The questions operators actually ask.

Compare what they bring in against what they cost you. That single ratio is the fastest read on a chair. A senior should be generating around 3.5x their wage, a junior 2.5x, an apprentice 1.5x and a master 4.5x. Tiering it matters, because one flat number punishes apprentices and flatters seniors. Run it on every stylist this month and rank them. You will usually find one or two chairs carrying the floor, and at least one sitting below their own wage.

34%, and that is everybody. Stylists on the floor, reception, management, apprentices who are not yet generating. The industry likes to quote a service payroll number and then a looser total wages number, which gives owners permission to bolt non-earning headcount on top of an already healthy floor. I do not run it that way. If you want to employ someone who does not generate revenue, they fit inside the 34%, not on top of it. Under 34% is where you want to be, 34% to 42% means there is room to move, and past 42% payroll is deciding your profit for you and it becomes the first thing to fix. One more thing worth knowing: if you are under 28%, do not celebrate yet. That usually means wages are booked somewhere else in the accounts, or the owner is not paying themselves.

70%, minimum. That is the Kai Haus standard and it sits deliberately above the market, because most salons run between 30% and 40%. Rebooking is the cheapest growth available to you, since the client is already in the chair and already spending. If you are sitting in the 30s you do not have a marketing problem, you have a conversation problem at the basin. Fix the ask before you spend another dollar bringing new people through the door.

An uninvoiced appointment is work that was performed and never billed. It sits in your booking system as a completed service with no payment attached. Most owners have never pulled the number, and it is almost never zero. On a $200 average ticket, a handful a week is thousands a year walking out the door. The target is $0, and getting there is a front desk process change, not a software purchase. Pull the report for last month before you read anything else in your numbers.

Busy and profitable are different measurements, and being flat out hides all three of the usual leaks. Wages drifting past 34% of revenue. Rebooking sitting in the 30s, so you are refilling the column with new clients instead of returning ones. And retail barely moving, which is the highest margin line you have. Full columns feel like success and produce almost nothing if the average ticket is too low and the chair costs too much. Check those three numbers before you take another booking.

It depends which end of the market you sit in, and measuring yourself against the wrong band is how good salons decide they are underperforming. Budget and quick service runs $80 to $150. Mid-range runs $150 to $250. Premium is $250 and above. Pick your band honestly, then work to it. Average ticket is the fastest lever you own, because it moves without another client walking through the door. A $20 lift across 40 clients a week is over $40,000 a year, and it usually comes from the treatment conversation and the retail recommendation rather than a price rise.

17% to 20% of your total sales, with 10% as the absolute floor. Measure it one way only: retail dollars divided by total revenue. Counting the percentage of clients who bought something is a different number with a different denominator, and running both is how salons end up with three versions of the same metric and no idea which one is true. Worth saying plainly though: salons are genuinely struggling to hold retail, because products that were once salon-only now sit on the shelf at Mecca, Sephora and Adore Beauty. A salon at 12% is not lazy, it is competing with retailers that did not exist in this category ten years ago. And be honest about what a lift is worth. Gross profit on retail runs roughly 60% to 65% of the revenue you add, so a $1,000 month in product is closer to $600 kept. Still the best margin in the building, just do not budget the top line as though you keep all of it.

8% to 10% of revenue. The more useful way to ask it though is: what revenue does this space need to carry itself? Your rent needs 10 to 12.5 times its monthly figure in monthly revenue, so a $4,500 lease needs somewhere between $45,000 and $56,250 a month. If you are under that, the gap is your number to close. Two things worth knowing. Smaller salons genuinely run higher, because a lease does not shrink when your revenue does, so a salon under $300,000 a year sitting above 10% is usually carrying a space sized for more turnover than it currently makes. And above 12% is structural at any size, which means a lease conversation or a growth plan, not a roster conversation. Rent is the one cost the team cannot fix for you.

10% to 15% is healthy, and 24% is about the ceiling before colour waste is eating your margin. Here is the one most people get wrong: if your cost of goods is under 5%, that is not a tightly run salon. It almost always means product is being booked somewhere else in your accounts, so your real profit is not where you think it is. A number that looks too good is worth checking before a number that looks bad.

It depends entirely on the work. A colour-focused stylist doing 3 to 4 a day is running properly. A quick service stylist should be closer to 8 to 12. Measuring a colourist against a quick service number punishes them for the very work you booked into their column. Set the target by the type of work, not by the salon average, and look at the gaps in the day alongside it so you can see whether the issue is bookings or pace.

