For hairdressers, nail and beauty therapists, tutors, cleaners and anyone who repairs or fixes things. You do not sell a thing off a shelf. You sell your time and your skill, and a little of your products goes with every client.
A baker can see the flour going into the bowl. In a service business the costs are quieter: half a tube of colour, a few foils, a pair of gloves, a towel to wash, the petrol to get to a client. None of it feels like much on its own, so most people price from what the salon down the road charges and hope.
Then there are the costs that sit behind every client and never show up on one: chair rent, electricity, data, the training course you paid for last year.
Get both of these roughly right once, and you know what an hour of your work actually pays you.
Take one service you do often and list what one client uses. Use what you paid for the product, divided by how many clients it lasts.
| One full head colour | Amount |
|---|---|
| Colour (one tube) | R85 |
| Developer | R20 |
| Foils | R12 |
| Gloves and cotton wool | R6 |
| Towel wash | R5 |
| What one client uses | R128 |
Charged at R450, the colour leaves R322. It takes about two and a half hours, so it pays you about R129 an hour before your running costs.
For things that last many clients, cost the tub, not the treatment. A R180 tub of wax that does about 30 half-leg waxes is R6 a wax. A R240 bottle of shampoo that does 80 washes is R3 a wash. You only need to work this out once, and again when your supplier puts the price up.
Running costs are what you pay to be open at all, whether you see two clients or twenty. Chair rent, travel, electricity, data, insurance.
Say your chair rent is R2,000 a month and you see about 80 clients. That is R25 behind every client before you have picked up a brush. A R150 blow-dry that uses R10 of product leaves R140, but after the rent it is closer to R115.
You do not have to build that R25 into every price by hand. Keep a note of your running costs as you pay them, and take them off what your services made at the end of the month. What is left is what you really made.
One thing to watch: the products you buy for clients are already counted in each service's cost. Do not take them off a second time.
An empty two-hour slot costs you two hours. A small deposit when someone books a long service is normal and fair. Clients who have paid something tend to arrive.
For anyone who does not pay in full on the day, whether a deposit now and the rest later or a regular client who settles at month end, keep an invoice rather than trying to remember. Note each payment as it comes in, and you can see at a glance who still owes you and how much.
Many service businesses sell a few things on the side: shampoo, nail oil, a book for tutoring. Those are products, and they work like any shop item. They have a cost, a price and a number on the shelf that goes down when you sell one.
Keep the two apart in your head. Services earn from your time; products earn from the gap between what you paid and what you sell for. It is common for the side products to pay better than they look, and for one or two services to pay worse.
Clients prefer a price per service, because they know what they will pay. Set it by the service, then check what it works out to per hour. If a service keeps paying less per hour than the others, raise its price or shorten it.
Only once. Work out roughly what one service uses, put that in as its cost, and leave it until your supplier's prices change. Close is good enough; forgetting it completely is what hurts.
Make it an invoice instead of a sale. You can record a deposit now and the rest when it is paid, and send a reminder on WhatsApp when it is due. What each client still owes stays in one list.
No. Little-Till does not keep a diary or a booking calendar. Keep using whatever you book with, whether that is a booking app, WhatsApp or a paper diary. Little-Till looks after the money side: what each service costs you, what clients paid and owe, and your profit.
Little-Till is a small app for one-person businesses. Add your services with their price, per job or per hour, and what each one uses, plus any products you sell. Then ring up a client in a few taps, send invoices and reminders on WhatsApp, and note what you spend. It keeps what clients owe you and your profit up to date. It is built for a phone, keeps working when the signal drops, and shows amounts in Rand or your own currency.
Note chair rent, travel and other running costs as expenses, and Reports takes them off what your services made, so you see what you really made. Products you buy for clients go in as materials, so they are not counted twice.
R49 a month or R495 a year, with 14 days free and no card needed to start.
Try Little-Till free