With your hair salon business constantly growing, there will come a time, when managing the barrage of administrative tasks, will become increasingly challenging. The various administrative tasks involved in efficiently running a salon business such managing appointments, creating schedules, tracking inventory, preparing work rosters and running payrolls can and does become overwhelming. Often, many salon owners and managers are found complaining that they’re constantly short of time because the administrative work bogs them down. Fortunately, with technology now being omnipresent in our lives, one can rely on it to run the entire gamut of operations. This piece of technology is known as hair salon management software. Operating through a cloud based platform, hair salon point of sale system assists you in optimizing and streamlining your business processes. Listed below are the top 6 reasons how the hair salon point of sale system features help streamline your business.
Convenience of Booking & Scheduling
Ranking amongst the key features of a POS system, and perhaps the primary reason to deploy a POS software is to automate the process of accepting and scheduling appointments. While one cannot completely forgo the walk-in clients and with some experience a judicious count of slots have to be kept for the walk-ins, most hair salons are now increasingly adopting the method of advance booking. The POS software features of accepting booking through multiple platforms such as calls, webpage, chatbots and app make it extremely easy for guests to book appointments anytime, anywhere. During the booking process itself, the software, based on the client’s preferred timing shows the available slots in the calendar and confirms the booking. The daily schedule is created simultaneously and shared with responsible stake holders. The system also empowers your businesses to respond to the guests 24x7x365.
Improved Database Management
Businesses that run on clients, know how important it is to keep up to date on the customer’s details. Thus, keeping a tab on customer’s contact information is a routine task. A POS software allows to maintain a comprehensive customer database, at a single point. No longer do you have to scurry around for missing information. What is even better, the system allows guests to modify certain details about their personal information such as change of address, phone numbers, payment information through a secure password authenticated access. The system captures and saves the new information securely. As a result your salon is able to maintain and up –to-date centralized database, complete with the entire details of the client such as personal information, transaction details including purchase and service history and market survey responses. The information helps you plan your targeted marketing campaigns.
Dynamic Resource Deployment
An important aspect of running a salon means juggling the schedule of your talented resources. Work deployment, weekly offs and financial benefits in compensation & tips, everything falls under the entire gamut of managing the resources. Studies have repeatedly indicated that one of the prime causes of businesses facing high attrition rates is because managers have repeatedly faltered in managing schedules and compensation. With salon POS software, you can compute error-free payrolls and commissions, and keep a track of their upselling skills and performance ratings. Furthermore, by dynamically allocating appointments, the software ensures that the division of work is equitable and the weekly offs are managed without bias.
Inventory Management
Hands down the most time-consuming process, among the host of other administrative processes required to run a hair salon is inventory management. Inventory management is often the trickiest aspect of the business. Keeping less stock means expressing regret to guests, and losing potential revenue. Stocking too much means blocking capital. Hair salon point of sale system features includes an inventory management system. Gone are the days of manually taking stock, and guessing what to order and how much. The POS system not only tracks the inventory but also the lead times to prompt you to replenish stocks at the right time. Further, by analyzing the stock movement, also helps you differentiate between what is selling and what isn’t selling. As a result, you maintain your inventory at optimum levels, at all times.
Referrals and Loyalty Rewards Management
Since, the software records each and every client’s details and their purchase history, businesses can easily spot and identify their most loyal customers and their spend patterns. As a result businesses are enabled to transfer benefits to select clients accordingly and without bias. The POS software is equipped to collect feedback for each and every service from clients and review this feedback to improve their services. Negative reviews, if any, can be collected here instead of social media and rewards and referral programs can be improved accordingly.
Reporting and Analytics
Another big advantage of using a hair salon POS software is its ability to generate on-demand reports, which can be accessed anytime. With the ability to generate reports based on the requirement managers and owners can keep a tab on daily sales, revenue, profit and loss and deployed capital. The software is equipped to give you a picture of the health of your business along with the key financial metrics such as Return on Investment, Internal Rate of Return etc. With such important financial data being readily available, businesses are equipped to take course correction immediately
The hair salon POS software market is mature and has some good products available. Some of the renowned names are Zenoti, Phorest, Vagaro, MindBody and SalonIris. Personally, I find Zenoti to be the best in class product for its host of features such as advanced data analytics, geo fencing, and award winning loyalty program module.