How to Get back Time with Salon Software for Small Business in 2023
Bartek Kulasza
2 Mar 2022
If you haven’t considered using salon software for small business management yet, you definitely should. It takes the guesswork out of optimizing your business and makes handling staff, inventory and client information easier.
15 Essential Salon Software Features to Help Your Small Business Grow
1. Staff Scheduling
Flexible Scheduling:
Salon owners can save time by creating flexible rotas for staff who work non-standard hours.
Optimize Calendar Time-Slots letting staff members perform concurrent appointments.
Appointments can be integrated with other calendars for your stylist and clients.
Share the calendar with your staff and grant individual permissions per staff member, with full flexibility in granting individual admin rights to your employees, allowing them staff access to modify or delete calendar data.
Changing Salon Opening and Staff Working Hours:
Add holidays and breaks, blocking off time to make online bookings simple.
Schedule Resources (treatment rooms, equipment, etc.). Salon spa software can auto reserve them when adding an appointment or online booking.
Add “buffer time”: processing time for your color or blocked time for cleaning and station preparations, so the actual duration of booking is always accounted for in your calendar. Remember, you’ll have the ability to double book during processing times to optimize your business performance and reduce downtime.
2. Online Booking
Fast and Easy to Use Online Booking Page (for salon management and clients) :
The booking widget is customizable and seamlessly integrated with every channel: your website, social media: Facebook page, Instagram; GMB- it features a book now button/booking link.
Quick rebook functions.
Schedule recurring bookings for existing clients.
Ability to choose which services can be booked online, offline or both.
Auto-reserve your resources for a smooth client experience.
Take group bookings (events, weddings) in-person or online.
3. Automated Waiting List
Invite Clients to Book Appointments Automatically:
Makes customer management easier.
Notify clients as soon as cancellations or no shows occur.
No more front desk phone calls to fill these appointments.
4. Salon Mobile App
Versatile App for Growing Salons:
Install on your device as a mobile app (Android and iOS), tablet app and desktop app (Windows and MAC).
A mobile salon app to manage appointments for salons and clients on the go.
Hairstylists have access to their calendars from their app.
No installations, no maintenance, etc. in an all in one cloud-based salon solution with data synced across all devices automatically.
Manage data access permissions for staff.
5. Salon Point of Sale (POS)
Multiple payment options.
Integrated payment processing.
Online Payments - take customers’ payment during the online booking (deposits, prepayments, late cancellation or no-show fees).
Suggestive selling at checkout (make online store sales based on services, previous purchases or sell products via calculated days of usage).
Chair-upgrades via the mobile app (eg. when getting your haircut, get a deep conditioning service approved in the app).
In-app payments for self-checkout.one bundle/
6. Automated Appointment Confirmation and Reminders
Multichannel Notifications:
Via email, SMS, salon mobile app push notifications, automated confirmations and follow ups, and notifications about an appointment being booked, canceled or rescheduled.
This salon software feature shows your busiest and slowest times of the day/ week/ year, best-performing stylists, most popular services, top products sold, slow movers and profit margins.
Create end of the day reports.
Show staff payments for easy salon management and payroll.
Statistics Dashboard:
Visualize data for insights into your bookings & sign-ups, cancellations, revenue, resources, and customers.
Staff Management:
Monitor the booking availability and working capacity of your resources. Optimize their shifts or scale your teams up and down as needed.
8. Inventory Management
Purchase Order Automations:
Set minimum stock levels, generate pre PO’s, track approval and send email to the supplier.
Simple acceptance of salon inventory stock received.
Salon owners and managers are always looking for ways to make their business more competitive.
This might mean finding new ways to reach out to your current client base, improving your product sales, tracking customer data more efficiently, and optimizing your online scheduling and booking process.
If you’re looking to make your mark in the salon industry, then adding salon software for small business solutions will help you save both time and money. This software will free up more time to let you focus on giving each client a great experience.