Assigning Shoots to Your Team
How photographer assignment works — per-session assignment, eligibility by services and coverage area, and auto-assign for client bookings.
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Every session on an order — not the order as a whole — has its own assigned photographer. That means a multi-session shoot, like a daytime session plus a separate twilight session, can go to two different team members if that’s what makes sense for your schedule.
Assignment is per session
Reassigning who’s shooting is a calendar action. If you need to move a session to a different photographer, add a session, or split a shoot into multiple sessions, see managing shoots for the mechanics.
Changing who’s assigned normally requires order management permission. A narrower reschedule-only permission lets someone move a session’s time, but it does not let them reassign the photographer — see roles and permissions for the full breakdown of what each permission level allows.
Who’s eligible to be assigned
When you open the assignment picker, Spatiko lists team members who have a linked account, are active, and are accepting orders. A client’s self-service booking page is stricter: it only offers members who are fully set up, with a saved location and at least one working day on their availability schedule.
From there, two separate checks apply:
- Service capability. If a member hasn’t had any specific services or packages configured for them, they’re treated as able to shoot everything. Once a member has at least one capability configured, a client’s self-service booking page only offers them for the services and packages they’ve been given. The assignment picker doesn’t hide them, so check capabilities before you assign someone yourself.
- Coverage area. Members are generally offered based on whether the shoot address falls within their coverage. That depends on how the member prices travel: on radius rings, it’s anywhere within their maximum travel distance. On custom travel zones, it’s anywhere inside one of their zones, plus the area beyond them when their Everywhere else rule charges a fee (up to their maximum travel distance). When you’re creating or editing an order yourself, you can still manually assign someone outside their usual coverage as an override. On a client’s self-service booking page, only members whose coverage includes the address are offered at all.
These two checks are independent — a member’s service capability doesn’t affect their coverage eligibility, and vice versa.
Once the shoot has an address, each member in the picker carries a short note:
- Travel fee: $X — what that member’s trip would cost, from their own travel settings (including $0.00 when it’s free).
- Travel not configured — the member covers the address but has travel fees switched off.
- Out of coverage — the address is outside the member’s coverage.
- No location set — the member has no home base yet.
Members who cover the address are listed first, lowest travel fee first, with ties going to whoever is closest. Members with travel fees switched off come after them. Anyone out of coverage or without a location sinks below a divider.
Auto-assign
Each team member has an auto-assign flag. It’s on automatically for the first team member created on a new business (typically the owner), and off by default for everyone invited after that.
Auto-assign matters when a client books through your public booking page and Spatiko needs to suggest a photographer without a human picking one. Spatiko suggests the closest member who covers the address and can do the booked services. Auto-assign, then how long a member has been with your business, only decides between members who are equally close. This is a simple tiebreak used for online-booking suggestions — it isn’t a load-balancing or scheduling engine, and it doesn’t come into play when you assign a photographer yourself.
Assignment and pay
Reassigning a session’s photographer automatically updates the order’s payout to match the new assignee’s configured rate. See photographer payouts for how those rates and payouts work.
Reassignment also reprices that trip’s travel fee: each session carries its own travel fee, priced from whoever is assigned to it, so handing a session to someone based farther away changes what the trip costs. The exception is an order the client has already paid something on — the billed fee stays as it was, and simply follows the new photographer for payout. The travel-fee pricing itself is covered in the travel time & travel fees guide below.
For an overview of team member setup in general, see team and roles.
Go deeper
- Travel time & travel fees — set the home base, coverage area, and travel fees that drive eligibility and the picker’s ordering.
- Managing shoots on your calendar — add, split, or move sessions, which is where reassignment actually happens.
- Order forms — the public booking page that auto-assign feeds photographer suggestions into.
- Setting up photographer payouts — configure the per-service rates a reassignment switches an order’s payout to.
- Team performance & payout reports — the report showing how assigned work and revenue spread across your crew.
Frequently asked questions
Why isn't a team member showing up in the assignment picker?
The picker only lists members who have a linked account, are active, and are accepting orders. Coverage then shapes the list. A member outside their coverage, or with no home base set yet, drops to the bottom with a reason instead of a travel fee. Service capabilities limit who a client's booking page offers.
Can I assign a shoot to someone outside their coverage area?
Yes, when you're creating or editing the order yourself — an out-of-coverage member drops below a divider in the picker with a reason instead of a travel fee, but you can still select them as a manual override. A client's self-service booking page won't offer them at all.
How does Spatiko choose a photographer when a client books online?
Spatiko suggests the closest member who covers the address and can do the services booked. Auto-assign, then time with your business, only breaks ties between members who are equally close. Auto-assign is on for the first member created on a new business and off by default for everyone invited after that. It's simple ordering for booking suggestions, not a load-balancing engine.
Does reassigning a session change what the shoot pays out?
Yes. Reassigning a session's photographer automatically updates the order's payout to the new assignee's configured rate for those services, and reprices that trip's travel fee from the new photographer's travel settings — unless the client has already paid something, in which case the billed fee stays as it was and simply follows the new photographer for payout.