---
title: Staff capacity and dogs at once
slug: staff-capacity-dogs-at-once
category: Team Management
url: https://alaga.io/help/article/staff-capacity-dogs-at-once
audiences: business_owner, manager
updated: 2026-10-23
source: Alaga Help Center
---

# Staff capacity and dogs at once
There are two different things here:

- **Booking limits** on each person. These actually stop overbooking.
- The **Staff Capacity** page. This is a planning view of skill hours. It does not block bookings.

## Booking limits for one person

1. Sidebar: **Team & Payroll**, then **Team Members**.
2. Open the menu on the person's row and choose **Edit Profile**.
3. Find the **Booking limits** section.

Only owners and managers can change these. Everyone else sees them greyed out.

**Dogs at once** (1 to 6, default 1). How many different clients' dogs this person can have booked at the same time.

- Leave it at **1 (one at a time)** if you book by the clock and never want appointments to stack.
- Raise it for someone who works several dogs side by side, such as a bather with a drying station.

**Buffer between appointments** (None, or 5 to 120 minutes). Time kept clear before and after each of their appointments, for cleanup or a short break. With a 15-minute buffer, an appointment ending at 11:00 means the next one cannot start before 11:15.

**Online dogs per day.** The most dogs customers can book with this person online in one day. Choose **Business default**, **No limit**, or a number. Bookings made by your team do not count and are not limited. The business default is set under **Business Settings**, then **Customer Portal**, then **Online Booking Limits**.

Press **Save Changes** when you are done.

## How the limits work

- Dogs from the same household booked together **count as one**. A two-dog family never trips Dogs at once.
- A service marked **Requires Exclusive Attention** (in the service's settings) still allows only one client at a time, whatever Dogs at once says.
- The limits apply everywhere this person is booked:
  - The booking form warns as soon as a time clashes.
  - The calendar refuses to drop an appointment onto a full slot.
  - Online booking only offers times that fit.

**Booking on purpose anyway.** Owners, and anyone with the **Override scheduling conflicts** permission, see a **Double-book this slot?** box instead of a hard stop. Confirm it to book anyway. The same box appears as **Book over approved time off?** if the person is off that day.

## Online booking limits for the whole business

Sidebar: **Business Settings**, then **Customer Portal**, then **Online Booking Limits**. Here you can set:

- **Grace period** — lets an appointment run into the next online time by this much without blocking it. With 15 minutes, a 9:00 groom that ends at 10:15 still leaves 10:00 open online.
- **Overlapping online bookings per groomer** — or "Same as each groomer's dogs at once"
- **Online dogs per groomer per day**

Only an owner or manager can change these.

## The Staff Capacity page

Sidebar: **Team & Payroll**, then **Staff Capacity**. The page is titled **Appointment Capacity**. It needs a plan that includes Staff Capacity.

It tracks how many staff hours each kind of work needs against how many you have. It has three tabs.

**Skills.** Press **Add Skill** to create a skill such as Grooming or Bathing. Pick a **Skill Type** (Grooming, Bathing, Front Office or Kennel Technician) and a colour. Each skill has a **Weekly Capacity (hours)** row. Click a day to set its hours.

**Service Mappings.** Press **Add Mapping** to say how many skill hours a service uses. Choose the service, the skill, and a **Duration Basis**:

- **Pet's Typical Duration**
- **Fixed Hours Per Appointment**
- **Service Duration × Multiplier**
- **Fixed Hours × Number of Pets**

Services with no mapping are listed under **Unmapped Services**.

**Utilization.** Today's capacity, booked and available hours, then a grid of each skill by day for the next week or two weeks. Colours show how full each day is: under 50%, 50 to 79%, 80 to 99%, and 100% or more.

Use it to spot days that are overbooked for bathers or short on groomers before they happen. To actually stop overbooking a person, use their **Booking limits** above.