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The right software can make the everyday business of running a salon with multiple staff members or multiple locations a lot easier. Salon software can help you speed up workflows, automate manual processes, and better manage bookings, appointments, and finances across all of your salons.
Square Appointments makes it easy for you with a single — and reliable — source of information for everything. You won’t have to aggregate information from various software with all of your business information available in one place. With individual employee accounts and permissions, everything is trackable, from when someone clocked in and out to who sold a bottle of shampoo and where.
Here’s a rundown of suggestions for how to successfully run more than one salon location and some tools to help you work more efficiently.
Managing and Scheduling Multiple Locations
One of the most important needs of a salon is scheduling. Setting, displaying, and managing appointments well means that clients are happy and your salon is staffed properly at all times.
This becomes even more important when you are managing multiple locations and have to ensure that the flow of clients is smooth. Square Appointments can help you streamline the process of booking clients at any of your locations, creating an efficient scheduling process for your clients and team.
First, be sure to set up your locations under “Business information” in the settings — that way your locations will be reflected directly in your Square Appointments calendar. For each new location, add a business name and nickname to help you keep track of locations, descriptions, logos, physical addresses, and bank information. You’ll want to ensure that the time zone and hours are set for each location so that everything syncs well with staff hours and the calendar.
Then, in your Square Appointments account, ensure that you have set up your staff, resources, and services and assigned them to their respective locations. You have the choice to add them to one, multiple, or all locations.You and your team can toggle between locations to view full calendars within your Square Appointments dashboard. You can do the same in the free mobile application by tapping More in the navigation bar and selecting Switch Location. From there, you can see an individual location, bookings, and other information.
If your staff is full time per location, it might help to have a front desk admin or location manager at each location managing the whole team’s schedule. They can see the macro view of what schedules look like and work with stylists individually to adjust calendars if needed. If your staff rents chairs, works across multiple locations, or is commission-based or part time, it might be best to let them set their own hours so they are only booked when they’re available and can manage their schedules. You can customize admin permissions and business hours with Square Appointments.
Appointments also syncs with Google Calendars to ensure no one gets double booked, which is an indispensable feature.The simpler it is for staff and the less they have to worry about logistics, the more they can focus on clients.
Square Appointments makes it easy for clients to book when and where it is convenient for them. With the free Square Appointments online booking website, clients can book appointments at any location they choose. You can set which locations you would like to be bookable and displayed on your booking site.
When a new client lands on your booking page, they will immediately be prompted to choose a location. The client can easily switch between locations if they are looking for convenience, specific staff members, or services, all of which can be set per location as well.
Alternatively, each location will also have its own URL, so you can link the unique pages to your business website if you want to drive clients directly to that location for booking. This can be done by selecting the “Get your booking flow URL to add to your website” in the Square Appointments dashboard in the Booking Flow section under Channels.
A Real-World Example of How This Works
One of the key benefits of using Square Appointments for a multiple-location salon is that sellers have plenty of options. You can customize each location to your business, from services to hours to how clients interact when they go to book online. This can help you create just the right website booking experience for clients.
Live by the Sword Tattoo is a New York City–based business that offers tattoos (Soho location), tooth gems (Williamsburg location), and beauty salon services ranging from hair highlights to facials (Williamsburg location). Live by the Sword has multiple locations in New York, and clients can book appointments at different locations based on what is convenient for them, their preferred staff, or the service they’re looking for.
Square Appointments is fully integrated into our point-of-sale and checkout system. We have one screen that makes it possible to visually see our appointments, check out our walk-ins, and check out those appointments. ”
Rudy Temiz → Live by the Sword Tattoo Owner
Live by the Sword Tattoo has web pages dedicated to each location on its website, and has a corresponding booking page with a unique URL for that specific location. For example, they have a booking page set up for their Williamsburg and Soho locations so clients can choose which location is best for them based on the services they need and book directly with staff on site.
The business can share individual links for each location that go directly into booking flows. When a customer clicks to make a booking, the very next step is to choose a location. This creates a direct path for clients to set an appointment at that specific location for services. (It’s a great choice for existing clients.)
Option 1: When clients first land on the booking website, they choose the service they desire — which might differ by location — and then flow to the selection of dates and times for appointments.
Option 2: Start with including the booking URL on your business’s website, often where you house your Contact Us or location information. The client can click the link to the location that is best suited for them and be taken straight into that booking flow.
The great thing is both versions of booking are concurrent and can provide different, but valuable, client interactions that make booking quick and easy.
Square Appointments Point of Sale and Team Management
Managing a multiple-location salon successfully also means easily accepting payments across locations for retail products and services. You should also be able to differentiate each location by staff and clients with reliable reporting that tracks revenue by staff member and by each location as a whole.
For many salon owners, tracking staff to sales is a challenge. Square Appointments eliminates the need to compare people who worked at a certain time of day against the sales, with data that helps you understand who to pay out, as well as the ability to track commissions.
Booking appointments is the first interaction a client will have during a salon experience. An easy-to-use point of sale allows a client to pay and leave a tip while creating a good customer experience that can make an impression after they leave the salon.
Square Appointments includes a robust point-of-sale system that accepts any major kind of payment and lets you facilitate a smooth checkout at any location, in person or online.
From a management perspective, the tool tracks single transactions as well as the sales of items and services that can be attributed to the proper staff member and location. (Great for business data reporting and analytics.)
With sales reporting features, you can filter and toggle by location to get greater insights about sales performance at individual locations and your business as a whole.
Having clean and accurate data, including staff and location sales attribution, can help you make better business decisions, from staffing and hours to what products and services to offer. At Live by the Sword, for example, they manage customer flow, optimize staffing, and empower their staff to view and manage their own schedules. You can use this information to help track business growth and make better decisions moving forward.
Additional features include the ability to run team member sales reports and labor versus sales reports, both included in the Square Appointments Premium subscription. Use this data to improve workflows by knowing when to staff and what employees are most productive at what locations, and even create incentive and commission structures for specific products or services. (You may consider incentives for sales at times when the salon is generally slow or at locations where retail sales are lagging.)
Tracking business performance over time can be a key contributor for future success and growth when you use the data to make future decisions.
Conclusion
Square Appointments can make managing a multiple-location salon easier and more efficient. With tools designed to allow staff to work between locations with ease and let clients book with who they want when they want, it’s a win-win solution. Learn more and get started today.