It depends on your size, because fixed costs do not scale with revenue. Under $500,000 a year, 8% is healthy. Between $500,000 and $1 million, 12%. Above $1 million, 15%. A small salon carrying a normal lease cannot reach 15% even with wages at 34%, because fixed costs eat roughly 17% of revenue instead of 8%. Chasing a big-salon number from a small floor is how a sound business gets misread as a struggling one. Most owners have never seen their number at all, because it sits underneath a P&L nobody reads monthly. If you are under 5%, the business is paying you a wage and calling it a profit. The four things that decide it are wages against revenue, product cost, rent and average ticket. Work out which of those four is furthest off before you touch anything else.

Two checks, both of which you can do today. First, where does total payroll sit against revenue right now? If you are already at or above 34%, a new wage makes it worse from day one, because the new person will not be at a full column for months. Second, is the existing team at capacity, or does the floor still have room? Hiring into unused capacity buys you a second problem. Fill the columns you already pay for first.

55% to 60% after product cost is the healthy target for an Australian brand. Overseas figures run higher, usually around 68%, but those describe large direct-to-consumer businesses and ignore what an Australian brand actually carries: freight, duties, small production runs, and stockists buying at roughly half RRP. The number that catches founders out is not this one though. It is what you actually keep once freight, packaging, card fees and returns come off, which lands at 25% to 30%. Price off the second number, not the first. If your brand feels like it is growing and going backwards at the same time, that gap is almost always the reason, and repricing off contribution margin is the move that closes it.

There is no single right dollar figure, because it depends entirely on what you keep per sale. $30 is a disaster on a $25 product and excellent on a $200 one. Judge it three ways instead. Can you recover acquisition cost inside the first order, or does it take the second or third? Are you getting your money back within 6 months, measured in margin dollars rather than revenue? And is lifetime value at least 3x acquisition cost? A no on any of those is a warning. A no on all three means you are buying revenue rather than profit.

MER is total revenue divided by total ad spend across every channel. It is a truer read than platform ROAS, because each platform claims the same sale and the numbers add up to more than you actually sold. Your target depends on what you keep per order, so there is no universal figure. What matters is tracking it monthly at channel level and watching the direction of travel. I report the trend and flag where spend is drifting. The in-campaign decisions stay with whoever runs your ads.

Gross margin is what is left after the product cost. Contribution margin is what is left after everything that scales with each order: freight, packaging, card fees, returns and acquisition. Healthy sits at 25% to 30%. Hair extension brands are the exception and run far lower, roughly 5% to 15%, because the hair is bought by weight and lands as a very high cost of goods. Contribution margin matters more because it is the number that actually funds your wages, your rent and your growth. A brand can hold a strong gross margin and still go backwards on every order once the real cost of getting it out the door is counted, which is why this is the number to build your pricing on. Work it out on your three best sellers first. That is usually where the most money is sitting.

$80 or better is healthy, with most brands landing between $45 and $150. Average order value is usually easier to move than traffic, and it moves through bundles, regimen sets and a sensible free shipping threshold rather than through discounting. Before you chase more visitors, work out what a $15 lift in average order would do across last month's order count. It is often larger than what another month of ad spend would deliver, and it costs nothing.

Stop reading the platform dashboards on their own. Each platform is incentivised to claim the sale, so add them up and you will find you sold more than you did. Look at total revenue against total spend, month over month, and compare that trend against what you keep per order. If revenue is climbing while spend climbs faster, you are buying growth you cannot afford. That is a channel level question you can answer from your own numbers, before anyone touches a campaign.

Turning inventory over 6x or more a year is a reasonable target. Slower than that and your cash is sitting on a shelf rather than working. The trap is judging it across the whole range, because an average hides the problem. Look at it per product. You will usually find a handful of lines turning fast and carrying the brand, and a long tail of slow movers quietly holding thousands in cash. The decision is which of the tail you reorder and which you let run out.

Under 3% is healthy for haircare and sealed product. Colour cosmetics are a different question entirely and run 8% to 12%, because shade mismatch drives returns that haircare simply does not have, so grading a lipstick range against the haircare number is unfair to it. Haircare returns low because hygiene rules limit resale, which is good news for your margin. If you are running well above your category number, it is usually one of three things: the product page is overselling the result, the shade or type guidance is unclear, or a single line is responsible for most of it. Check whether it is a brand problem or a product problem before you change anything.

They are different businesses with different economics, and most brands need both eventually. Direct keeps the margin and the customer relationship, but you pay for every sale through acquisition. Wholesale moves volume and buys reach, at roughly half the margin and with no visibility of who bought it. The question is not which is better, it is what each channel actually returns once you count the real cost of servicing it. Work out your contribution margin per channel before you expand either one.

