Therapist scheduling: hours, leave and cover without mistakes
In a hotel spa open seven days a week, the team schedule changes every week: rotating days off, leave, training, apprentices’ school days, last-minute cover. When that schedule lives in a separate spreadsheet, mistakes come fast: a treatment booked with a therapist on leave, a forgotten break, a client with no therapist on arrival.
By the SpaPlanner teamPublished on 2 min read
Start from the usual hours
Each therapist has base hours that vary by weekday: 9am–6pm Monday to Thursday, 9am–5pm on Friday, weekends off, for example. These hours, with the lunch break, must be the reference for the booking schedule: no treatment can be booked outside them, or during the break.
Enter absences in the same place as bookings
Paid leave, training, sick days, school days, time off in lieu: every absence must be entered in the same tool as the bookings. As soon as an absence is entered, the therapist disappears from the slots offered for booking, online and at reception.
Handle bookings already made
This is the trickiest case: an absence entered while clients have already booked with the therapist. The right reflex is not to delete those bookings, but to flag them to reassign, so the team hands them to an available colleague, with the same treatment and if possible at the same time. A week view showing absences and the bookings involved at a glance saves a lot of time.
The week view, the manager’s tool
For the spa manager, the week view is essential: one row per therapist, one column per day, with hours, days off, absences and how full each day is. You immediately see the overloaded Tuesday, the Thursday when no one can do a couples treatment, or the week two therapists are away at once.
Tell the team about every change
A treatment added, moved or cancelled must reach the therapist concerned without anyone having to call. On their phone, they see their up-to-date schedule and get a notification for every change that concerns them.
Best practices
- Enter usual hours once, by weekday.
- Enter each absence as soon as it is known, with its reason.
- Check the week view every Monday to anticipate busy days.
- Handle “to reassign” bookings first.
- Compare each therapist’s workload to balance it.
In short
A reliable team schedule rests on a simple idea: hours, absences and bookings live in the same place. That is what SpaPlanner does, with a day view by therapist or room, a week view that takes leave into account, and absences entered in seconds. Discover team management or read our guide to choosing spa software.