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.
30 days free · No card required
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 might be twenty minutes of application, forty of development and thirty of finishing, and a salon that blocks the whole ninety as one solid unit has quietly thrown away the middle. Because appointments here are separate records against separate capacity units rather than a single lock on a stylist, a second client can occupy the basin or the next chair while the first develops. The gain is real and it is entirely a scheduling decision.
- Chairs, basins and colour stations counted as distinct pools of capacity
- A service names which pool it draws on, so finishing and development do not compete for the same seat
- Two visits can legitimately overlap when they need different furniture
- The whole day's shape is visible per branch rather than per stylist alone
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. That is handled without duplicating the service into four near-identical entries: a branch can hold its own price for a service, and a specific client can hold an agreed price of her own that survives whoever happens to raise the bill. Discounts and coupons then apply on top, allocated across the lines before tax is worked out.
- A price per branch, inherited from the company default unless overridden
- An agreed price per client for a named service, applied automatically
- Coupons and offers allocated proportionally across lines before tax
- Membership discounts applied at checkout without anyone doing arithmetic
Retail belongs on the same bill as the service
Shampoo sold at the counter is the most profitable thing a salon does and the thing it does least deliberately. Products and services share one ticket here, which matters more in India than elsewhere: the two can sit at different tax rates and different inclusive-or-exclusive settings, so a single percentage applied to the total will be wrong on at least one line. Purchase orders, suppliers and stock movements sit behind the shelf so the counting is not annual guesswork.
- One ticket carrying services and retail together, taxed correctly per line
- Independent tax treatment for services and for products
- Suppliers, purchase orders and recorded stock movements
- Transfers between branches when one has stock the other has run out of
Six weeks later
Colour has a return window that a salon can almost set a calendar by, and letting it slip is how a regular becomes a lapsed client without anybody deciding anything. Follow-ups here trigger from a delivered service rather than from a booking, and the rule can be set for that specific service or for the whole colour category. Feedback is collected through a link on the bill, so the salon hears about a bad colour before the internet does.
- Follow-up rules per service or per category, with your own timing
- Triggered by work actually delivered, not by an appointment that may have been cancelled
- A feedback link tied to the visit it belongs to
- Win-back for clients past a lapsed threshold you set yourself
Common questions
- Can two clients be in the chair at once during processing?
- Yes, provided the salon's capacity says so. Because chairs, basins and stations are separate pools and each service names the pool it needs, one client can develop while another is at the basin. The product allows the overlap; it does not schedule it for you automatically.
- How do I charge more for a senior stylist?
- Through a price held per branch or an agreed price held per client, rather than by duplicating the service into a senior and a junior version. That keeps one clean service in the reports while still billing what the work is genuinely worth.
- Where do I record what colour was mixed?
- In the notes on the client record, which open with her file and stay attached to it. There is no dedicated formula field with its own history, so a salon that needs a structured, dated formula log will find this thinner than a specialist colour system.
- Can I sell shampoo on the same bill as a cut?
- Yes, and it is worth doing on one bill rather than two. Services and retail products sit on the same ticket with their own tax treatment per line, so the GST is right even when the two categories are set up differently, and the retail shows up properly in the reports.
What it doesn’t do
Worth knowing before you start, not after.
- There is no colour formula field. What was mixed for a client goes in free-text notes rather than a structured formula record with a history.
- The diary does not automatically place a second client into a processing gap. It permits the overlap through capacity; the decision is still yours.
- There are no patch-test records or dated consent entries. Allergies and medical notes are free-text on the client record.
- Retail stock is tracked for products you resell. The colour and developer consumed during a service are not deducted per client.
See it with your own salon’s data
30 days free, no card required, and a guided setup that takes four steps.