What Is Salon Software? | Your Guide To Key Features

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1. What is Salon Software?
2. 9 Salon Software Key Features
3. How To Choose A Salon Management System
4. Conclusion

What is Salon Software?

Salon software is any solution that assists salon owners and managers operate their businesses. This software or app handles employee scheduling, online appointment booking, salon marketing and point-of-sale transactions. This is where a salon management system can support all of these business functions.

9 Salon Software Key Features

Schedule Management

The key benefit of salon management software is to manage your salons’ schedule effectively. It can be a big step to get rid of that paper appointment book so therefore your choice of solution should have scheduling at its core and will offer features such as double booking, gap optimization and resource management also.

Appointment Reminders

Reducing no-shows is a simple way to improve profitability. Using automated appointments reminders via email, in-app push notification and sms reminders can reduce no-shows by up to 70%. It is essential that any solution you choose has SMS appointment reminders within its key features.

Customer Management

Tracking client visit history not online delivers good insight to both salon owners and stylists but also clients through a better customer experience. Improving customer experience is an important aspect of a salon and is often overlooked but this is a key drive of client retention.  

Making sure your salon has an online salon booking system for clients to book at their convenience is essential in this online world. From our own research Zolmi has found that 50% of bookings are made when our clients are closed and many clients have seen online booking rates of up to 95% for their clients book via their booking page.

Salon Management App

Want to check your salons performance on the go? Make sure your chosen salon scheduling software has an app for both Android and iOS. Within a salon app you should have the full functions which are available on the desktop version.

Client Booking App

We have already talked about giving clients the ability to book online. The next step which more salon clients are asking for is the ability to book via an app. This is still a growing feature in the salon software arena but check to see if they have an app to improve your client booking experience.

Inventory Management

Inventory within a salon can tie up large amounts of cash without you realising it. Stock in the storage rooms and on the salon floor for both retail and back bar use needs to be tracked so you know how much cash is tied up. A good salon inventory management solution should allow stock taking, purchase order generation and back bar usage reporting.

Salon Marketing

Want to retain and grow more revenue from your clients? Providing marketing tools such as email and sms marketing in your chosen salon appointment software should allow you to build customer segments and market them for better, more focused marketing activity which delivers results for your salon.

Staff Rostering

Without staff there would be no business, it is the second most important person in a salon, second behind clients. Using staff rostering software will allow you to plan your staff effectively and also give clarity to your staff of when they are working or not. You should be able to track sickness, vacations and breaks as part of the solution.

Business Reporting

It is always said that you cannot improve what you don’t measure. So therefore make sure that you have a wide range of reports in your choice of salon software and these reports should covers areas such as: top services and clients by sales, rebook rates, retail sales and product usages to name but a few.

How To Choose A Salon Management System

This can be one of the hardest business choices you may make, due to the fact that you need to trust an organisation you have found online with all your client and business data. First of all make a shortlist for providers of software for salons.

Some of the things you want to be asking your shortlist of software providers:

• How long have they been in business? As it is easier than ever to set up an online business make sure they have some heritage.
• Who owns your client data - some software your clients might become clients of both of the software and yourself. Often marketplaces, i.e. directories of salons work in this way.
• Where is there software hosted? Make sure they are hosted with a reputable hosting provider such as Amazon Web Services, this will ensure stability of the software
• Can they give you client references? Hearing from other clients is the perfect way to ensure a solution is trustworthy and stable for your salon business.

Conclusion

Hopefully we have been able to answer your question: what is salon software?.

With our list of key software features you should be able to make the right choice for your salon.

Do you have questions or responses to this article?

Connect with us today. We’ll respond to your queries as soon as possible.

Citations

Agile software development: The business of innovation
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/947100/

Software reuse: architecture, process and organization for business success
https://www.academia.edu/download/50856569

Winning with software: An executive strategy
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr