or cancel it.
- Working hours and time offStaff · Setting somebody's week, splitting a day around a long lunch, and blocking out a holiday for one person or the whole salon at once.
- How they get paidStaff · The three things on a staff record that decide what payroll owes someone — and the one that catches people out on their first pay period.
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