How to run a salon by its numbers

How booked the masters are

Fill rate is the share of a master's working time that has bookings. A master works 40 hours a week and has 30 hours booked, so her fill rate is 75%.

The salon has already paid for the free hours: rent, power, the receptionist. It just has not earned anything on them. If an hour of this master's work brings in 600 UAH on average, 10 free hours a week cost the salon 6,000 UAH.

So tomorrow's free slots and the week ahead get looked at in advance and offered to the clients who are due. An empty Tuesday is easier to fill on Monday than to explain on Thursday.

The average ticket

The average ticket is revenue divided by the number of visits. It falls quietly: someone did not offer a treatment, someone gave a discount to "her" client, someone booked a shorter service.

The average ticket slips from 1,450 to 1,330 UAH, the month has 80 visits, and the salon has missed 9,600 UAH. No single visit shows it, only the figure for a week or a month does.

It is worth looking at per master. When two masters of the same level have different average tickets, that difference explains more than any overall figure.

Clients who did not come back

Every regular client has her own rhythm: one comes every four weeks, another every three months. What should worry you is not "has not been in for a while" but a missed usual interval.

If 14 regular clients have missed their interval and their average ticket is 1,450 UAH, just the next visit of each is 20,300 UAH. And the one who has gone to another master takes all her future visits with her.

Once a week, take the list of those who missed their interval and write to each one personally, from her master and about her service. A mass "we have discounts" message works worse.

No-shows and late cancellations

A no-show eats a master's hour that can no longer be sold. Six no-shows a month at an average ticket of 1,450 UAH cost the salon 8,700 UAH.

What helps is a reminder the day before with a way to confirm or move the visit, a prepayment for long and expensive services, and a closer eye on those who fail to show a second time.

Discounts

A discount is money the salon gave away, so besides the week's total it is worth knowing who gave each one and why. A discount with no reason is no different from a gift.

Agree on a few clear reasons (first visit, birthday, making up for an inconvenience) and ask for a reason with every discount. At the end of the month you will see which ones bring clients back and which only cut revenue.

What is left from a service

Revenue is not earnings yet. From every service you take away the materials and the master's pay; only what is left goes to rent, the receptionist, advertising and profit.

Say a service costs 2,000 UAH, 380 UAH of materials went into it, and the master gets 40% of the amount net of materials, which is 648 UAH. The salon keeps 972 UAH, less than half the ticket.

For this, materials have to be counted by what was actually used, not by the norm in a reference sheet. That one master uses twice as much colour as another on the same service cannot be seen any other way.

Fifteen minutes a week

Numbers work when they are looked at every week, not when the year ends. In the salons we work with it looks like this:

• the owner or manager, every Monday, 15 minutes: six figures, a comparison with last week, one decision;
• the receptionist, every day: tomorrow's free slots and which clients are already due;
• every master, her own figures: how booked she is, her average ticket, her clients who missed their interval, and how much she earns if she fills her free slots.

Perukar counts all of this itself and every week tells everyone on the team what to do, in hryvnias. See what it looks like.