Make Informed Business Decisions with MioSalon’s Reports & Analytics Feature

When it comes to salon finances, most salon owners are in the dark. They seldom know the profit and loss incurred in a month. This makes things worse and affects the salon bottom line altogether.

If you own a salon and really want to watch your numbers grow, it is extremely important to stick to a concrete plan. Understanding the what, why and how of certain crucial numbers can help you make informed business decisions.

When you understand the basic numbers of your business, you can start planning and working towards bigger aspects such as salon face lifts, expansion, retail store, hiring spree and more.

A salon owner has countless tasks to juggle – payroll management, employee scheduling and marketing. With so many things to do, the business aspect just seems dull. Also, salon owners feel that with so many things to do, there is very little time left for strategic growth. Due to this, they tend to operate in the same way for years without realizing that some practices followed by them are actually hindering the growth of their business.

If a salon wants to embark on the pathway to success, the first step is to get the right tools. Salon software can help you achieve the results you truly want to see for your business.

MioSalon, salon management software, has a real-time report and analytic feature, which gives business owners an insight on how their business is performing. Besides generating detailed reports, it also helps salon owners and their managers to analyse the data correctly and make informed business decisions such as stock ordering, promotions, staffing, expansion, among the other things.

However, having too much data can be overwhelming and lead to business mishaps. Thus, if you are in the salon business, it’s important to run the right reports that will give you up-to-date information on how your business is really doing.

v Client retention report:Clients are the main reason salons are able to survive. Therefore, salon owners must give paramount importance to client retention. Running a client retention report will help you determine which employees are retaining most of the clients and which are struggling. Also, a salon must understand that it is cheaper to retain clients than acquire new ones. The average retention rate for first-time clients is usually 30% while for regular clients, it is 80%. The fastest way a salon can grow is by analysing these retention rates. Client retention reports should be generated every month to check which clients are leaving and which are staying. Salon owners can use this opportunity to reward employees who are able to retain clients too. If you haven’t seen certain clients in a while, send them an email, text message, inviting them back to your salon.

v Inventory status report:Inventory management is an important aspect in any salon. Analyzing this report every month will give you a fair idea on your retail and professional inventory. Retail products can add tremendous amount of revenue to your salon. Generating a product sales report will help you determine which products are bestsellers and which items are just collecting dust on the counter. Once you get this information, you can probably increase the order of the products that sell the most and ask your suppliers for discounts too. The inventory management feature on the beauty salon software will notify managers about product consumption, retail product sale and low stock alert.

v Sales/Business summary report:It comes as no surprise that the business summary report is an important one to look into. Most salon owners analyse this report with their accountant. It gives detailed information on the sales, deposits, gift card sales, redemption, tax collected and other client information. A salon owner must compare the numbers from month to month to identify trends and irregularities. If certain services are not selling out, find out why. While analysing these reports, emphasis should be even given to no shows and cancellations. Use these figures to eliminate no shows by frequently sending clients messages and emails.

v Activity trend report:In addition to monitoring your number of services, you will want to see the amount spent, by each guest, per visit. The more you know about a guest’s needs, the more you will be able to provide solutions. The statistical information generated on the salon management software can be used to analyse client rebooking rates, new client percentage, request rates, retail sales and average ticket. This report should be run every week to help stylists monitor their progress and work towards their goals.

v Employee utilization:When you run a salon, the primary resource that you are selling is time.In order to increase your bottom line, you would want your employees to be busy all the time. While it’s impossible to expect a 100% utilization, you must aim towards getting as close as possible to it. The employee report will be able to give you insights on your staff and their schedules. It will tell you which employee is busy most of the times and which one is idle. You can also gain an understanding on when your salon is busy, and when it’s not. To minimize gaps in the appointment book, improve marketing efforts and encourage customers to book appointments during quieter times to keep employees busy throughout the day. If you are nearing 100% utilization, it’s time to grow your business by probably adding another chair or hiring another stylist.

v Client referral report:The most cost-effective way to get clients in a salon is by way of referrals. If a client refers their friend to your salon is primarily because they have given you the ‘seal of approval’. They strongly believe in your services and want their friend or family member too also get the same kind of experience. A salon should make it a practice to check which client is referring their friends the most. At the end of a quarter, they should be rewarded and given special benefits. They are not just your VIP customers but unpaid advocates.

