Your Guide to Salon Back Bar Inventory

Managing your salon back bar inventory is one thing you should focus on. Unfortunately, many salon owners overlook their back bar and ignore their sales potential. By adopting the salon inventory best practices, it can largely boost your revenue. Keeping track of your inventory ensures that you only order products that you need and promotes financial transparency in your business.

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1. What Is A Back Bar In A Salon?
2. How to Manage the Back Bar to Make Your Salon More Profitable?
3. Benefits of Salon Software in Managing Your Back Bar
4. 11 Ways to Improve Your Back Bar Management
5. Conclusion

What Is A Back Bar in A Salon?

Back bar refers to the supplies used in providing services to clients within a salon. They are often monitored to understand profitability for the salon owner or manager.

Back Bar Fees

A salon employee gets a commission when they provide a service to a client. To determine how much commission an employee earns, the products’ costs, also known as bar back fees, are subtracted from the price of the service and then multiplied by the commission percentage agreed.

Back Bar Products

These are the professional products used in the salon or spa for providing services to clients.

Back Bar in Payroll

In the back bar in payroll, every deduction made on the employee services is saved, and it’s used to create the inventory report. It’s particularly useful when the commission amounts don’t correspond with the total sales.

Why Is Salon Back Bar Important?

Salon back bar when managed properly will make increase your salon's profit margins since you’ll be controlling commissions, supply and storage costs. You can even charge clients different rates for services e.g. hair dye, happy hour offers etc.

As you monitor your clients’ preferred products, you’ll have the opportunity to understand their trends and stock your back bar accordingly.

How To Manage The Back Bar To Make Your Salon More Profitable

How you manage your hair salon inventory spreadsheet will impact your business. Ensure the amounts of every product used is measured correctly and recorded. In this case, a salon color inventory sheet or similar software will be more appropriate than paper.

If there are employees on a commission basis, or booth renters, charging them will become easy with a free salon inventory app.

Benefits of Salon Software in Managing Your Back Bar

Having an inventory management software is an essential tool for all salon owners and it's easy to use since it has a salon inventory list example. It gives accurate reports on the back bar products in use so that you can see which products to purchase.

Additionally, a salon inventory management system promotes proper salon stock management. It also makes other aspects such as salon color inventory management easy. Here are some of its benefits.

Accurate Reports

The software will give you accurate reports on the back bar products being used so that you can make proper business decisions such as which products to order.

Identification of Mistakes

It helps in identification of mistakes in reporting, minimizing the risk of fraud in your business. Every product that gets in or out is recorded in the software, making it hard for people with ill motives to steal from you.

Minimize Product Wastage

All the details of a product are usually stored in it and you can identify products whose expiration date is near and use them to avoid wastage.

Remember, salon products also have a timeline within which they should be used.

Proper Stock Management

Additionally, a hair salon inventory management system promotes proper salon stock management by ensuring you have all the products you need to avoid last-minute ordering, which could create inconveniences.

Salon software helps avoid overstocking of products. Just like understocking is bad, overstocking is also not a good thing for a business. It might lead to an imbalance in the cash flow, especially if the goods are slow-moving.

It also makes other aspects such as salon color inventory management easy. You don’t have to count everything on your back bar manually, and probably make mistakes, unknowingly. A salon software lets you record a product any time it gets into the back bar, and when it is used. You can always have an easy-to-access list of which products are available and which are not.

11 Ways to Improve Your Back Bar Management

• 1. First In First Out

  Ensure that older products are used before the new ones, to avoid product expiration. Using older products first also ensures that there will be no time when you will have out of date stock.

• 2. Take Stock Counts Regularly

  Practice proper hair salon inventory management by taking inventory counts frequently to avoid running out of top products. It also helps you identify the slow-moving goods so that you can avoid buying them in large quantities.

• 3. Be Detail-Oriented

  Don't assume any aspect of the business, as it could lead to costly mistakes. Be keen on every detail of your salon back bar to identify mistakes and fix them.

• 4. Minimize the Waste

  Avoid buying slow-moving back bar products that might expire, freezing your cash, bringing losses, and polluting the environment. These goods might also become outdated when better products are invented.

• 5. Calculate Monthly Usage

  Calculating monthly usage will ensure that you will never run out of stock unexpectedly. It also helps you plan your budget properly. Additionally, it prevents cases of fraud, since you can easily identify an imbalance in the total amount of goods that have gotten in, and those that have gotten out.

• 6. Take Into Account Busy Seasons

  Get more retail products for the busy seasons, and less for the slow ones e.g. busier at Christmas and quieter in January and summer months. Don’t let clients come to your salon and go home unattended due to the lack of their preferred products. During the slow months, don’t buy too many products as they may stay on the shelves longer than expected.

• 7. Determine The Min Stock

  Determine a minimum amount of stock, just in time delivery, etc. before placing the next order. This ensures you don’t overstock your business, which might lead to product wastage and financial problems. It also prevents cases where there are no products in the inventory, which reduces the salon’s profitability and inconveniences customers.

• 8. Ensure Stock is Stored Safely and Securely

  Keeping your stock safe and secure ensures no product gets damaged or stolen. Let the products be well packaged and kept in a clean, conducive environment. Still, be careful on who you give access to the back bar, to reduce stock theft. On top of that, ensure your premises are well secured to prevent break-ins and theft.

• 9. Get Staff Involved

  Involve your staff and let them know what is expected of them, and listen to their suggestions as well. Remember, their relationship with the clients can give you reliable insights. Involving them also makes them feel appreciated and valued, which boosts their productivity. Increased productivity leads to an increase in profitability, which is the dream of every business owner.

• 10. Know Your Clients' Needs

  Knowing your clients' needs ensures that they are satisfied with your services. You can conduct surveys for salons by asking them questions or studying their behavioral patterns.

  Involve your employees in this too since they spend more time with the clients, and they also know which products they most prefer.

• 11. Push The Slow-moving Stock

  Don't let deadstock reduce your cash flow. Offer promotions on services that require a product that’s slow-moving or discount your retail product and sell them out.

  Slow movers might also expire while still in stock or become outdated, which is a loss to your salon business.

Is It Possible to Fully Automate Your Salon Back Bar?

It is possible to fully automate a salon back bar. All you have to do is get a salon inventory software, where all products getting in or out of the back bar are recorded. Automating the back bar comes with several advantages such as preventing last-minute ordering and fraud.

Conclusion

Keeping track of your salon back bar inventory not only gives you cost control of your business operations, but it also enhances customers’ experience.

A back bar has the capability of bringing in more revenue to your salon, but that will only happen if it is properly managed. Using software to track the information is even more recommendable. It makes things easy by improving accuracy and giving important insights into the cash flow of your business.

And if you love these ideas or have some other ideas that you've used in the past to promote your salon business, why not share them with the Zolmi community in the comment section below. We would also be delighted to answer your questions, as well.

Citations

Business marketing: understand what customers value
https://alexduchak.com/s/Finding-the-Platform-in-Your-Product.pdf

An inventory of shimmers
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=bl0udWQii48C&oi=fnd&pg=PA

Using inventory for competitive advantage through supply chain management
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/eb014615/full/html