Just borrowing a tube
Your renters are meant to supply their own colour. In practice, one renter runs out of a shade mid-mix and takes one from your colour room. Another uses your developer because hers is in the car. A third decides it is easier to use your stock all the time and pay you something for it, and you agree on 'about' an amount per month.
Your colour order creeps up. The stock never quite matches your employed stylists' usage. When you ask a renter about it, she says she only took a couple of tubes, and she may be right. You have no way to know.
Why renter usage goes unrecorded
The colour room is shared and open. Stock is taken mid-service, when stopping to write something down feels like a nuisance, and there is no simple place to write it anyway.
The arrangement itself is often unclear. Is colour charged at cost, at cost plus a margin, by the tube or by the gram? Different renters may have agreed different things at different times.
And the salon's stock system, if there is one, does not distinguish between employed stylists and renters, so renter usage is just part of the salon's cost.
What that costs the salon
| Problem | Effect |
|---|---|
| Renters take stock unrecorded | Salon pays for renters' colour |
| Flat monthly guesses | Charges that bear no relation to use |
| Different terms per renter | Hard to apply fairly |
| Stock counts off | Reordering and cost figures distorted |
| Awkward conversations | Tension between owner and renters |
What you charge renters for colour, and on what basis, is between you, your renters and your adviser. We make the recording accurate so the conversation is based on facts.
How we track and recharge renter colour
- Each renter's terms for using salon stock are recorded: which products they may take, and how they are priced, such as cost, cost plus a percentage or a fixed list price.
- When a renter takes product, they scan it or pick it on a tablet in the colour room, choosing their name. If the salon uses a bowl-weighing system, grams used by renters are recorded against them there.
- Each use is priced by their terms and added to a running total the renter can see on their phone.
- The total is added to their regular rent statement as a separate line, and collected with the rent if rent is collected automatically.
- The salon's stock record is reduced by what renters take, so your own colour usage and reorders are not distorted.
- A monthly summary shows what each renter used, so you can review whether the arrangement still makes sense for both sides.
If your salon software already tracks backbar usage by person, we set it up for renters before adding anything new.
A month later
A renter runs short of a shade mid-mix, scans a tube from your colour room on the way past, and carries on. At the end of the month her statement shows each item, priced as agreed. Your stock count matches. The flat 'about' amount is gone, replaced by what was actually used, and neither side has to argue about it.
- Every item taken by a renter recorded
- Charges based on actual use
- Salon stock figures kept honest
- Clear statements for renters
Renters often prefer this too. A charge they can see line by line is easier to accept than a monthly figure they suspect is too high.
Does this happen in your colour room?
- Renters borrow colour from salon stock when they run short.
- Recharges are a rough monthly guess or nothing at all.
- Your colour order rises and you suspect renter usage.
- Different renters have different, unwritten terms.
- Asking a renter about stock feels uncomfortable.