With MioSalon, beauty salon software, a salon can make informed business decisions. From receiving real-time information to making strategic changes, analysing profitability of services and products, efficiency of employees, client retention, monitoring effectiveness of marketing campaigns and avoiding errors in business management, a salon and spa can do all this and more with MioSalon. Run them consistently and you will slowly start seeing a change in every area of your business. It’s high time you understand where your business is going. Start your free trial here.

When Is The Right Time to Expand Your Salon into Multiple Locations

The whole process of running a salon can be broken down into four stages. First, you start the salon with all the great ideas you have. In the second you try your best to attract more customers and earn good profit. In the third, you would have reached some kind of constancy, in terms of customers, profit and reputation. It’s when the fourth stage comes, where you think about expanding your salon into multiple locations.

Unless you had so much resources — both monetary and human —, you would have started a single-location salon itself. As it happens, it’s the fourth stage that everyone’s confused about. The last time we checked, most salon owners don’t understand the right time to expand their salon into multiple location. And, if you ask us, we can’t give a ready-made answer yet.

As both of us know, salon business is really dependent on many factors, on your side and the customers’. It is thus unlikely that an impulsive decision to expand your salon business would help you succeed. Instead, a number of factors must be considered before taking steps to broaden your scope. In this article, we would be talking about indeed the right time to expand your salon.

Let’s Talk about Current Business

We hope you are not planning to leave the current salon/spa when the second one opens. So, we must talk about the current one first.

The first question you should ask yourself is this: how is my salon performing right now?

We don’t expect you to have a clear-cut answer, but you will certainly have an idea to start with. Your salon may be getting a good amount of visitors every day, you may have some dedicated professionals working at each sections and you may even have crossed the estimated profits last month. In short, as someone who’d dreamt of starting a salon one day, you would be satisfied with the performance.

Factors that Matter the Most

But, as experts say, starting another salon is more than what meets the eye. There are a number of factors that you should consider before just jumping in.

Take note of the following.

-          Ensure a Seamless Business Workflow

Every business succeeds when there is some level of automation involved. As the salon owner, this is quite an important aspect. To get the basics right, the salon should work perfectly fine even when you are not at the location. In most cases, what we have seen is that the business is hugely dependent on the manager. If the manager leaves, there will be minor to major issues in the overall workflow — also affecting the ultimate profit margins.

So, before you stick onto the decision, make sure that your current business goes like clockwork.

-          Do the Analytics (Don’t Underestimate Potential)

Error of judgement is not really helpful when it comes to expansion decisions. Before you make the decision to expand, you need to ensure that you are getting the best out of the current outlet. For instance, you must know how much customers you are retaining and whether your staff is offering impressive service. This is an area where a salon management software with customer records system can help. Through techniques of data analytics and prediction, you would know how much your current outlet is really worth.

If you think you are not utilizing the most resources you have at the current outlet, do that.

-          Let’s Consider the Odds

Let’s review the story once again. You started out a salon in a convenient space, it started attracting more customers and it became a success (as you say it). But, have you considered the peripheral factors that have contributed to that outcome? For instance, the lack of beauty salons in the area could have helped you. Or, a potential organization or education institution could have contributed several hundred customers to your client list. And, you never know if any of them is available at the next place.

We would not recommend expanding unless you succeeded solely because of the excellence of your service.

You Should Expand Your Salon, If

To view things from the positive perspectives, you should look at some signs first. If you can see the following signs in your establishment, it’s the right time to expand to a new location.

