Free your provider during the prep and drying parts of a job so they can take another booking in parallel — without ever overselling.

Most jobs aren't one solid block of your provider's attention. A groom is a bath, then an unattended cage-dry, then the actual finishing work — and for a big chunk of that time the groomer is just waiting. This guide shows you how to hand the waiting parts to a helper (or to nobody at all), so your groomer is free to start the next dog while the first one dries. The result is more bookings per day from the same team, and Seglo guarantees the extra slots are real — it never double-books a person who is genuinely busy.

It ties together three pages: Positions and Team to set up the helper, and the service editor to describe the job's steps. Set it up once and it runs on every future booking.

How it works, in one picture

A booking is a sequence of steps. Each step has a length and a performer:

  Full Groom (90 min)
  ├─ Check-in & bath   20 min   → Assistant       (groomer is FREE)
  ├─ Cage dry          30 min   → Nobody          (everyone is FREE)
  └─ Groom & finish    40 min   → The provider    (groomer is BUSY)

The groomer is only truly held for the last 40 minutes. During the bath (handed to an assistant) and the dry (handed to nobody), their calendar is open — so Seglo can offer those 50 minutes as availability and slot another dog in. One groomer who used to do about 7 dogs a day can do 10–12.

The safety rule: the extra slot only appears when a real helper is actually on shift. If no assistant is rostered that day, the step quietly falls back to the groomer covering it themselves — the booking still goes through, you just don't get the bonus slot. Nothing is ever oversold.

Step 1 — Create an Assistant position

A helper is a team member whose position is linked to the Assistant scheduling role. That link is what makes them a behind-the-scenes helper instead of a bookable provider.

Go to Settings → Resources → Positions.
Click New position, name it (e.g. "Bath Assistant"), and set Scheduling role to Assistant.
Click Create.

An Assistant position is deliberately non-bookable — customers never see the person, and they never get a calendar column. Their entire job is to free up your bookable staff. (A Groomer-linked position is the opposite: bookable, on the calendar, needs skills. No scheduling role is a pure title like Manager.) See Resources for the full Positions tab.

Step 2 — Assign the position and roster the person

Go to Team, add the person (only a Name is required) or open an existing member.
On their row, pick the Assistant position from the Position selector. This immediately provisions them as an active assistant — you do not add them again as a resource. The selector shows Not on calendar, which is correct for an assistant.
Roster them. Open Staff schedule and give them shifts exactly as you would any staff member.

Rostering is not optional. The engine reads the assistant's shifts to know when a helper is free — an assistant with no shifts contributes zero extra capacity. This is the single most common reason a setup "does nothing". An assistant needs no service skills; helper work is generic prep, not service-specific.

See Team members for assigning positions and the leaver edge cases.

Step 3 — Break the service into steps

Now tell Seglo which parts of the job the provider actually needs to be present for.

Open Catalog → Services and edit the service. Save it first if it's brand new — steps attach to a saved service.
In the variant's Step sequence section, click Add step for each stage. Give each a Step name (for your reference only), a Duration, and set Who performs it:
- The provider does it — the booked groomer/stylist handles this step (they're busy).
- Nobody — runs unattended — the cage-dry / colour-develop / cure. Frees the provider and everyone else.
- A role (e.g. Assistant, or a room / equipment pool) — a helper handles it; the provider is free.
For a role step, pick what happens if none is free: the provider covers it (the booking still commits — recommended) or don't allow the booking (the slot is hidden until a helper is free).
The steps must add up to the service's total duration — Seglo won't save otherwise, and shows the running total as you edit. Click Save steps.

A good grooming setup: Check-in & bath (Assistant, 20 min) → Cage dry (Nobody, 30 min) → Groom & finish (The provider, 40 min). The summary line under the steps shows how much shorter the provider's held time becomes with a helper. See Service variants and pricing for the full editor.

Optional: make a step's time scale with the job's size

A fixed step length works when every dog's bath takes the same 20 minutes. If bigger jobs genuinely need a longer bath or a longer dry — without lengthening the groomer's own hands-on time — you can make an Assistant or Nobody step scale with attributes instead of staying a fixed length.

In the same Step sequence editor, each Assistant or Nobody step has a toggle: Fixed duration / Scales with attributes. (This only appears once the service has a factor-based pricing attribute, e.g. "Dog size" — the provider's own step can't be set to scale.)
Switch it to Scales with attributes. The step's duration field relabels to Baseline minutes (before attribute adjustments) — enter the length for the smallest/plainest option. A hint under the field lists which attribute drives it, e.g. "Scales with: Dog size".
Open the attribute's pricing setup (Settings → Pricing, or the service's own Pricing → Manage pricing — see Factor-based pricing). Each option that adds duration shows an Offload these minutes row for each helper role you've set up, plus Rest / processing time. Fill in the row(s) that match the step(s) you switched to scale — e.g. an "XL" size option could add 60 minutes to the Assistant row (the bath step) and 10 to Rest / processing time (the dry step). Rows for a role you haven't marked any step to scale on are harmless to leave blank — those minutes would just land back on the provider.

The result: an XL dog gets a proportionally longer bath and dry, but the groomer's own finishing step stays exactly as long as it is for every other size — so the extra time is genuinely absorbed by the helper/rest window, not by the groomer's calendar. If a helper isn't rostered when a big dog books, the same safety rule above still applies — the provider covers the extra (now-longer) time themselves rather than the booking failing.

What you'll see afterwards

Nothing about the customer's experience changes — they book the same service at the same price. Behind the scenes, on the days a helper is rostered, more start-times open up on your bookable staff, because their bath-and-dry windows are now offered as free. On days no helper is on, availability is exactly as it was before. The calendar packs tighter only when it safely can.

Troubleshooting

"I set up a helper step but no extra availability appeared." Almost always no helper is rostered that day. Check the assistant has shifts on Staff schedule covering the times you expected extra slots. With no one rostered, a fallback step correctly reverts to the provider — so availability is unchanged, by design. Also confirm the step's performer is set to the role (not "The provider does it") and that the service's steps were saved.
"Why can't customers book my assistant?" By design. An Assistant-linked position is never bookable and never appears to customers — its only job is to free up your bookable staff. If you want that person to take bookings, give them a Groomer position instead (they'll then need service skills and a location).
"I changed a groomer to an assistant and got a warning." That groomer has upcoming bookings. Those existing appointments run to completion untouched — only future bookability changes. Reassign or complete them if you don't want them held by someone who is no longer bookable.
A role step shows "No … is set up yet". You picked a role you own no resources of. Add the person (Assistant position + roster) or the room/equipment under Resources; until then the step always falls back to the provider or blocks the booking, per your choice.

Service variants and pricing — the full step-sequence editor and resource requirements.
Factor-based pricing — set the per-attribute minutes that make a scaling step longer or shorter.
Resources — the Positions tab and how offload roles map to resource types.
Team members — assign positions and manage skills, locations, and leavers.
Staff schedule — roster your helpers so their free time becomes capacity.

Fit more bookings with helpers