People, places & things
The three resource categories and what each changes — working hours, client choice, availability.
Every resource kind carries one setting that changes more than anything else in the catalog — its category. It never appears on the public page and you don’t type it when adding a resource: you pick it once, when you create the kind, and it decides which fields exist at all for every resource inside that kind.
There are four categories: People, Places, Equipment and Things. This article explains what each one does, what it does not do, and how to pick the right one first time.
1. Where the category lives
The category belongs to the kind, not to the individual resource. One choice applies to every unit inside it.
- In the left icon rail, pick your board.
- Catalog → under the Team & resources group, click Resource kinds.
- Each card shows the kind’s name, its category and the number of units — e.g. “Stylists · People · 4 items”.
- To change the category, click the three dots on the card → Edit → the Category section.
There are exactly four radio buttons, and the hint below reflects the one you selected:
| Category | Hint in the UI |
|---|---|
| People | ”Bookable people — masters, instructors, doctors, teachers.” |
| Places | ”Bookable physical spaces — rooms, courts, cabinets, halls.” |
| Equipment | ”Movable items, possibly with quantity (cameras, instruments, machines).” |
| Things | ”Anything else that doesn’t fit the other three.” |
A kind’s category can be changed at any time. An already-created resource’s type cannot: the field is locked with “Type cannot be changed after creation.” If a resource sits in the wrong kind, either change the kind’s category or recreate the resource.
2. What each category changes — the table
The category decides which sections appear in the resource editor and how the resource looks to the customer.
| People | Places | Equipment | Things | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Short bio section | yes | no | no | no |
| About section (experience, languages, specialties, certifications, socials) | yes | no | no | no |
| Working hours section (personal schedule) | yes | no | no | no |
| Role / Title field | yes | no | no | no |
| Home location section | no | yes* | yes* | yes* |
| Stock count section | no | no | yes | no |
| Located in field on the kind | no | no | yes | no |
| Public specialist profile | yes | no | no | no |
| Avatar with initials and a rating on the public card | yes | no (icon) | no (icon) | no (icon) |
* The Home location section only appears when the board has two or more locations. With a single location the system quietly pins the resource to it.
3. “People” — the only category with a personal schedule
Pick it for anything that is a human with working hours: stylist, barber, trainer, doctor, teacher, consultant.
What it adds:
- Role / Title — the hint gives examples: “Senior stylist”, “Orthodontist”. It shows under the name everywhere.
- Short bio — up to 500 characters, with an “N characters left” counter. The section reads “Shown on the specialist’s public profile page.”
- About — Years of experience, Languages, Specialties, Certifications & training, Social profiles.
- Working hours — an own weekly schedule with breaks, an Apply Mon to all button and a Copy from… dropdown that clones another person’s schedule. In edit mode there’s also a Schedule & Leave link for per-day overrides and time off.
- A public specialist page the customer can open from the staff picker.
What it forbids:
- Home location — a person has no fixed branch. If a stale value survives, the save is refused with “A person doesn’t have a home location — that’s only for rooms and equipment. Clear it.” People rotate between branches through their per-day schedule: “People rotate via per-day chips in the Schedule section.”
- Quantity above 1 — “A person is a single resource, so it can’t have a quantity above 1. Remove it.” Two stylists are two resources, not one resource with a quantity of 2.
Public side: A specialist’s public profile. Schedule: A staff member’s schedule.
4. “Places” — spaces taken for the duration of the service
Rooms, cabinets, courts, studios, halls. A place has no personal schedule — it follows the board’s hours. Instead of the hours section the editor says “Working hours follow the board’s default schedule. Per-day overrides are person-only.”, and the live preview says “Schedule inherited from location / board.” and “Not editable here.”
What that means in practice:
- If the salon is open until 20:00, the room is free until 20:00 — you can’t close it at 17:00 independently of the salon.
- To “switch off” a place for a day, use the Active · available for booking toggle or block the date at board level.
- With two or more locations the Home location section appears, described as “Where this resource physically lives.” Bookings at other branches won’t pick from this pool.
The name field suggests “e.g. Room #2, Studio «Loft»“.
5. “Equipment” — the only category with a count
Machines, devices, cameras, tools, rackets, helmets. This is the only category that gets the Stock count section.
- The value is a number of interchangeable units — “How many units of this equipment you have. Customers will book one from the available pool.”
