Choosing booking software for a hair salon
Most booking software is built for any business that takes appointments: spas, nail bars, barbershops, clinics, dog groomers. A hair salon's day doesn't fit their slots. A color processes while the stylist cuts someone else, the same service takes 90 minutes for one client and three hours for another, and last time's formula has to be there when she comes back. Here is what to check before you pick one, whichever you choose.
What a hair salon's booking software should do
- Book around processing time. A color's processing shows as free time on the calendar, and another client books into it without a double-booking warning. See how to book around color processing time.
- Know each client's real length. One length per service is wrong for half your clients. The software should suggest how long a client takes from her last visits.
- Give each stylist their own lengths and prices. A senior stylist's balayage isn't a junior's, in time or in price.
- Keep color formulas on the visit. Shades, developer, ratio and timing stay with the visit they were mixed for, next to the photos, so anyone can mix it again. See how to write down a hair color formula.
- Put the whole team on one calendar. Every stylist's day side by side, so whoever answers the phone finds a free time with anyone in a few seconds.
- Work on a phone and a tablet, not only on the front desk's computer. Stylists look up a client or book the next visit from their station.
- Show what the desk must know before booking: "pays cash only", "book 30 minutes extra", a client who didn't show up last time.
- Send reminders. Most salons want an automatic text the day before. Ask what each text costs and whether it's in the price.
Questions to ask about the price
- Is it per stylist, per location or per booking? What does it cost with your team, and when someone joins?
- Is there a fee on clients the app's marketplace sends you? Some take a share of a new client's first visit.
- Are reminders, extra calendars or reports sold as add-ons?
- Do you have to take card payments through them to get the best price?
- Is there a contract, a setup fee or a cancellation fee?
Online booking: yes or no?
Many apps are built around a public booking page. For hair it cuts both ways. Clients can book at night, but they pick the wrong service, guess low on the time, and the same color takes a different time for each of them. Some salons let clients book online; others keep booking with the team, by phone, by text or at the chair. Decide which you want before comparing apps: it changes which ones fit.
Moving in
- Your client list: ask how it gets in, from an export file, photos of your cards or typing, and who does the work.
- Your appointments: plan to type in the next few weeks, or run both systems for a couple of weeks.
- Your team: pick something they can use without training. If it needs a course, the desk will keep the paper book.
For salons in Quebec
- The software, its terms and its support should be in French.
- Ask where client information is hosted. Under Law 25, sending personal information outside Quebec, to a cloud service included, calls for a privacy impact assessment first.
Where HairSync fits
HairSync is booking software built only for hair salons and stylists, from one stylist on their own to a team, in English and in Quebec French.
- What it does: processing time as free time on the calendar; each client's usual length from her last visits; each stylist's own lengths and prices; color formulas, notes and photos on every visit; the team's calendar side by side; alerts on the client the desk sees before booking; a client list brought in from photos of your cards or old system. It runs in the browser on a phone, tablet or laptop.
- What it doesn't do: take payments, so keep your terminal for checkout; give clients an online booking page, on purpose, so the team books with the client's past visits in front of them; walk-in queues for barbershops.
- The price: free to start, with no credit card, no commission and no contract.