-          Your Slots are All Booked

The next time you open your salon appointment software, take a deeper look. Check for the number of free columns you find every day. If you cannot find many free hours for any of your stylists, it’s the right time. It means that people are rushing to your salon and could not find available slots. To confirm this, you can do a simple thing:

Connect Google Analytics with your online booking system and analyze the behavior. If a lot of people visit the page but leave without booking, your assumption might be true. In that case, the strictness of slots is a great reason to expand the salon.

-          You don’t have Enough Space at the Salon

This is rather a physical constraint that may force you to expand the salon into an extra location. There are times when you cannot put enough number of chairs and other equipment for smooth functioning. At such a point, if your regulars are getting tired of waiting, you should think of expanding. This is probably the only sign that means multiple things.

It means that you are making the most out of the current space. It also means that your place attracts a lot more people than you expected earlier.

-          You have Less Churn and More Acquisition

If you are running a membership program for your salon, it’s the best way to track down the progress as well as the potential future. Once again, you should have got at least a free salon software in the first place. You can thus track how many memberships were added in the past weeks, in order to analyze the popularity of the place.

If there is less churn and consistent number of members each month, you can expect the same in your next location as well.

Summing Up

We hope you got an answer for when you should expand your salon into multiple location. To sum up every bit we said, it’s about management. Unless you can allocate someone to manage the next location, you have to bring the current salon space to clockwork. Of course, you can get the help of some brand-new technology such as the salon management software like Miosalon and membership tracker. And, once you think your absence would not impact the current salon’s growth, you can expand with confidence.

How to Benefit From Using Customer Records In A Beauty Salon

A beauty salon is one of the businesses where clients matter the most. You cannot keep switching the clients in the course of time — unless you are ready to shift places too. So, whenever a person visits your salon for a haircut or body massage, they must have the motivation to come back.

Customer Retention, we are talking about here. Without customers who love to come back for more services every month, it would be hard to survive in the beauty salon and spa industry. And, this is exactly where customer records can help.

Records — data, to be precise — will help you make your customers come back. Of course, you should have an effective beauty salon software in the first place. There are a number of ways you can benefit from using Customer Records in a beauty salon, and we’ve covered some below.

#1 Up-to-Date Data Keep Things on Track

The best part about using a salon software for customer records is that you have access to up-to-date data. Of course, you have to train your staff and infrastructure to meet up with these requirements. Every person who visits your salon will be recorded by the data systems.

You will have the essential details such as the name, phone number and how many times they have visited. Tools like Miosalon will also let you link the phone number to a customer account so that further transactions can be made easier. The best part about these tools is that it’s very intuitive to use. Even if you are completely new into software-based salon management, you would not want any introduction.

Provided that you take time for recording everything that happens in the store, the Salon Software would become the centralized hub for all your data. It does not matter whether you are randomly checking the list of customers or looking for active people, everything would be available.

#2 Data Analytics for Enhanced Results

We are now living the age of data and analytics is the first step for improvement here. Through the proper analysis of customer records data, you can know how your beauty salon is performing at many levels. You can, for instance, take the case of visitors’ data. You would know how many people have been visiting your place during the past month or a specific period of time.

And, if you are using a feature-rich solution like Miosalon, you would also have options to get some number predictions based on data. For instance, it can predict the churn, which refers to your customers who are likely to be active. At the same time, you would also have an option to keep an eye on the active set of customers.

There is also something called Service Segments — a feature to know which of your services are trending in the current scenario. This will help you personalize some of the offers and attract more users. That is, if one group of customers prefer massaging-based services, you should launch some offer campaigns for that. At the same time, you can always launch general campaigns too.

#3 Personalizing Customer Relations

Knowing the Customer is an integral part when it comes to growing your business. More importantly, you’d have to know what your customer needs. Along with the conventional customer records, you would also get information on their preferences. That is, if most of your customers don’t seem to avail a particular service at the salon, you can understand it from the records.