- One row “Laser device” with a stock of 3 behaves as three parallel units: three bookings at the same time go through, the fourth does not. Under the field it reads “Stock: 3 — can serve up to 3 parallel bookings.”
- An Equipment kind also gets the Located in field, tying it to a place kind: “When set, equipment is suggested alongside the matching place during booking.”
Plan warning: each unit of the count is charged separately against your bookable-spots limit. A row with a stock of 4 eats 4 spots, not one. See Your plan’s bookable-spots limit.
Full rules: Equipment stock and parallel capacity.
6. “Things” — everything else
The hint is literally “Anything else that doesn’t fit the other three.” Chairs, tables, lockers, desks.
In practice Things behaves like Places: no personal schedule, a Home location on multi-branch boards, but no count field. The name field suggests “e.g. Chair #1, Table 3”.
Choose Things over Places when the unit isn’t a space you walk into but an object that gets occupied — a chair on the floor of a shared salon, a table, a workstation.
Choose Equipment when you have several identical units and you don’t care which one the customer gets. Four separate rows “Chair 1…Chair 4” are Things. One row “Chairs” with a stock of 4 is Equipment.
7. What the category does NOT do
This is where most wrong expectations start.
- It does not decide whether the customer picks a specific unit. The Client picks which one toggle lives in the service editor and unlocks with one or more bookable resources of the kind — people, rooms or machines alike. A customer can choose a court exactly the way they choose a stylist. See Client picks a resource.
- It does not decide price. Price belongs to the service, not to the category.
- It does not decide whether the resource counts against your plan. That depends on whether the resource can fulfil the capacity anchor of at least one active service — not on the category.
- It does not change the conflict check. It’s identical for all categories: a busy unit is never offered twice.
- It never appears as a word on the public page. Customers see the kind’s name (“Stylists”, “Courts”), never the word “Place”.
8. How to choose — quick table
| Business | Kind | Category | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beauty salon | Stylists | People | personal schedule, public profile |
| Beauty salon | Chairs | Things or Equipment | Things for named chairs; Equipment for “5 identical” |
| Barbershop | Barbers | People | customers look for a specific person |
| Cosmetology studio | Rooms | Places | the space is the constraint |
| Cosmetology studio | Devices | Equipment | often 2–3 identical ones |
| Tennis club | Courts | Places | physical space |
| Tennis club | Rental rackets | Equipment | interchangeable units |
| Gym / studio | Instructors | People | schedule and profile |
| Gym / studio | Halls | Places | group capacity |
| Clinic | Doctors | People | per-service specializations |
| Clinic | Consulting rooms | Places | second requirement on the service |
9. If you picked the wrong category
Nothing needs deleting.
- Catalog → Resource kinds.
- Three dots on the wrong kind → Edit.
- Change Category and save.
- Open any resource in that kind — the new sections are already there.
What to expect after the switch:
- Fields that are no longer valid stop being sent on the next save. Switching Equipment → Places means the count stops being used and capacity drops to one unit per row.
- Switching to People removes Home location from the resources and adds Short bio, About and Working hours — but the schedule is empty until you fill it in.
- If a count above 1 was in play, the freed units come back to your plan’s limit.
Don’t use a category change to “move” a resource from one kind to another — that’s a different thing and it isn’t possible. An existing resource’s type is locked.
10. Troubleshooting
I don’t see “Stock count” on my device. Its kind is Things or Places. Change the kind’s category to Equipment.
I don’t see “Home location”. Either the resource is People (it doesn’t exist there by design), or the board has a single location — the section appears from the second one onwards.
I don’t see “About” / “Short bio”. The kind isn’t in the People category.
The save was refused with “A person doesn’t have a home location…”. The resource sits in a person kind but carries a stale location value. In the error panel click Go to it and clear it.
The save was refused with “A person is a single resource, so it can’t have a quantity above 1.” Same cause — a stale value from a previous category. Set the count back to 1, or move the resource into an equipment kind.
I changed the category and the people’s schedules vanished. The working hours are still stored, but they’re only read for the People category. Switch the category back and the schedule reappears.
What’s next
- Creating and managing resource kinds — how a kind is created and what “primary” does.
- Equipment stock and parallel capacity — the Equipment category in detail.
- A specialist’s public profile — everything the People category unlocks.
- Add a resource — the form, section by section.