Because growth consumes cash before it produces it. You pay for stock now and get paid later, and the faster you grow the wider that gap opens. Add wholesale terms and you are financing your stockists. Revenue on a rising line and a bank balance on a falling one is normal for a growing brand, and it is also how brands fail while looking successful. Forecast the cash, not just the sales. Know which month is tightest before it arrives.

Start from what it costs you to land, not from what a competitor charges. Add freight, packaging, duties and the card fee, then work back from the contribution margin you need, around 30%. Only then check the number against the market. If the price the market will bear cannot carry your costs, that is worth knowing before you order stock rather than after. Run the full landed cost on your next launch before you set the price, and you will price it once instead of discounting your way out of it later.

40% or better, and that is deliberately above where most of the category sits. Published ranges run from about 17% to 45%, which means the average brand is closer to 25% and comfortable with it. I do not think that is a target worth having, because repeat rate is the number that decides whether your acquisition cost is survivable. A brand at 20% has to win almost every sale from scratch, so marketing cost never comes down and every good month has to be bought again. At 40%, four in every ten orders come back without you paying to win them again. If yours is low, the fix is almost always the 60 days after the first order rather than the ad that produced it.

Take everything you brought in, subtract every cost of being in business, then divide by every hour you actually worked. Not just the hours in the chair. Admin, ordering, socials, cleaning and travel all count. Costs means chair rent, colour and product, insurance, software, super and your tax set-aside. The number that comes out is usually well below what people assume. $120 or better is healthy, and the real spread runs from $60 to $150.

Under 30% of your gross is healthy, and the range runs from 20% to 40%. Once rent passes 40%, the chair is setting your prices for you rather than the other way around. Work it out as a percentage rather than a weekly dollar figure, because $300 a week is very different on a $1,000 week and a $2,500 week. If the percentage is climbing, the answer is almost always a price review before it is longer days.

Add up your fixed weekly costs, then divide by what you take on average per hour in the chair. That gives you the number of billable hours going entirely to costs before you earn a cent. Knowing it changes how you read a quiet week, because you can see exactly where the line is. It also answers whether a price rise or more hours is the real solution, and for most sole traders it is the price rise.

When your real hourly rate is under $120, when you are booked solid weeks ahead, or when you have absorbed two or more product cost rises without moving. Being fully booked is the clearest signal of all, because it means demand is ahead of what you charge. Work out the new rate from your costs and the hours you actually want to work, not from what the salon down the road charges. Their cost base is not yours.

Compare like for like, which almost nobody does. An employed wage includes super, annual leave, sick leave and someone else buying the colour. Renting a chair does not. To match a $60,000 salary you need considerably more than $60,000 through the door, because super, leave, product, insurance and tax all come out of your side. Work out your real hourly rate first, then compare it against the hourly value of the wage plus entitlements. Sometimes renting wins clearly, sometimes it does not.

Set the money aside the week you earn it, in a separate account you do not touch. The exact percentage depends on your income and structure, so your accountant sets the figure, not me. What I will say is that the most common reason a sole trader has a bad year is not poor takings, it is a tax bill that arrives for money already spent. Build the set-aside into your weekly numbers so what is left in the everyday account is genuinely yours.

70%, minimum, the same standard as a salon team. Most operators run between 30% and 40%. Working alone, this matters more, not less, because every gap in your day is unpaid and there is nobody else to fill it. A rebooked client is the difference between a full week and a week spent chasing. Ask at the basin, every time, before the card comes out.

Work backwards, not forwards. Take the income you want, add your fixed costs, your product cost and your tax set-aside. Divide that by your average spend per client, and you have the number of clients. Divide by the days you actually want to work and you have the daily target. Most people find the number is either comfortably reachable or clearly impossible, and either answer is useful. If it is impossible at your current prices, you have your answer about pricing.

Usually one of three things. Your prices have not moved while your costs have, so every client is worth less than they were two years ago. You are counting takings rather than what is left after costs and tax. Or the hours outside the chair, admin, ordering, socials, cleaning, are eating a day a week you are not paid for. Being fully booked and underpaid is the most common position in this industry, and it is a pricing problem, not an effort problem.

Price it per hour, not per service. A $400 service that takes 5 hours is $80 an hour before product. A $90 cut that takes 45 minutes is $120. The long, technical, impressive services are often the ones dragging your average down, especially once colour cost and the second application are counted. Run every service on your menu through the same calculation. The results usually surprise people, and they usually change the booking sheet.

Work out what share of your income comes from your top 10 clients. If a small number of people account for a large part of your week, that is a risk sitting quietly in your business, and it is invisible until one of them moves, has a baby or changes jobs. It does not mean anything is wrong. It means you should know the number, and know how many new clients would need to replace them, before you find out the hard way.

