Glossary
Salon business glossary
The words salon software is sold with, defined plainly. Nothing here is specific to BeautifyOS; where a term deserves more than a paragraph, there is a link to it.
7 terms
Booking and the calendar
- Salon booking softwareAlso: Online booking system, Salon appointment software
- Software that lets clients book their own appointments against a salon’s live calendar, applying the salon’s rules about service durations, which staff can perform what, how much notice a cancellation needs, and whether a deposit is required.
Much of the point is the hours the salon is closed: a booking taken at midnight is in the schedule before anybody arrives.
Salon booking software - Processing timeAlso: Development time, Gap time
- The middle stage of a service during which the client is occupied but the stylist is not — colour developing, a treatment sitting. It falls between the work at the start and the finishing at the end.
A calendar that models a service as one unbroken block cannot book anybody into the processing, and that is the largest single difference between a column that looks full and a chair that is earning.
Salon scheduling software - Buffer
- Padding before or after an appointment for cleaning down, resetting the station or running over, which a client cannot book into.
Set globally it quietly costs an appointment a day. Set per service it protects only the appointments that actually need it. - Waitlist
- A list of clients who wanted a time that was already taken, held with the service they wanted and the windows that suit them.
Without one, a cancellation is a loss. With one it is a phone call, and automated, not even that.
Reducing salon no-shows - Cancellation fill
- Offering a slot freed by a cancellation to the clients most likely to take it, usually from the waitlist, without anybody making the offer by hand.
AI receptionist for salons - AI receptionist
- An assistant that answers client messages and completes the booking itself: it reads live availability and books, reschedules or cancels, rather than replying and leaving the appointment to a person.
The distinction is commercial. Something that only replies has moved the work rather than removed it.
AI receptionist for salons - Walk-in
- A client served without an appointment. In a barbershop it can be most of the trade; nearly everywhere else it is a normal part of a Saturday.
Software that insists on a full client record before it will take money is how a client list fills up with people who do not exist.
8 terms
Money
- Salon POSAlso: Point of sale, Salon checkout
- The checkout a salon takes payment at, covering appointments, walk-ins and retail in one sale, and applying deposits already paid, gift cards and memberships to the bill.
Salon point of sale - Deposit
- A part-payment taken when the appointment is booked and applied to the bill at checkout.
Applied to everything it costs bookings; applied per service it protects the appointments that are expensive to lose without deterring a fringe trim.
Reducing salon no-shows - Split tender
- Settling one sale with more than one payment method — part on a gift card and the rest on a card, or a deposit plus cash.
A checkout that cannot do it forces the person at the counter to record the sale wrongly to get the client out of the door. - Gift card liability
- The value of gift cards sold and not yet redeemed. It is money the salon holds but has not earned, and it belongs on the books as a liability until the appointment happens.
Counted as revenue on the day of sale it flatters December and starves the January that does the actual work.
Salon gift cards - Salon membership
- A recurring monthly payment entitling a client to included services, a set number of visits, or a discount, applied automatically at checkout.
Salon memberships - PackageAlso: Course, Series
- A set of treatments bought once and drawn down visit by visit, with a balance that decreases as they are used.
Salon memberships - Commission split
- The share of a service’s price that goes to the person who performed it, the rest staying with the salon.
It has to be worked out from what was actually taken, after discounts. Calculated separately in a spreadsheet, it diverges from the checkout the first time somebody discounts at the counter. - Retail attachment
- The share of service appointments that also sell a product, or the average retail value added per visit.
It is the cheapest revenue in a salon, because the client is already there and already trusts the recommendation.
8 terms
Clients and retention
- Salon CRMAlso: Client management
- The client record: history, formulas and notes, photos, spend, when they last came in and when they are due, with marketing consent stored against it.
Salon CRM - RebookingAlso: Pre-booking
- A client leaving with their next appointment already in the calendar, rather than intending to call.
It is the number most responsive to a change in what happens at the counter, and it compounds: every rebooked visit is another chance to rebook.
Salon reporting and analytics - Client retention rate
- The share of clients who come back within a defined window — commonly the share of first-time clients who return at all, and separately the share of regulars still visiting a year later.
Quoting one number without saying which of the two it is makes the figure useless for comparison. - Overdue client
- A client who has gone longer than their own usual interval without booking.
Measured against a fixed number of days instead, the same list nags the twice-a-year client and misses the four-week one entirely.
Salon CRM - Lapsed client
- A client who has not booked for long enough that the salon treats them as gone rather than late. Where that line sits is a decision, not a standard.
- Client lifetime valueAlso: CLV, LTV
- The total a client is expected to spend across the whole time they stay with the salon, rather than at any one visit.
It is the figure that makes a rebooking conversation and a retention message look like what they are, which is the highest-return work in a salon. - Client segmentation
- Splitting the client list into groups that should be messaged differently: overdue, lapsed, new, high-spend, never rebooked.
Salon marketing software - Marketing automation
- Messages sent on a rule rather than on somebody deciding: appointment reminders, review requests after a visit, a follow-up to a no-show, an offer when a slot frees up.
They outperform campaigns largely because they still run in the weeks nobody had time to think about marketing.
Salon marketing software
4 terms
Measurement
- Chair utilizationAlso: Utilisation, Column fill
- Booked hours as a share of the hours a stylist was available. Measured per person, it shows where the spare capacity actually is.
A salon-wide average hides the thing worth knowing, which is that one column is full and another is not.
Salon reporting and analytics - No-show rate
- The share of booked appointments where the client neither arrives nor cancels. Usually tracked separately from late cancellations, because the two have different causes and different fixes.
Reducing salon no-shows - Average visit valueAlso: Average ticket, Average bill
- What a client spends in one visit, usually split between services and retail.
Read alone it rewards discounting the calendar full. Read beside utilization and rebooking it becomes one of the few numbers that says what to do next. - Revenue per available hourAlso: RevPASH
- Revenue divided by the hours the salon could have sold, whether or not it did. It combines how full the calendar was with what the appointments in it were worth.
It is the one figure a discount cannot flatter: filling the day at half price moves utilization up and this down.
All of it in one system
The calendar, booking, checkout, clients and the money, under your own name.