This also means that you can personalize your marketing campaigns. Suppose you want to offer some kind of discount to the customers you have. Instead of providing a generic offer to every customer, you can go a bit deeper into this. That is, you can first decide who are the to-be-inactive customers on the list. Depending on their previous transactions and the preferences, you can offer a customized discount coupon or deal.

Thanks to the intuitive User Interface of Miosalon, you have an option to completely customize the message. You can even include their favorite products accordingly. That is, you can gift the customer something that they would really love to avail from your store. As it happens, this is one of the best things about having one beauty parlour software.

#4 Reports for Growth Hacking Ahead

Now that you have clear customer records, it’s easy to create customized reports too. For instance, you may want to know something specific from the scene. Say, do you know how many people joined the membership program during the last month? Or, how about the feedback that you are getting from a to-be-inactive user? All these can help you hack the growth.

For instance, negative feedback from churn-predicted users means that you should really improve what you are offering. Similarly, if people don’t renew the membership program after a year or so, it means you aren’t offering worthy promotions there. If analyzed correctly, these reports are a great way for growth-hacking at the best levels.

Once again, this parlor management software manages to offer all these features to you. In a single click, you can have a detailed as well easy-to-understand report of your customer activities. Thereafter, you can filter the customers based on factors like gender, service, staff, satisfaction level etc. Of course, you can have a clearer understanding of the whole scene at the parlor.

A Word on Integration

There is no doubt that the aforesaid features can change the way you manage your beauty parlor. However, an important aspect here is how integrated these things are. For instance, the feedback from the customer must be integrated with the customer profile so that you can use the filter. Similarly, there must be a way to create customized promotional deals by filtering out the right group of customers.

Obviously, the best method is to get a comprehensive beauty parlor management software like Miosalon. It makes sure that every bit of data is recorded and brought together for your easy access. Be it promotional SMSs or on-time notifications, this tool would not let you down. And, if you are talking about investments that make your business bloom, this is the best to happen right now.

Summing Up

These, we believe, are the best ways to benefit from using a customer records. Indeed, based on the type of data you collect, there are other methods as well. For instance, you can set up a system where the user gets a promotional deal on their birthday. To make this work, however, there should be a way to record the data from the user. Conclusively speaking, if set up nicely, a parlor management software and updated customer records will surely help you boost growth.

Booking Appointments Made Easier with Miosalon’s New Calendar Functionality

If you have ever run a salon, you’d understand how tough appointment management is. If not taken care of properly, this can be a real headache for sure. This is the real problem: you should offer a convenient way for your customers to make appointments. At the same time, all appointments should be properly recorded that there must be no clash at all. 

Things would have been fine if you were running a simple salon with three or four employees and up to 10 services. Customers could call you and make their appointments, right? Well, think about the scenario where you have 10+ staff, 100+ packages and 500+ potential customers. That is exactly where you need a dedicated salon appointment software like Miosalon.

Miosalon comes with a dedicated section of salon management for exclusively managing appointments that are made by your customers. As we said earlier, it offers a convenient way for customers to book all desired packages. At the same time, you — as the owner or manager — can observe and manage whatever that is happening in the salon.

Sounds awesome, right? Well, let’s have a deeper look into what this salon management software is capable of offering.

Different Ways to Book Salon Appointments

This is where your customers enjoy the most privilege. It allows you to set up different ways to make an appointment in the salon. Some of those methods are:

-          Online Booking

Perhaps one of its best features, Online Booking makes everything easier. You can set up a widget on your website to enable online booking. Whoever visits the website can make the appointment. This method offers complete control for the user.

For instance, the customer can choose the services they want, staff they prefer and of course the time schedule. Once confirmed, users can also provide personal details and even process the payment.You can also integrate a payment method with the comprehensive platform.

Here are some extra perks too. Unlike some other solutions in the market, the widget works within a website. That is, your customer won’t have to leave your website to make the appointment. And, you can customize the appointment widget as per your aesthetic needs as well.