Yes, and the maths is better for you than it is for a salon. Aim for 17% to 20% of your total takings, with 10% as the floor. Working alone there is no commission to fund, so more of every sale stays with you. The trap is the stock itself. Every product on your shelf is your cash, not a supplier's, so start with the three or four lines your existing clients already use rather than a range you have to carry. And be clear about what it adds: gross profit runs roughly 60% to 65% of the retail revenue, so a $1,000 month in product is closer to $600 in your pocket. Worth doing, just count the $600 when you are deciding what the shelf earns, not the $1,000.

Monthly intelligence reporting for hair and beauty businesses. I take the numbers already sitting in your booking system, your accounts and your ecomm platform, and turn them into a small set of ranked, dollar-quantified decisions. There are three versions, built for salons, brands and sole traders, because the questions each one needs answered are different. What they share is the output: not a data dump, a short list of what to do next.

No. The Suite runs from a sole trader working alone through to a brand doing seven figures. What matters is that your numbers exist somewhere, in a booking system, an accounting file or an ecomm export. If the data is there, the reporting works. The one thing worth timing is marketing efficiency analysis for a brand, which needs real ad spend behind it before the numbers say anything useful. Everything else works from day one, and the smaller the business the faster a single clear decision shows up in the bank.

No. The monthly retainer runs month to month with no minimum term. To stop, give 30 days notice. There is one final payment after that, and your reporting runs right through to the end of that billing cycle, so you always finish on a complete month rather than a part one.

Exports you already have. For a salon, that is your booking system reports, your payroll and your accounting file. For a brand, your ecomm export, your ad spend and your accounts. For a sole trader, your income records and your expenses. I tell you exactly which reports to run and where to find them, so there is no guesswork at your end. You do not need to prepare, format or clean anything, and you do not need to change systems to do it. If it exports to a spreadsheet, I can work with it.

Yes. Your numbers are used to build your reporting and nothing else. I never share a client's report or name them, which is why every sample on this site is an anonymised version with the figures changed rather than someone's real month. You will not find your salon in anybody else's report, and you will not find theirs in yours.

A Snapshot is one month of your data, turned into the two reports that matter most for your business type. It is the way to see what this actually looks like before committing to anything ongoing. The monthly retainer is the full report set, every month, at a flat rate with nothing charged per report. If you start with a Snapshot and go on to the full system, the Snapshot fee is credited in full against your onboarding.

Snapshots are $497 for a sole trader, $997 for a salon and $1,497 for a brand, one-off, and credited in full against your onboarding if you continue. The monthly retainer is $497 for a sole trader with 6 reports, $1,197 for a salon with 7, and $1,497 for a brand with 8. Flat rate, everything included, no per-report add-ons. Before the retainer starts there is a one-time system build: $1,850 for a sole trader, $2,997 for a salon and $5,500 for a brand. That build includes your first full month of reporting, so retainer billing starts from month two.

Not for everything, but it decides where we start. The reporting that comes out of your booking system or ecomm platform works regardless of the state of your accounts. Anything that touches profit and loss or cash flow needs a reconciled set of books to be worth reading. If your books are behind, we start with what your operating data can tell you and bring the financial reporting in once the accounts catch up. Better a real answer to fewer questions than a confident answer built on numbers that are not right.

Your accountant tells you what happened and keeps you compliant. That work is essential and this does not replace it. What a set of accounts will not tell you is which stylist is carrying the floor, which product is quietly holding thousands in cash, or what to do about it on Monday. Accounts look backwards at the whole business. This looks at the operating detail underneath and turns it into decisions. Most clients keep both, because they answer different questions.

A coach works on you. This works on your numbers. I have been inside this industry for more than 20 years, 10 of those in senior management, so what you get is an operator reading your data and telling you what it says. Every report ends the same way: three ranked actions with the dollars attached, so you know what to do next and what it is worth doing. The focus is cash flow, the moves that put money back into the business fastest. A coach helps you think differently about your business. This shows you exactly where the money is going and which lever moves it.

Whatever you already use. This works from exports, so any mainstream booking system, accounting package or ecomm platform is fine. You do not install anything, you do not change systems, and there is nothing to integrate or connect. If your system can produce a report as a spreadsheet or a CSV, it will work. Nobody should be changing platforms to get better reporting.

Yes. There is an anonymised sample for each business type, showing the actual structure, the real metrics and the way the actions are laid out at the end. Client numbers are changed and nothing identifying appears, but the report itself is the genuine article rather than a marketing mock-up. Have a look before you book anything.