A salon POS has to do something a restaurant POS never does: attribute every line of a sale to the person who performed it. That single requirement is why general point-of-sale systems feel wrong in a salon, and it is the thing to test hardest.
What makes a salon sale different
Every service belongs to somebody. A colour by Maria and a blow-dry by Sam on the same ticket are two different people's numbers. If the system attributes the whole sale to whoever rang it up, your commission figures are wrong from day one and nobody will trust the reports.
Commission rates vary by line. Services and retail are usually paid differently, and often a colour and a cut are too. The register is where that gets recorded, so the register has to understand it.
Tips are attached to a person, not a ticket. Split between two technicians on one sale, paid by card, and reported for payroll.
Retail sits beside services. Same sale, different margin, different commission, different tax treatment in some states.
The appointment and the sale are the same event. A salon POS that does not know about the appointment book is doing half the job.
The five things to test in a demo
Do not watch their demo. Make them do these.
A two-technician ticket. A colour with one person and a blow-dry with another, on one payment. Watch whether both get credited correctly, and how long it takes to ring.
A product added to a service sale. Different commission rate, one payment.
A tip split between two people, paid by card.
A price adjusted at the desk. A discount, a comp, a loyalty redemption. Watch who ends up carrying the reduction — the salon or the technician — because that is a policy question the software will decide for you if you do not decide it first.
Close out the day. Ask to see the day-end report, and whether it shows what you would need to run payroll without a spreadsheet.
What it must track
- Service and retail sales per person, separated
- Commission at whatever rates you actually use
- Tips by person, by day, by payment type
- Rebooking — did the client book the next appointment before leaving
- Retail attachment — what share of service clients bought something
- Chair or room utilisation
The last three are the ones owners tend not to ask for and later wish they had. Rebooking rate in particular is the single best leading indicator in a salon, and most systems will show it if you ask at setup.
The tips and commission question underneath the software
A POS will faithfully record whatever arrangement you configure, including one that is not lawful. Two things are worth settling before setup rather than after.
Who pays the card fee on a tip. There are rules, and they vary. We went through it in the card fee on a tip and who pays it.
What the commission structure actually is, written down, before it goes into software. Nail tech commission structures compared lays out the common ones, and the salon commission calculator does the arithmetic against booth rent.
The cost lines
Software per month — check whether it is per terminal or per stylist, because both exist in this category and both punish growth. Hardware. Payment processing, which over a year is usually the largest line and the least compared. Setup.
Ours is flat by team size, which means a second till does not change the bill, and it includes the AI receptionist alongside the register. The pricing page has the tiers.
The half most salon POS comparisons ignore
The register serves the person in front of you. It does nothing about the phone ringing while your hands are in someone's hair — which is the actual reason salons miss bookings.
That is why ours is both halves in one system rather than a register with an integration. But the general point stands whatever you buy: decide about the phone when you decide about the register, because doing them separately usually means paying twice and integrating them yourself.
Sonorch POS has the register detail. If the phone is the more urgent half for you, it can run that way too — get in touch and we will tell you honestly which half you actually need first.