This means that your customers can pre-pay for a service and walk away when done. As we said, this salon online appointment system is the easiest to set up.

-          Booking via Facebook

Does your salon have a popular Facebook page? So, even if you don’t have a fully-fledged website, you can allow your customers to make an online booking. This is so fun, you know. You are integrating the booking system with the Call to Action of Facebook page.

Users can click on the Book Now button, provide the details and finish the appointment. Obviously, it is an easier way to take care of the appointments across the salon. Just as seen in the previous case, there will be option to choose services, payment and preferred staff.

-          Booking from Store

If you are using it for managing your salon, you would have the interface open all the time, right? If someone calls you and makes the appointment, you can enter it from the Appointment section of the interface. You can get the booking done in a few seconds.

You will have to enter details such as the date, service selection and the staff. Because this salon software is centralized, you can simply enter the mobile number to get customer details. It will show you their future appointments, favorite staff, total visits and even the total revenue.

Once again, this is an awesome way to make bookings easier.

Integrated Confirmation & Reminders Messages

It’s not good for both you and the customer if they forget about the reminder. In order to prevent this, the management platform has been equipped with a Reminder system. In fact, there are multiple reminders set up for a single event.

-          Whenever the user books an appointment, they will receive the notification from server. It should contain the basic details such as the date and time.

-          Automated Reminders can be scheduled to remind the customers about a booking. You can create a customized Reminder from the corresponding section.

There is also a provision to SMS your staff about the upcoming appointment, including the customer details ahead. This is a great way to keep everything under controls.

You are also keeping the end-customer in sync. Even if you have to make changes to the appointment in case of emergency, the salon management system would notify them immediately.

An Intuitive UI to Manage Appointments

Things can be tiresome if you have a salon with multiple staff and multiple packages. Thankfully, Miosalon has brought an intuitive User Interface for appointment management. As we said earlier, you can utilize the Appointments section from the main UI to keep track of appointments, staff schedule and even for adding a new appointment.

-          A Detailed Timeline

As you can see, you are presented with a detailed timeline of the upcoming appointments at your salon. You can choose between the Daily or Weekly view, depending on the level of details you want. In the Daily view, it will show you different columns for different staff you have. So, as the manager, you can know who will be working on which projects — every single time.

-          Making Edits

What happens if a customer calls and asks for reschedule? Well, you can do that too.

This powerful tool lets you simply drag the appointment and drop it somewhere. Thanks to the notification system, the customer will be instantly notified. This would work even if the customer had used the salon booking via online system but calls you for modification.

There are also some additional Viewing options you can choose. For instance, you can see the daily agenda of a particular staff member by filtering the results.

In short, this tool makes it really easy for you to manage the bookings that have been made online or offline.

Some Other Perks

As you may have noticed, what you have is a complete hair salon management software as well. So, you also get a bunch of benefits like centralized customer management and invoice control. It’s not an overstatement to say that it can be your perfect business partner.

So, at the end of the day, you are getting more than online booking and client management. And, it’s great that you can manage everything from a single dashboard.

The Bottom Line

Do you want to offer maximum convenience to your customers when it comes to booking appointments? Is it great to have everything under control in your hair salon? Then, we believe Miosalon is the best option in the market. It offers a quick and easy way to implement online booking and offline booking and also to keep track of every activity inside your salon. Regardless the size of your institution, this is something that every hair salon owner would love to have. Let us know what you think of these features via comments.

All you need to know about Salon & Spa Membership Programmes

Today, more and more spas are offering membership options to their clients. The truth is that everyone likes being a member of a club or organisation. Just like gyms, health clubs and fitness centers, spas too are on their way to utilize the membership model.

At some point or the other, most spas would have put immense thought into starting a spa membership program, but have been hesitant.

The primary reason behind this is the task of managing multiple memberships. To keep a track of every client’s balance on their membership is a process spas do not want to put themselves through.

