Playbook, salon or spa
Most salon billing questions are voucher questions
Ask any salon what its billing enquiries are and the honest answer is vouchers, then a long gap, then everything else. They arrive from people who did not buy the thing they are holding, with no reference, a vague idea of when it was bought and a treatment on it that may not be on the menu any more. Almost none of that can be answered without opening a record.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for billing and invoices holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The person asking is usually not the person who paid, so there is no order to look up from their side and nothing they can quote except the card in their hand.
- Several markets set minimum validity periods for vouchers and restrict short expiry dates, and those rules have moved recently, so the terms have to be indexed rather than inferred from whatever was printed on an old design.
- A voucher for a value and a voucher for a named treatment behave differently once list prices have risen, and that difference is the source of most of the awkward conversations at the desk.
- Group and corporate bookings need a proper invoice rather than a card receipt, which is a different document from anything the desk usually prints and often has to be asked for before the day.
How it arrives
- how long is my gift voucher valid for
- can i use part of my voucher and keep the rest
- what name shows up on my bank statement
- can we have an invoice for our team spa day
- my voucher is for a treatment you dont do any more
- can the bill be split between two of us
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The voucher terms you actually apply | Validity period, whether it is a value or a named treatment, part redemption, transferability, and what happens when prices rise. Index the current terms rather than the wording on last year's card, and review them, since this is the rule most likely to have changed under you. |
|---|---|
| The trading name that appears on a card statement | The descriptor shown on a bank statement where it differs from the salon name. One line, and it prevents a payment being reported as unrecognised, which is a worse phone call than it sounds. |
| Invoices for groups and companies | Whether an invoice can be issued, what details you need, when it has to be requested and what a card receipt covers instead. Corporate spa days are booked by somebody who has to expense them, so this decides the booking. |
| How a bill can be split | Whether payment can be divided at the till, whether it can be split before the day, and what happens when one person in a group does not pay. The desk deals with this every weekend without anything written behind it. |
The reply
Our voucher terms say how long a voucher runs for and whether it can be part used, and both are on the terms page [1]. Where a voucher was bought for a named treatment and our prices have changed since, the salon will explain what it covers now, but that depends on the individual voucher and I cannot look one up [2]. The name on your bank statement is the trading name rather than the salon name, which catches people out [3]. If you want the balance or the expiry on the voucher you are holding, leave me your name and an email with the number on the card and the salon will check it.
It gives the published terms first because that answers a good half of these messages outright. The named treatment case is flagged as genuinely individual rather than glossed, since that is where a confident wrong answer costs the salon a client and a voucher. The statement descriptor is included unprompted because it is one line and it prevents a payment dispute.
Where it stops
The trigger. Anybody asking about a specific voucher, a balance, an expiry on a card they are holding, or an invoice for a booking.
I cannot look up a voucher, see a balance or issue an invoice. Give me your name, an email and the number on the voucher or the booking it relates to, and the salon will check the record and reply.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never say a voucher is still valid, since that depends on a record the assistant cannot open.
- Never state a balance on a voucher or an account, whatever the client says is on it.
- Never promise an invoice will be issued in a particular format or by a particular date.
- Never say who bought a voucher, even to somebody holding the card.
Questions
- Why does the voucher question dominate so heavily?
- Because vouchers are bought by one person and used by another, months apart, with the terms in a place the second person never saw. Every other billing document in a salon is handed to the person who paid, at the till, on the day.
- Can it check the balance if we upload our voucher list?
- No, and it should not be given one. It answers from documents rather than from records, it cannot look anybody up, and a list of live voucher balances is a list of other people's purchases that has no business being in a public assistant.
- What should it do about an expired voucher?
- State the published validity period and hand over. Whether a salon honours an expired voucher is a commercial decision made per case by a person, and an assistant that answers either way is making that decision on the owner's behalf.
Keep reading
- Everything for a salon or spaPrices depend on hair length and condition, so a real quote needs a consultation. Patch tests and pregnancy questions need a person.
- Handling billing and invoices in generalInvoice copies, tax numbers, purchase order references. Nearly all of it is account specific, so the honest handling is process plus a clean handover.
- Waiting for one person's column to openClients wait for a person, not a service. What a short notice list really asks when the gap that opens is a three hour colour.
- The ingredient question that has to end in a refusalAn ingredient question is a safety question. The manufacturer holds the list, the patch test stands, and the assistant refuses.
- Shut Sunday and Monday, so nothing is read until TuesdayMany salons close two days running, so an honest wait is Tuesday. A scalp reacting tonight needs a number, not a message form.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.