The assistant

Updated on 2026-10-03

Instellingen aanpassen door te typen wat u wil, in gewone zinnen. — Change settings by typing what you want, in ordinary sentences. You are always shown what changes first, and you confirm it yourself.

Instellingen → Koppelingen → Assistent → Instellen (Settings → Integrations → Assistant → Configure). Only the owner can do this.

What it does

There is a text box in the top bar, next to the question mark. It appears on every screen where the assistant can do something, so you do not need to know which screen handles your sentence. Next to it is a microphone: dictation uses the speech recognition your browser offers. It keeps listening until you stop it yourself — click the microphone or the face again — so a pause in the middle of your sentence no longer cuts the recording short; what you say appears in the box as you speak. After two minutes, or after thirty seconds of silence, it closes by itself. Say "enter" at the end and the sentence is sent straight away; no click needed. A long sentence is shown in full below the box as soon as it no longer fits. Clicking the assistant’s face does the same as the microphone.

Note what that does and does not mean. Your browser sends the recording to its own maker's speech service — Google for Chrome, Apple for Safari — and gets the text back. So audio does leave the device, just not to us and not to the language model. If you would rather it did not, use the keyboard; the assistant works just as well that way.

The box is on every screen, and you do not need to be on the right one: saying at the till that Sofie is off on Thursday gives the same proposal as on the Absences screen. Since 3 September 2026 it is also on Products, Suppliers and Deliveries: ordering, receiving a delivery and changing a price work there just as well with a sentence.

Today's calendar customers only go to the language model on the calendar, the till and the customer screens. Elsewhere you simply say the name; the assistant looks it up herself.

You are always shown a table of what changes first. Only when you press Bevestigen (Confirm) does anything happen.

If the assistant asks something back — until 19:00 or until 07:00? — a conversation window opens with your sentence and her question. Answer there, briefly if you like (19h): the assistant reads your answer together with what you said before. As long as she still needs something, the window stays open; once she knows enough, the proposal appears as usual. Close the window and you start again with an empty bar.

"The same appointment" means what was last paid for at the register, not what was booked at the time. At the desk something gets added or dropped; the receipt is what the customer received and paid. If you work with packages, the package comes back — not its separate services, because washing and styling are included once. Extras only added at the register, such as an extra dose of colour, are not booked again. If the customer has never paid, her last appointment counts.

So the language model never writes to your data directly. It does one thing: turn a sentence into a proposal. Every check — does that day exist, is that a valid time, does the closing time fall after the opening time — happens on our side afterwards, and the writing happens along exactly the same path as when you fill in the form yourself.

If the assistant is switched off there is no text box, and no language model is ever queried for your salon.

Ordering and receiving. Bestel 6 flessen Olaplex nr. 3 prepares an order with status Ordered at the product's supplier; if that supplier already has an order that has not been sent yet, the line is added to it. No e-mail leaves: you choose Send to supplier on the delivery yourself afterwards, and the proposal says so. De bestelling van Coiffure Pro is toegekomen sets that order to Delivered; the proposal shows the stock per product from old to new, and only on confirmation does it go onto the shelf — along the same path as when you switch the status on the form. We hebben 5 flessen Olaplex nr. 3 ontvangen books a delivery without an order. If a name matches more than one product — the same bottle in 100 ml and 250 ml — the assistant asks which one, with the names as they are in your catalogue; she never guesses. The stock level itself is never set through the assistant: it only changes through a delivery or a movement.

The whole order in one sentence. Zet de bestelling Wella klaar op basis van wat vorige week verbruikt is (prepare the Wella order from what was used last week) is a different question from the previous one: you name no product and no quantity, because you do not know them — that is exactly why you are asking. Hairlien then adds up per product what was sold and used in the salon during that period, with exactly the same sum as the first route under Bestelling klaarzetten on Deliveries. The proposal shows the period in full, the total and the first twelve products; if you name a supplier, it sticks to that one. You say the period the way you would say it — vorige week, deze maand, augustus — and Hairlien pins it down in the proposal, so a day rolling over in the meantime shifts nothing. If the till sells another one in between, the proposal expires instead of writing away a different quantity. After confirming you are on Deliveries, where you check the quantities and send the order yourself.

Making an invoice. Stuur Thomas een factuur (send Thomas an invoice) takes his last closed receipt that has no invoice yet. Name a day — factuur voor de bon van deze morgen van Christine, stuur de factuur van gisteren naar Christine — and that is the receipt. An invoice never exists without a receipt: if there is none, the assistant says so.

The proposal shows the receipt, the customer with the address the invoice goes to, the lines with VAT per line, the total, and whether it will be mailed. The invoice only gets its number on Confirm, and mail only leaves if you asked to send or mail it — otherwise it says nee and you get the pdf. With no e-mail address on the record, the proposal says so beforehand; no address is derived.

