How salons actually run — the diary, the colour bowl, the phone, the pay. Written from the floor of six working salons, not from a marketing desk.
Rent for one chair, commission for another, a salary for the desk — most salons already run more than one pay model at the same time. The maths only falls apart when nobody wrote down which rules apply to which chair.
Neither model is more 'proper' than the other, and neither removes risk — it only moves whose risk it is. A plain look at control, cash flow and the client relationship, without wandering into legal or tax advice you should get properly.
Back bar and retail drift for different reasons and get caught by different counts. Blend them into one stock figure and neither problem is visible in it.
Deposits reduce no-shows and cost you some bookings. Reminders help, but only if they land while a client can still act on them. There's no policy that removes the trade-off — only ones that make it on purpose.
A double-booking isn't bad luck. It's what happens when the online page, the phone and the front desk book are each checking their own copy of the same diary — and none of them find out about the others until it's too late.
Applications for a stylist chair arrive all week and get read on Sunday night, by which point the best candidates have already taken another chair. Speed of reply beats a perfect CV.
Back bar product and retail product disappear for different reasons. Most of what looks like theft is just use that nobody wrote down.
Twelve real questions to put to any salon software provider, with honest answers — including the ones where the honest answer is "it depends". Ask them of us and of anyone else on your list.
When a stylist can only see their commission on payday, every payslip is a potential argument. When the number is live all month, there is nothing left to dispute.
Every salon mixes a little extra colour, just in case. Nobody weighs what goes down the plughole afterwards, so nobody knows what it costs.
A colour card in a drawer is a record of what a stylist meant to do. When that stylist moves to a different salon, the client's next appointment starts from a guess.
Most salons price a colour service by the tube and guess the rest. Weigh the bowl instead, and the real cost of a head of colour turns out to be a number you can act on.
Most things sold as all-in-one are several products behind one login, each keeping its own copy of the client — which is why the numbers never quite agree. Here is the test that actually shows the difference.
Most phone-answering products sit outside your diary and reach into it. Ours doesn't reach into anything, because the phone and the diary are the same system.
The phone does not stop ringing when the desk goes quiet — after closing, on a Sunday, or on a Saturday when both receptionists are already with a client. Most of those calls become someone else's booking.
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