Time Management for Salon Owners

As salon owners you will have to balance several different hats. Marketer, beauty professional, manager, and it may seem like there isn’t enough time in the day but with a few quick and easy time management apps and tools you can streamline, and most importantly, automate your process. The more automated your process means the less you have to worry and stress about and the more time and energy you will have to focus on yourself and your clients.

Automated

If This Then That (IFTT) – Perfect if you wonder how on earth you are supposed to remember to post pictures to Facebook after you pin or blog or even to turn on the coffee maker on in the morning when you wake up. Take away the stress of having to wonder if you remembered to do something and automate. Putting what you can on cruise control frees up time to focus on your client and gives you more time with friends and family.

Appointment Booking

Schedulicity – Appointments made easy with a booking system that enables your client to book their service right from their tablet, phone, or desktop. As the beauty professional you have access to set your hours, services, and pricing for your services. Not only can your clients easily book with you while they are on the go and while you have someone in the chair, but also it has many additional features to make your life easier, all in one place. No need to send reminders to your clients for their bookings, because Schedulicity sends appointment reminders directly to them. You can also have access to a client CRM complete with the ability to add client photos and email marketing campaigns. Schedulicity is part of Salon Suites Concierge Services and will be happy to help you get started with your new salon. Once you are set up with Schedulicity a booking widget is added to your Salon Suites mini site and this widget is easily added to a Facebook Business Page.

Organization and To Do Lists

Trello – Need to order color, forget to text that client a text to make them feel special, or trying to plan an event? Trello has you covered from the little things to the big projects. Trello is an online and app organization system. Great for an individual or a team it can handle everything from a grocery list to a marketing strategy. Gone are the days of forgetting, you can add due dates and choose how to receive alerts on your phone or through email.

Payments

How many times has a client gotten to you and forgotten cash or not had enough cash for a tip and had to run to the ATM or look for a check? These days even our money is digital, but never fear there are now many options to keep your salon up on the digital times.

Stripe – Stripe integrate with Schedulicity to take payments directly from your Schedulicity app. Stripe takes 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction without a monthly charge. You are also able to pull fee reports and transaction history from Schedulicity that may easily be sent to your accountant.

Square – Square mobile payments will send you a free magnetic stripe reader and each swipe costs 2.75% of each transaction. Square also has additional features such as gift cards and invoices they promote highly with the reader and Square products.

Quickbooks Go Payments – Part of the Intuit family of products, Go Payments, has a pay as you go and a monthly fee option. The monthly fee is $19.95 a month and then 1.6% plus 25 cents per each swipe transaction. Pay as you go is 2.4% plus 25 cents.

Documents

Google Drive – If you have a Gmail account or area an Android user congratulations, because you already have Google Drive. You can view and edit documents from your email and from the Google Drive app. So what is Google Drive??? It is cloud based storage for your files. You can backup your client photos and more straight to the cloud and have peace of mind that they are safe even when your computer crashes or your drop your phone.

Dropbox – Another wondrous cloud system for those of us on the go and or prone to electronic destruction, Dropbox is a password secured data cloud that is capable of storing and sharing large files and integrates easily with a phone and desktop as well as several of the other apps and tools mentioned in this article (i.e. Trello and IFTT).

What tools help you get through the day? Contact us today to start your business and put those tools to use in your very own salon.

There are many great tools and apps out there and we love many of them. This is not meant to act as a comprehensive list. Please visit each site to learn more detailed information.