Well, not anymore! With spa software, running a membership program is a breeze. It has built-in mechanisms that tracks everything and makes it easy for spa managers to communicate the same to the client without giving room to misunderstandings or disputes.

Introducing a membership plan for your spa provides numerous benefits to both you and your clientele. It is a win-win situation for both because while they get services and treatments for discounted rates, their membership makes them keep coming back regularly.

If client retention is on the cards, a spa membership program is definitely the way to go. It can really add to your overall profits and increase your bottom line.

A spa membership program is stress-free too because you know that a steady stream of income is generated and you don’t have to worry about when client’s will take their next appointment. Once they are used to your services, they will just resort to the spa software to book their next appointment in order to move towards a healthier lifestyle.

Difference between a membership program and loyalty program

Most clients use the word ‘membership program’ and ‘loyalty program’ interchangeably. While both aim at client retention, they are slightly different. A membership program requires a client to pay a fixed amount on a monthly, quarterly or half-yearly basis to avail a certain set of services. The fee is automatically charged to the client based on the membership model they choose. On the other hand, a loyalty program does not require clients to pay any specific amount. For their continued business, a spa usually rewards them with loyalty points that can be redeemed as per the terms laid down.

As a spa owner, if you wonder which to offer from the two, we would recommend having both. While a membership program brings clients in, a loyalty program makes them want to keep coming back.

Setting up and implementing your spa membership program

Now that you are aware of the multiple benefits that spa membership programmes have, it’s time to figure which types of memberships should your spa offer and how to implement them.

v Price, duration and services:When creating various membership programs, you need to understand which services your membership plan will include and how much you are going to charge. We would suggest that initially you could start off with a simple membership package and then move on to a slightly fancier one that would include interesting offers based on the client’s needs and budget. You can have a treatment specific package and a general health and wellness package. In terms of duration, most spas generally offer monthly memberships. However, it’s up to you if you wish to charge your clients a monthly fee or annual fee. Here, it is important to establish terms and plans for payment. When the term ends, you can notify your clients on the spa software if they wish to renew or cancel. As far as payment type is concerned, credit and debit card is the simplest and it can be charged automatically to clients too.

How to get people to join?

Now that you know which type of spa membership program appeals to you, it’s time to get people to join and get the word out. It’s all about marketing your spa membership programs. If you have a website, you should really post information there. You can also share information about your spa membership programme on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

Though email is an old-school way of marketing it really works. Thus, focus on your email efforts and send out emails to all your clients explaining to them the benefits of joining your membership program. Include the cost benefits and duration clearly. You may also include a link on your spa software with more information so that clients can directly sign-up.

Besides digital efforts, you can also print flyers and brochures to be included in the local newspaper. Most health clubs resort to these kinds of marketing efforts.

Keeping members involved

Nothing can get worse than starting a membership program only to find that it’s not working. Though clients have signed-up successfully to the program, you need to keep them coming and engaged. When you staff is under-worked, they too tend to feel stressed and bored. Hence, it’s not always about revenue. Besides that, you need to focus on attracting members to avail the benefits your spa has to offer.

The best way to keep clients in the grip of your treatments and services is by organizing events and getting suppliers to talk about the latest trends in skincare, hair care, beauty and wellness. You can also organise contests and lucky draws to keep your clients involved.

If at any time, your spa business tends to slow down, don’t worry. You can combat this by offering discounted memberships. By doing this, you can convert your slow time into your productive and profitable time. Among your clients, you will always have a captive audience that will be interested in buying additional services and products.

Now that you know the basics, set up your spa membership program. Discuss with your team and distribute tasks to all your employees so that in the end the fruits of labour are sweet.

With MioSalon, spa software, membership creation and sale of membership packages is easy-peasy. Once you’ve started your membership program, you can track a client’s plans, the type of package they have opted for, duration, and member activity. You can also enable a feedback option on your spa software to check which packages are working and which are not.