Beauty studio software: the complete 2026 guide for a small studio

Why a studio has different requirements than a large salon

In a studio you are the front desk, the therapist and the bookkeeping at the same time. Nobody picks up the phone while you are doing a facial. Software built around a reception desk assumes someone is always watching the diary, and that assumption simply does not hold for you.

What a studio does need is a system that keeps running while your hands are busy. The foundation for that is appointment scheduling software: it knows how long each treatment takes, which slots are free and when your break is, so a client can book without you lifting a finger.

And there is something here that does not come up during a haircut. In a beauty studio you work on the skin: peels, skin analyses, permanent make-up. You record information that carries more legal weight than a colour formula. Choosing a package is therefore not only a matter of convenience, but also of liability.

Leak 1: the diary that lives in your phone

As long as clients can only book through WhatsApp or a phone call, you are the diary. Every appointment costs three or four messages: which time suits, is that slot still free, how long does it take. Twenty messages a week at two minutes each is a good forty minutes you never invoice.

A booking widget on your own site makes that exchange disappear. The client sees which slots are free and takes one. A large share of those bookings arrives outside opening hours - exactly when you could not have answered anyway. Without an online option you push that client into a call-back moment, and part of them never come back.

Do pay attention to where the booking lands. Some providers place you in their own marketplace, where your client scrolls past competitors before reaching you. Booking on your own domain and through your Google listing keeps the client relationship with you. You can see what bookings management looks like in practice on the feature page.

Leak 2: the slot that stays empty

A no-show is more expensive than a cancellation, because you can no longer sell that slot. In a studio it hits harder than in a salon with five chairs: you only have one or two rooms, and a missed ninety-minute facial is not something you make up later that day.

An automatic reminder removes a large part of that. At Salonnare it goes out by email or WhatsApp rather than SMS - that keeps the cost down and works just as well in practice. Timing matters: twenty-four hours ahead is usually the best compromise. Early enough that you can still fill the slot if someone cancels, late enough that it has not been forgotten again. The page on automatic reminders shows how to set the wording and the timing.

For long treatments and new clients, add a deposit. The client pays part of the amount at the moment of booking through Mollie or Stripe, and that money goes straight to your own bank account. It does not sit with an intermediary until some payout date.

Skin data falls under article 9 of the GDPR

This is where a beauty studio differs from most other salons. If you note allergies, medication, skin conditions or a pregnancy, you are processing special category personal data under article 9 of the GDPR. Heavier requirements apply to that than to a name and a phone number.

An ordinary notes field in the client record does not meet them. That data belongs in a separately encrypted vault with its own access rights, so not every employee or trainee sees it by default. At Salonnare that vault is built in, with separate consent registration per client, and your data sits on servers inside the EU.

Those per-employee rights are useful on their own too. You set per person what is visible: a trainee does not need to see revenue figures, and a freelancer renting a room from you has no business in your clients' records. If you want to go deeper into the records side, read the guide on client records software for your salon.

Checkout, VAT and your bookkeeping

A treatment that has happened still needs to be paid for. If you do that in a separate till or on a paper receipt book, you keep two sets of records that will not line up at the end of the quarter. A till that is attached to your diary knows which treatment was given and prepares the receipt in one action.

The real work sits in the VAT rates. Treatments and the products you resell do not always fall under the same rate, and a till that makes that distinction while ringing up saves you an evening of sorting out per quarter. Which point-of-sale functions you need in the beauty trade is worked out in the guide on a POS system for beauty salons.

Your bookkeeping does not have to be retyped afterwards. Salonnare has an export function that puts your revenue data into a file for your accounting package. Note the word export: you move that data across yourself at the moment that suits you, it is not a continuous live integration that syncs everything by itself.

What it costs, and what does come off a payment

At Salonnare you start on the Free plan at 0 euro per month: one employee, up to 50 bookings per month. That is not a trial that stops after two weeks. If your studio grows beyond it, Starter is 29 euro per month and Pro is 59 euro per month, and you keep your diary, client records and settings.

Be precise whenever you meet the word commission, because that is where providers differ. At Salonnare there is no marketplace commission on new clients who reach you through the platform: that percentage is 0. What does come off is a platform fee of 0.5 percent with a minimum of 30 cents on every online or card payment. On a 75 euro treatment that is 38 cents. If you settle in cash, that payment falls outside it.

That is a different model from a percentage per booking across your entire revenue, and it is also not the same as free. Do the sum for your own studio before you commit: number of online payments per month times 0.5 percent, with that minimum of 30 cents per transaction. To compare the plans side by side, see the page with pricing per plan.

How to set it up this week

You do not have to move everything at once. Start with your five most-booked treatments: name, duration and price. Duration is the most important field, because it determines how large the slots in your diary become. Book a facial at sixty minutes while it actually takes you eighty, and your day runs behind from the second client onwards.

Then switch on online booking and share the link in your Instagram bio and on your Google listing. Set two boundaries straight away: how far ahead clients may book, and how close to the appointment they still can. Without those limits, Saturday morning at eight brings you an appointment for quarter past eight.

Finally, switch on the reminders and set up the vault for skin data. Your client list fills up along the way: only enter the clients who came in over the past year and let the rest arrive by themselves at their next appointment. You can start today through the free plan.

Frequently asked questions