If something an invoice needs is missing — your salon's VAT number or address, the customer's name — there is no proposal but the list of what is missing and where to fill it in, and nothing happens. If the receipt already carries an invoice, or that cash day has gone to your accountant, the assistant says so in plain words, with the road that is still open. See Making an invoice. Anyone without the Facturen maken (Make invoices) right gets no invoice from the assistant — exactly as the button at the till stays closed.

Moving, cancelling and ticking off

What a hairdresser does all day long now works with a sentence too.

Moving. Verzet de afspraak van Christine van morgen naar vrijdag 10 uur, zet Els een half uur later, verplaats de afspraak van 14 uur naar volgende week dezelfde dag en uur. The proposal shows the old and the new moment, who the appointment is with and how long it lasts. All blocks move along — the processing time included — exactly as when you drag the block in the calendar; a locked block stays where it is.

If the new time lies over another appointment, the proposal says who it clashes with, with the customer's name and the time, and adds the next free slot where it does fit, with the same staff member. Moving then only goes through if you explicitly choose it, and that move lands in the log (Instellingen → Logboek) as Afspraak bewust met overlap geboekt.

Cancelling. Annuleer de afspraak van Christine morgen. The proposal shows who, when, which service, with whom — and whether the customer gets a message. That last one is no by default: nothing goes out unless you choose Bevestigen en klant verwittigen (confirm and notify the customer), or unless you say so yourself. A moved appointment can be moved back; a sent message cannot, which is why this is the one step you point at separately. If you give a reason it is carried over; otherwise it stays empty — none is invented. If someone is waiting for a slot in that period, the proposal counts them; you then notify them yourself from the Wachtlijst (waiting list) screen.

Cancelling erases nothing: the appointment gets the status Geannuleerd, stays in the customer's history and gives its time back.

Present, finished, no-show. Christine is er, Jonas is klaar, Els komt niet opdagen. Only those three statuses. Geboekt and Bevestigd are not set with a sentence, and Geannuleerd always goes through the cancellation proposal — with the question of whether the customer gets a message. If the no-show mail is on (Instellingen → E-mail), it goes out as always.

Two appointments on one day. If the same customer has two that day, the assistant asks which of the two, with the times. She never chooses by herself: cancel the wrong one and someone stands in front of a closed door while a gap sits in the calendar that nobody sees.

Requesting and handling leave

With HairConnect Social, leave goes with a sentence too. See Requesting leave.

For yourself. Ik wil verlof van 14 tot 18 juli, vraag een vrije dag aan voor volgende vrijdag. The proposal shows the requester, the first and the last day, the type, your balance and who the request goes to. If no approver has been named yet, that is on it too. Whole days, and the type only if you say it yourself — none is created for you.

The requester is always whoever types the sentence, never a name out of that sentence. If the name came out of the sentence, anyone could request leave in a colleague's name. If your account hangs on no staff record, the assistant says so and nothing happens.

As approver. Keur het verlof van Sofie goed, weiger de aanvraag van Nova, we zijn die week met te weinig. The proposal shows the staff member, the period and the decision. With an approval it says alongside what that does: that time disappears from the calendar and from online booking, and appointments already standing there stay — you move those yourself. Refusing is only possible with a reason; give none and the assistant asks for it. Your colleague reads that reason in her app, and a refusal without an explanation leaves her with nothing.

If there are two open requests from the same person, the assistant asks which one. She does not gamble: approving the wrong week is noticed by nobody until that week arrives.

Setting someone absent is something else than requesting leave: that stands there straight away and waits for nobody. Sofie is donderdag afwezig therefore keeps doing what it always did, Social or not.

Asking for a figure

Hairlien does not only change things, she also answers. Ask hoeveel omzet hebben we vorige week gedraaid (how much revenue did we do last week) and you get the figure back with its period, plus a Naar het rapport (To the report) button.

An answer has no Confirm button. A question changes nothing, so there is nothing to approve — and a button that sometimes does nothing is a button you stop noticing after a week.

The figure comes from the report itself. Hairlien adds nothing up and recalculates nothing: she looks up exactly the figure that is on that report screen, and tells you which report and which table it came from. If you doubt it, open that report and you will see the same thing. That way there are never two truths about your revenue.

Say the period the way you would say it: vorige week (last week), augustus (August), deze maand (this month), vorig jaar (last year), gisteren (yesterday). If you do not give one, Hairlien asks for it; she never picks one herself.

What does not exist stays empty. If someone has no roster and no punches that month, there is no occupancy rate: you do not get 0 %, you get the reason. If the drawer has never been counted, there is no expected cash either. A zero that actually means unknown is worse than no figure at all.

