Setting up for a barbershop

Saturday, three chairs going, two people on the bench and somebody at the counter holding a twenty. Nothing in that picture has ninety seconds spare for software. A barbershop setup is judged almost entirely on how fast the till is and whether the pay split is arguable at the end of the week.

A short menu, honestly timed

Barbering menus are the easiest in the trade to get right because they're short and the times are well known. The trap is optimism: a fade booked at 30 minutes that reliably takes 40 puts your whole afternoon behind by two o'clock.

If your barbers charge differently by seniority, that's a price on the service and a note on the booking page, not six near-identical services.

Make the till the thing you practise

The checkout is the surface you'll touch fifty times a day, so learn it on the sample data before you're busy. A walk-in needs no appointment and no client: start a sale, leave the client blank, add the service, take the money. See Take a payment.

Two habits worth forming in week one:

• Ring up under the barber who did it. It's the only thing that makes commission and tips work out later, and it can't be reconstructed on Friday.
• Take the tip at the till, not in a jar, if you want the pool to be able to see it.

The pay split is the real setup job

This is the part of a barbershop that software either fixes or makes worse. Set each barber's commission when you add them, then set the tip-pool rule once — the split runs off it every period and shows its working, so "why is my cheque this?" has an answer that isn't your memory. Tips and tip pools has the rules; How pay is worked out has the arithmetic.

Do it before the first pay period closes. Reconstructing a fortnight of splits after the fact is the worst afternoon in this product.

Turn this on first

The pay explanation. A paycheck that says, in plain sentences, which services made which commission and where the tips came from — the thing you'd otherwise write out by hand for whoever asks. See A paycheck that explains itself.

Reminders, second. They're the cheapest no-show reduction there is and they need nothing set up beyond your menu being right.

Skip these for now

Charting, forms, memberships and campaigns. A barbershop can run for years on a menu, a till and a pay rule, and a line on the client record — his guard number, how he takes the neckline — beats a chart template you'll never open.

Three barbers puts you on Starter, which covers five. Note the one real cliff: payroll, the time clock and tip pooling begin at Starter and are absent on Solo entirely. A single-chair barber renting a room doesn't need them; a shop with one employee does.