Hair salon software for colour work and graded stylists
The processing gap, the price difference between a senior and a junior, and the retail shelf everybody forgets to sell from.
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The short answer
What makes hair salon software different from generic booking software?
Three things a generic calendar gets wrong: colour services have long processing periods in the middle, the same service costs different money depending on who performs it, and a meaningful share of the takings comes from products sold alongside the service. Software that ignores all three produces a diary that looks efficient and a bill that is wrong.
Colour is mostly waiting, and the waiting is where the margin hides
A full head of colour is twenty minutes of application, forty of development and thirty of finishing, and a stylist held for the whole ninety has been paid for forty minutes of standing about. A visit here is a chain of services rather than one block: each link carries its own length, its own chair or basin, and its own stylist, and each holds that stylist for its own stretch alone. Enter the development as a step of its own with nobody assigned, and she is genuinely free at 10:20 — free enough that the diary will offer her to the next client.
- A visit is a chain of services, each with its own length and its own place in the order
- A stylist is held for the service she is assigned to, never for the whole visit
- A step left unassigned occupies a seat and nobody's time
- Chairs, basins and colour stations counted per branch
The same cut, three different prices
Most salons grade their team, and the honest consequence is that one named service has more than one legitimate price. Nobody has to duplicate the cut into senior and junior entries to get there. Every branch keeps its own catalogue, so its prices are its own. A regular can hold an agreed price for a named service, applied the moment that service is added, whoever happens to be standing at the till. A manager who holds the pricing permission can override a single line for a single bill. Each line then stores what the normal price was and which of the three it charged, so the bill can still explain itself a year later.
- Each branch holds its own service list and sets its own prices on it
- An agreed price per client for a named service, applied automatically at the till
- A one-bill-only override, refused for anybody without the pricing permission
- An agreed price is a price, not a discount — reports show what was charged, not a markdown
Retail belongs on the same bill as the service
Shampoo sold at the counter is among the most profitable things a salon does and the thing it does least deliberately. Products and services share one ticket here, each line taxed at its own GST rate, so the shampoo is never taxed at the haircut's rate. Behind the shelf sit suppliers, purchase orders and a movement ledger, so the counting is not annual guesswork.
- One ticket carrying services and retail together, each line taxed at its own rate
- Suppliers, purchase orders, a movement ledger, and transfers between branches
Six weeks later
Colour has a return window a salon can almost set a calendar by, and letting it slip is how a regular becomes a lapsed client without anybody having decided anything. A nudge is scheduled off a bill that has actually been settled rather than off a booking that may have been cancelled, timed on the colour service or its whole category. The rating request rides the same trigger by WhatsApp rather than being printed on the bill. Both travel by WhatsApp from the salon's own number, so somebody who has opted out receives neither.
- Scheduled from a settled bill, so nothing goes out for work that never happened
- A rating link tied to its own invoice, capped at one ask per client per day
- Win-back for the regular who has lapsed past your threshold
Common questions
- Yes, and how you set the catalogue up decides whether they can. A visit is a chain of services, and each link holds its resource and its assigned stylist for its own stretch alone. Enter colour as application, development and finish, leave the development step with nobody assigned, and the stylist really is free during it — free enough for the diary to offer her to the next client. Entered as one ninety-minute service, she is held for all ninety.
- Not by duplicating the cut into a senior and a junior entry. Each branch holds its own catalogue and its own price for a service; on top of that a named client can hold an agreed price applied automatically whoever raises the bill, and a manager holding the pricing permission can override one line for one bill. An agreed price replaces the price rather than being written as a discount, so the reports show the ₹1,000 you actually charged instead of ₹1,200 less ₹200.
- On that visit's bill, as a note typed at the till. It stays with the invoice in her history — and prints on the invoice she receives, so write it for her eyes too. Her profile also lists which back-bar products each visit used and how much, from the service's recipe and any correction. There is no mixing-formula field, so structured formula history is thinner than a specialist colour system's.
- Yes, as a utilisation figure per resource type over a date range: how many bookings drew on the colour stations, and roughly what share of the working day they accounted for. It is counted from the bookings themselves, so it is a record of what was sold rather than a forecast of what could be.
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