Only for those who may see the reports. Asking for a figure falls under the same right as the report screens themselves (Rapporten on the staff record). Without that right there is no figure — not even by asking Hairlien.

Getting ready for the accountant

Say maak alles klaar voor de boekhouder van het vorig kwartaal (get everything ready for the accountant for last quarter) — or zet het kwartaal klaar voor de boekhouder, stuur Q3 naar de boekhouder (send Q3 to the accountant), is september klaar voor de boekhouder? — and Hairlien does it in three steps. Nothing goes to the accountant before your second click, not even if you said send.

1. Checking. The first proposal is a list about the period, with In orde (in order) or Na te kijken (to check) for each item, and a link to the screen where you put it right:

Nothing on that list stops you: a drawer you count weekly or an open receipt you leave on purpose is your decision.

You say the period the way you would say it: vorig kwartaal (last quarter), Q3, Q3 2026, het derde trimester, september, vorige maand. Het kwartaal (the quarter) is, for the accountant, always the last one that has ended. If you name no period, Hairlien asks for it. Today and the days after never go along: a day only goes once it is over.

2. The test. Below the list is the question Zal ik de proef naar u sturen? (Shall I send you the test?) After Bevestigen (Confirm) you receive at your own e-mail address exactly what the accountant would receive — the same text and the same attachments — and every invoice separately, as ClearFacts would receive it, with Proef – before the subject. It is the same Proefzending naar mezelf (test send to myself) as on the till reports: nothing goes to the accountant or to ClearFacts and nothing is recorded. Without a mail server there is no test but the reason, with the link to the integrations.

3. The send. Right after the test a second proposal is ready: what actually goes out, from the same window as the Naar de boekhouder (to the accountant) button, and one sentence on what it fixes — every till day that goes out is then fixed with the accountant, and correcting can only be done with a reversal. Only after that second Bevestigen does it go to the accountant. The notification afterwards says what actually went out. If a day went out by another route in the meantime, the proposal is refused and you ask again. If there is no accountant's address and no accounting package, there is no second proposal but the way to set it up.

Only the owner and the salon manager can do this, just as only they see the buttons on the till reports.

Finding a screen

Not sure where something is? Ask: waar kuis ik mijn klanten op (where do I clean up my clients), hoe lees ik de prijslijst van Wella in (how do I load the Wella price list), waar staan de openingsuren (where are the opening hours). Hairlien points you to the screen, with one sentence from this manual and a link to the article about it. If more than one screen fits, she names three at most, the best first.

She does not open the screen herself and changes nothing: you click through when it suits you. She only knows the screens described in this manual, and only names what your account in this salon may open — a staff member is therefore never pointed to the integrations or the Wella price list. If nothing fits, she says so and points to the manual; she does not invent a screen.

After switching from Optios. If your salon came over from Optios through the switching wizard and the clean-up afterwards is not finished, Hairlien suggests it herself, below the text box, with a link to the overview. She does so once per session: close it with the cross, or move to another screen, and it only comes back the next time you log in.

Hairlien for the client

The same assistant also sits on your booking page, at the top of step 1, with the name you gave her. A client types or speaks a haircut next Tuesday, adding a stylist's first name if they have a preference and lands on the free slots of that day, with package and stylist already filled in. They pick the slot themselves and confirm; no appointment is ever made without those steps. Only what the booking page itself shows goes to the model: opening hours, packages, services and first names — never another client. See What the client sees.

The proposal in the calendar

If you ask for an appointment, no window appears. The calendar jumps to that day and a dashed block appears in that staff member's column: the appointment as it would be.

You can drag that block — to another time, to another staff member — exactly like a normal appointment. It snaps to your salon's time grid. A bar at the bottom shows the customer, the services, the time, the total duration and two buttons: Bevestigen (Confirm) and Laat maar (Never mind).

That dragging is not a detail. The assistant finds a gap, but whether that is the right gap can only be judged by someone who has the rest of the day in front of them: a colour with waiting time belongs between two other customers, so you can serve someone else while it develops. That judgement stays human work.

Stretch each part separately. The proposal is made of parts: one per service, and after a colour a hatched part inwerktijd (processing time). At the bottom of each part sits a small handle with two lines. Pull it down and that part gets longer; up, shorter — in steps of the time grid, and never below five minutes. The parts after it shift along, so the appointment stays one whole; the start time and the parts before it stay put. That is how you shorten the cut and lengthen the colour, each on its own. The time and the total duration in the bar recalculate live. With the keyboard: put the cursor on the handle and use arrow down and arrow up. The duration you pull applies to this appointment; the service's standard duration does not change.

