Staff scheduling and team management for grooming salons

A grooming salon's week is decided by who is in and what they can do. Get that wrong and nothing downstream works: customers get offered times nobody can work, commission lands on the wrong person, and someone finds out they were expected in on a Tuesday by being phoned about it.

So scheduling in Argus is not a note on a wall. It is real data — and it is what your calendar, your online booking availability and your payouts all read from.

Scheduling is a weekly grid — your team down the side, the days across the top, each cell showing that person's hours and a weekly total beside their name. Click a cell to set the day.

• Several intervals in one day — up to ten — for split shifts and long breaks
• Repeat a pattern weekly or every other week, with an optional end date
• Repeating rotas are written out as real shifts, up to a year ahead
• Each branch has its own rota and its own opening hours
• A groomer's colour carries through to the calendar so columns are recognisable

Time away from the floor is entered directly on the calendar as blocked time with a required reason — draw over the empty space and it is done. Blocked time is fenced off from online booking, so a customer is never offered a slot during someone's dentist appointment.

One thing Argus deliberately does not have: a request-and-approve workflow for leave. Holidays are entered as blocked time rather than submitted for approval.

Every team member has a list of the services they are qualified to perform. It looks like admin housekeeping and it is quietly one of the most important settings in the product.

When a customer books online, Argus only considers groomers who are attached to that branch and qualified for every service in the basket. A bather is never offered for a full groom. Nobody has to police it, because an unqualified person simply never appears as available.

• Tick services per person, grouped by size category with prices shown
• Assign each person to the branches they actually work at
• Online availability is computed from qualification, branch and rota together
• Assistants are drawn from staff rostered at that branch that day

Not everyone should see everything. Argus has four levels, and they are enforced on the server rather than by hiding buttons.

• Owner — full control, and permanently the owner: the role can't be changed or reassigned, so you can never lose your own account
• Admin — runs the business: services, team, customers, reports and voids
• Manager — the branches they are responsible for, and nothing outside them
• Member — a groomer profile with their own calendar, no admin access

A manager restricted to one shop cannot check out a sale or cancel an appointment at another — that is refused by the API, not just absent from the screen.

This is the part most salon software leaves out. Every team member — including groomers who never see the dashboard — can have their own login and their own view of the day.

They sign in with a code sent to their email address. There is no password to invent, forget or reset, which matters when your team shares a tablet in a wet room.

• Their own calendar — just their appointments, with the notes for each pet
• Their shifts and time off, so nobody has to ask what they're working
• Appointment detail with the pet, breed, service and customer notes
• Optionally their own earnings: commission, tips and payout for any date range
• Their language, not yours — the portal is translated into 8 languages

What they see is your decision. Price visibility and earnings visibility are both off by default. Turn earnings on and each person sees strictly their own — restricted at the database query, not just on screen — with the effective percentage they really earned and, on an assisted job, the name of the person they worked with.

Owners can also sign in as any team member to see exactly what that person sees, which is the fastest way to settle a “my calendar looks wrong” conversation.

A team record holds what a salon actually needs to employ somebody and pay them: name, job title, phone and email, date of birth, a photo, their calendar colour, their commission percentage, and — where you need it for payouts — a personal ID number, address and bank account.

Job titles show in the calendar column headers, so a stand-in covering the desk can tell the senior groomer from the bather at a glance. Deactivate someone who leaves and their history stays intact: past appointments and receipts still name them correctly.