Most salon software comparisons are feature lists, which is the wrong shape for this decision. A feature list tells you what a system has. It does not tell you whether the thing will answer your questions.
So here is the inverse: the things a salon register has to track properly, and the question each one exists to answer. If a system cannot do one of these, you will find out in month four.
Service, staff and duration on every line
Not just what was sold — who did it and how long it took.
Without the staff attribution, nothing about commission, productivity or rebooking works. Without real duration, your booking system is offering slots that do not match reality.
Answers: who is producing, and whether your menu durations are honest. A colour listed at sixty minutes that consistently takes eighty-five is why you run late every afternoon.
Retail separately from service
These are different businesses on one ticket. Different margins, different commission treatment, different tax treatment in many places, and stock only applies to one of them.
A system that lumps them into one total makes your margin unreadable and your commission wrong. We have gone through why retail and service have to stay separate at the register in detail — it is the single most common cause of commission that does not add up.
Answers: what your retail is actually contributing, and what your attachment rate is.
Commission, at the line level
Commission has to be calculable from the ticket, per line, with the rule that applies to that line — different rates for service and retail, tiered rates, a different rate for a new client, sliding scales.
If the system stores a total and the rules live in a spreadsheet, you are doing payroll by hand and you will keep doing it.
Answers: what each person earned, without a Sunday evening.
Tips, split by tender, with the fee treatment recorded
Cash tips and card tips are different problems. Card tips are authorised after the sale, have to be allocated before the batch closes, and in many arrangements carry a processing cost.
Who bears that cost matters and is regulated. Under federal law an employer may not keep any portion of an employee's tips, and the FLSA rules on tip credits and tip pools are specific. Some states go further and prohibit deducting card fees from tips at all. This is worth confirming for your state rather than accepting whatever your system defaults to — we have written about card fees on tips and it is a genuinely common compliance mistake.
Answers: what is owed to whom, and whether your handling is lawful where you are.
The client, on every ticket
A ticket with no client attached is a sale you cannot learn anything from.
The record needs history: what they had, when, with whom, what they paid, what they bought, what they tipped, and any notes — formula, allergies, preferences.
Answers: who your best clients are, whether people are coming back, and what a returning caller should be offered without being asked.
The failure mode here is duplicates. Two records for one person, created by a misspelling or a new phone number, and every report about that person is now wrong. Duplicate client records are worth fixing before they reach four figures.
Packages, memberships and gift cards as liabilities
All three are money you have taken for something you have not yet done. That is a liability, not revenue, and a system that books it as revenue on the day of sale is flattering your month and misleading you.
You need the outstanding balance, per client, at any time. It is also the thing that has to migrate if you ever change systems, because it is somebody else's money.
Answers: how much unredeemed service you owe, and whether your good months are real.
No-shows and cancellations, with the time they happened
Marked on the appointment, not deduced from a gap in the day.
The time matters. A cancellation eight days out is a slot you refilled. One at nine in the morning for a ten o'clock is a loss. Same event in a naive report, completely different economically.
Answers: your real no-show rate, whether your policy is working, and which clients need a deposit. Deciding a cancellation policy without this data is guessing.
The close, every day
Expected against actual, per tender, plus the card batch.
Answers: whether you have a counting problem or a theft problem. You cannot tell without a run of daily numbers, which is why the daily close is not optional.
The shape of the whole thing
Notice that every item above exists to answer a question, and the questions are the ones owners actually ask: who is producing, what makes money, who is coming back, what do I owe, is the day balancing.
A system that tracks these can answer them in a few clicks. A system that does not will let you run a salon perfectly well and leave you unable to explain why a good month was good.
When you are evaluating, do not ask whether it has reports. Ask it one of those questions and watch how many places somebody has to look.