Drag the block over an existing appointment and the colliding part turns red, with the bar saying which appointment it lies over, with the customer's name and time. Only a service collides; processing time does not, and your proposal may sit in someone else's processing time. Confirming is still possible, but never unnoticed: the button is then called Toch bevestigen, met overlap (Confirm anyway, with overlap). Press it and the appointment is booked over the other one, and a line is added to the log (Instellingen → Logboek): Afspraak bewust met overlap geboekt (appointment deliberately booked with overlap), with the appointment it lies over. The block deliberately lies over the column rather than beside it: a proposal neatly slotted next to an existing appointment looks valid while it collides.

If the proposal sits with a staff member who does not have the service on their record (Team → Medewerkers, tab Wat ze kan) — because you dragged it there, or because you named that person — then Bevestigen does the same as at the front desk: the calendar reports Nova heeft niet de nodige kennis voor nl men (Nova lacks the knowledge for nl men) and asks whether you want to plan it anyway. Say yes and the appointment is booked and lands in the log as Afspraak bewust ingepland bij iemand zonder de kennis. Say no and the proposal stays where it is, so you can drag it to a colleague who does do the service. You no longer have to discard the proposal and start over via Nieuwe afspraak.

Only on Bevestigen does the appointment exist — with the parts exactly as you pulled them — and then it appears on every iPad in the salon, just like one booked at the counter.

Where it runs

A name and a face. By default that is Hairlien: a female robot with hair, the same in every salon. Would you rather have someone from your own team? You choose that under Medewerkers (staff): tick Assistent on a row. Name and face then come from that record — the photo already on it, and the first name preceded by Digitale. The text box then says Zeg het Digitale Kris… and a question back is called Digitale Kris vraagt terug.

On the booking page only. That face and that name are for your customers. Inside the program it stays Hairlien of HairConnect: behind the counter everyone knows it is the assistant, and reading Digitale Kris while you are Kris helps nobody.

That word Digitale is always there, and it is not decoration: without it a customer thinks the owner is answering in person what an assistant writes. Because name and face come from the same record, they cannot drift apart.

There is only one assistant at a time: tick someone else and the previous tick clears itself. Untick everyone and it is Hairlien again.

A salon that prefers a drawn face over a person simply adds a staff member for it and ticks that one.

Claude reads spoken Dutch noticeably better and answers in a second or two.

Ollama runs on your own machine. Nothing leaves it and there is no cost per sentence. Measured on 30 August 2026 with qwen2.5:7b: the sentence above was read entirely correctly, but it took thirty-one seconds. Usable to try out; not what you put in front of a hairdresser at the counter.

What leaves your salon

If you choose Claude, the typed sentence goes to Anthropic together with what is needed to understand it. That differs per screen:

What never goes along: phone numbers, email addresses, colour formulas, receipts, or a customer's history.

If you choose Ollama, nothing leaves: the model runs on your own server.

That difference belongs in your data processing agreement before you switch Claude on.

Testing the connection

The test button walks the whole path except the execution: it has the model convert one fixed sentence and checks whether the right action comes out. Nothing is saved and nothing is changed.

• Het model verstaat Nederlandse opdrachten. — everything works.
• Het model antwoordde, maar begreep … niet als een opdracht. — there is contact, but this model is not suitable.
• Geen contact met het model: … — with the reason. On Ollama, does not support tools means this model cannot execute instructions; choose another one.

A test that only checks the key would turn green while the model cannot handle a single Dutch sentence. Hence this one goes further.

The assistant may do exactly what your account may do

Hairlien is on every screen and acts on behalf of whoever is logged in. Whatever a button refuses you, she refuses too: she is no way around the rights on the staff record. An action you do not have the right for is not merely refused — it is not offered to you either, and the data belonging to it (such as your colleagues' schedules) does not go to the model.

A closing day stands apart because it touches the whole salon: it takes appointments out of the calendar and closes the booking page. Setting someone absent is open to everyone — that is daily work at the counter.

If the right is missing, the assistant says which right it is and who can grant it. It is also checked at the moment you press Confirm, not only when the proposal is drawn up: a proposal made by a colleague with more rights cannot be pushed through by you.

What the assistant deliberately does not do

What is kept

Every typed sentence is kept with the proposal, including after it has been carried out. Without that sentence, a dispute leaves you only the consequence — changed opening hours, an appointment nobody recognises — and no longer what was asked for.

After twelve months such a proposal disappears by itself. That is a full season plus the review of it; anything older is of no use to anyone.

What is not in it yet

Paying and closing at the till (the assistant prepares the receipt, you check out), sending an order to the supplier (the assistant prepares it, you send it), retyping the stock level itself (that goes through deliveries), and the VAT, deposit or name of a service. If you ask anyway, the assistant says she cannot; she does nothing else instead.