Financial reports for hairdressers: how to compare periods fairly and pick one action

Why a single revenue figure tells you nothing

Revenue is what your salon brings in from treatments and product sales, before costs. Costs are expenses such as products, rent and staff. Profit is what remains when you subtract costs from revenue. High revenue therefore does not automatically mean your salon makes a profit.

The full financial picture, with balance sheet and profit and loss account, is in your annual financial statements (in Dutch: jaarrekening). You put those together with your accountant, once a year. For steering in between, you use the reports from your till and calendar. How to get from daily takings to real profit is explained in our guide to salon revenue reporting. This article is about the step before that: comparing two periods so that the difference actually means something.

Five things that skew a comparison

Before you read a drop or rise as good or bad work, go through these five points. Each one can cause a difference that has nothing to do with your performance.

The number of opening days. A month with two public holidays and a bridge day has fewer days to earn revenue. Compare it with a month without holidays and it looks like you are falling back.

Staffing. If one team member was off the rota through illness, leave or departure, there were fewer chair hours available. Lower revenue then does not mean demand fell.

Holidays. Summer and school holidays shift your clients' rhythm. Compare a summer month with the same month last year rather than with the month before.

Price changes. If you adjusted your prices halfway through the period, part of the increase comes from the new prices and not from more clients. Look at the number of treatments as well, not just the amount.

One-off items. Gift cards sold around the holidays are often redeemed months later. A large product order from one client or an extra promotion can also inflate a month artificially. Write such items down so you recognise them at the next comparison.

Recalculate to a fair measure

The simplest correction is revenue per opening day. Divide the revenue for the period by the number of days your salon was actually open. That largely removes the effect of public holidays and closing days.

Worked example (made-up figures for illustration): in month A you take 12,000 euros over 20 opening days, which is 600 euros per day. In month B you take 11,050 euros, but because of public holidays you were only open 17 days: 650 euros per day. The total fell, but per opening day your salon did better. Without that correction you might have launched promotions to fix a drop that was not there.

If you work with several team members, you can go a step further and calculate per scheduled hour. Put revenue next to the number of hours worked. You calculate that figure yourself, but it tells you a lot about how well your calendar is filled.

Ideally compare in two ways at once: with the previous month, to see the short-term trend, and with the same month last year, to filter out seasonal effects. If both comparisons point the same way, the signal is stronger.

The monthly numbers hour: one question, one comparison, one action

A report does not tell you what to do by itself. So plan one fixed moment each month, for example the first Monday morning, and work in four steps.

Step 1: choose one question. For example: why is Tuesday afternoon quieter than the rest of the week? Or: is product sales growing in line with the number of treatments?

Step 2: select only the data that belongs to that question. Revenue per day, per treatment or per product, over the period you want to look at.

Step 3: compare fairly. Put periods side by side that are comparable in opening days, staffing and prices, and recalculate to a fair measure such as revenue per opening day.

Step 4: decide on one action and a date to look back. For example a different layout of Tuesday afternoon or a more visible product shelf. Write down when you will review the effect, so the action is not forgotten.

For every conclusion, also note the possible explanations. A quieter period can be linked to changed opening hours or fewer staff. Do not draw conclusions about the cause from a single figure.

Which questions your salon software answers, and which your bookkeeping does

Salon software and accounting software each do a different part of the work. It helps to know which question you ask where.

Your salon software records what happens in your salon: appointments, treatments, product sales and payments. In the Salonnare reports you can see, among other things, revenue per treatment and per product over a period you choose, revenue per team member, the split by payment method, how busy your calendar is by day and time, returning clients and a VAT overview. Because everything comes from the same point-of-sale system, you can look at every period with the same yardstick. Which reports pay off most is covered in our article on salon reporting software.

Your bookkeeping knows your costs: rent, purchasing, wages, insurance. That is where your profit calculation and ultimately your annual accounts come from. Salonnare is not accounting software. You can export data in a format that Moneybird, e-Boekhouden and Exact Online can import, plus an MT940 file. That is an export and not a live connection: you download the file and import it yourself or via your accountant.

In practice: questions about how busy you are, treatments, product sales and clients are answered in your salon software. Questions about margin and profit are answered together with your bookkeeping.

How to start your own numbers hour

The free Free plan (€0) includes the till, client management and your online booking page, for one team member and up to 50 appointments per month. The extended reports and the accounting export are included from Starter (€29 per month, up to three team members). Pro (€59 per month) is for salons with more staff or that also want to send email campaigns. You can compare all plans on the pricing page.

Start small: for one month, record every treatment and every sale through the till, so you have a complete period to compare at your first numbers hour. Start free with Salonnare and put the date of your first numbers hour in your calendar today.

Frequently asked questions