Overview

Two settings decide who clients end up booking with: Provider assignment and Require the same service provider. You’ll find them in Manage Location › Booking. Provider assignment has its own section, and Require the same service provider is under Appointments.

New here? Start with the Booking Settings Guide.

Provider assignment

When a client doesn't pick a specific provider (they choose first available), this setting decides who gets the booking. It has two parts: a rule and priority groups.

Choose a rule

Rule	What it does	Best when
Assign optimal provider (default)	Picks the provider that makes the best use of your calendar.	Demand is high and providers are routinely fully booked.
Distribute among all providers evenly	Spreads first-available bookings evenly across providers. It only counts bookings Boulevard assigned, not ones clients requested. Your calendar is a bit less efficient.	Demand is lower and providers get about the same number of requested bookings
Assign provider with fewest bookings overall	Gives the booking to whoever has the lowest share of booked hours. It counts all bookings, requested and assigned. Least efficient for your calendar.	Demand is lower and some providers get more requests than others, like newer staff building a client book.

More on Assign optimal provider. This setting follows the times marked “Optimal”, so it also looks at provider changes, resource needs, and wait times to pick the best provider. For appointments with more than one service, it picks the best service order too.

For simple setups, like one service with no resources, the calculation is more straightforward.

Example

Ana, Maya, and Priya all do haircuts. A client picks first available for 2:00 PM, and all three are open.

Assign optimal provider: the booking goes to whoever the appointment fits best on the calendar, even if that's often the same person.
Distribute among all providers evenly: the booking goes to whoever has had the fewest first-available bookings, so over time everyone gets a similar share.
Assign provider with fewest bookings overall: the booking goes to Priya, whose calendar is the least booked.

Priority groups

Priority groups let you rank your team. Priority group 1 is considered first. If no one in it is available, Boulevard moves to group 2, and so on. Anyone who isn’t in a group stays in No priority, which comes last.

Each group has its own rule, so you can mix them. For example, use Assign optimal provider for your senior providers and Distribute among all providers evenly for a group of newer providers.

Build your groups

Select Add provider override to rank a specific provider. Select Add role override to rank everyone in a role, like all Manicurists.

Drag a group’s handle to change its order. Drag a provider’s handle to move them to another group. Select the X to take a provider out of a group.

Example

Your salon has senior stylists and newer stylists. Put the senior stylists in Priority group 1 and the newer stylists in Priority group 2. When a client picks first available, a senior stylist is chosen first. If every senior stylist is busy, the booking moves to group 2. Flip the order if you’d rather fill newer stylists’ books first.

Think twice if

A provider in a lower group looks quiet. They only get first-available bookings when everyone above is unavailable, so check where they sit.\You’re not sure you need it. The rule alone may be all you need.

Test it

To see how assignment plays out, start a new booking in a private browser window each time.

Require the same service provider

Some appointments have more than one service, like color and a cut. This setting decides whether one provider has to do all of them.

Toggle	What happens	Example
Off (default)	Precision Scheduling can split services across providers to find better times.	A client books color and a cut. Color is with Ana and the cut is with Maya, so the client gets an earlier time.
On	One provider does every service in the appointment.	Color and cut both go to Ana. The client may see fewer times, because services can't be split between staff.

Good to know

Add-ons are the exception. An add-on is always done by the same provider as its main service, whether this is on or off.
Your team can still override it. If a staff member picks two different providers when booking an appointment, that works.

Try it if

Your clients book a person, and a mid-appointment handoff would hurt the experience.