Salon software and booking apps in Australia: deposits, commission and stock

Where does a salon actually lose money?

Most salons don’t lose money on the booking calendar. They lose it on empty chairs from no shows, commission calculated by hand, and colour and retail stock nobody counts. A booking platform fixes the first problem well. The other two are where owners end up in spreadsheets late on a Sunday.

That shapes what software is worth paying for. If you run one salon with a handful of stylists, the right answer is almost always a good platform, set up properly. If you run three or more salons, pay commission on a tiered scheme, sell a lot of retail or send stylists to clients’ homes, the gaps get expensive enough to fix with small custom pieces.

What do Fresha, Timely, Kitomba, Shortcuts and Phorest do well?

All of them handle online booking, reminders, client records and payments. They differ in pricing model, payments and how open they are to other software. A few points from their own sites at the time of writing (November 2026):

Platform	Worth knowing	Where salons tend to outgrow it
Fresha	Subscription from A$44.95 a month for one calendar, plus a 20% one time fee (minimum A$8) on brand new clients who find you through its marketplace. No fee on returning clients	Marketplace fees on growth, group reporting
Shortcuts	Fusion platform for hair, barber, beauty and multi site businesses, with ShortcutsPay handling deposits through to tips	Bespoke commission tiers, custom client apps
Kitomba	Long established with Australian and New Zealand salons, with tools to reduce no shows	Cross salon stock and payroll logic
Timely	Sold as salon software made simple, aimed at hair and beauty businesses	Check API access and group reporting before you commit
Phorest	Publishes a developer API with guides and a reference	Depends on what the API exposes for your use

The practical test is the API. A platform with a documented API lets you add a commission engine, a stock tracker or a branded app without leaving it. Without one, you are limited to exports, which is often still enough for payroll.

Can a salon charge deposits and no show fees?

Yes, but the terms must be fair and clear, because salon booking terms are standard form contracts under the Australian Consumer Law. Since 9 November 2023, proposing, using or relying on an unfair term in a standard form consumer or small business contract has been banned, with penalties for breaches.

The ACCC explains that a term is unfair if it causes a significant imbalance in the parties’ rights, isn’t reasonably necessary to protect the business’s legitimate interests, and would cause the client harm if enforced. Its examples include terms that penalise one party, but not the other, for breaching or ending the contract.

For a booking flow, that translates into a short checklist:

• Show the deposit and cancellation policy before the client pays, not in a link after.
• Keep the fee proportionate to the real loss, such as a share of the service price.
• Give a reasonable notice window, and let clients reschedule inside it.
• Treat the salon’s own cancellations fairly too, with a refund or credit.
• Record the version of the policy each client accepted, with a timestamp.

Payments changed on 1 October 2026. The Reserve Bank’s Payments System Board removed surcharging on eftpos, Mastercard and Visa debit, prepaid and credit cards from that date. Any booking or terminal setting that adds a card fee should be off, and prices should absorb card costs.

How should commission work alongside the Hair and Beauty Award?

Pay award wages for the hours worked first, then pay commission as an extra. The Hair and Beauty Industry Award 2020 sets minimum rates and penalty rates, and the consolidated version on the Fair Work Commission site includes amendments to 1 July 2026. The award has no clause that lets commission stand in for those rates.

Penalty rates are where hand calculation goes wrong. For ordinary hours, the award sets:

When	Full time and part time	Casual (includes loading)
Saturday, 7.00 am to 6.00 pm	133%	158%
Sunday	200% (10.00 am to 5.00 pm)	225% (any time)
Public holiday	250%	250%

A commission engine worth building takes sales from your platform, applies your tiers (service, retail, rebooking targets), checks the award amount for the same pay period, and exports one clean file to Xero or your payroll system. Chair renters are different again: they are usually contractors running their own business, and the line between contractor and employee is a legal question to settle with an adviser before you design the software around it. Our workflow automation service covers this kind of export work.

What about retail stock, colour and back bar costs?

Platforms track retail sales well, but few track colour and back bar usage per service, which is where a colour heavy salon’s margin disappears. A small tool can log grams of colour used per client from a tablet at the mixing station, cost each service from supplier prices, and flag stylists or services that run over. Reorder alerts and supplier ordering can sit on top. This usually starts as a spreadsheet replacement rather than a new system.

Do skin penetration rules apply to beauty treatments?

In NSW, yes for many treatments. NSW Health says the Public Health Act 2010 and the Public Health Regulation 2022 regulate skin penetration by people who are not registered health practitioners. Regulated activities include beauty treatments, body and ear piercing, cosmetic enhancements and tattooing, and operators must register with their local council. Laser hair removal is not a skin penetration procedure under the Regulation.

The rules focus on infection control and inspections, not software. Still, if your salon offers these services, your system should keep treatment records, staff training and sterilisation logs where an inspector can see them, and treat client health notes carefully under the Privacy Act. Other states run their own schemes, so a group across borders needs per state settings.

Groups and mobile stylists

Multi salon groups and home service businesses are the two cases most likely to justify a custom build. A group owner wants one view of utilisation, rebooking rate, retail per client and commission cost across salons. Platforms report per location well and across locations less well, so a small reporting layer that pulls from each salon’s data is a common first project; our data analytics service covers that.

Mobile stylists need travel time in the calendar, a service area, and routing between appointments. A booking app built on a platform API, or a light custom booking flow, can handle that. Our booking and marketplace app cost guide explains how those projects are priced.

Where does AI help a salon?

AI helps most with messaging: rebooking nudges, review replies and answering routine questions out of hours. A model can draft a rebooking message based on the client’s usual interval, reply to common questions about prices and parking, and summarise reviews by theme. Keep a person in the loop for anything about allergies, skin reactions or complaints, and don’t send client health notes to an AI tool without a clear basis under the Privacy Act.

What do salon builds cost?

These are indicative AUD market ranges, ex GST, for planning, not quotes. They sit inside the bands Expeed publishes for Australian custom software: $15,000 to $40,000 for simple internal tools and $40,000 to $150,000 for mid complexity systems.

Build	Indicative range
Commission and payroll export automation	$10,000 to $30,000
Colour and back bar costing tool	$15,000 to $35,000
Group reporting across salons	$20,000 to $50,000
Branded booking app on a platform API	$40,000 to $100,000

The API is the main cost driver. A documented API keeps work small; scraping exports adds time and fragility.

How AWLabs approaches salon software

We start with a Development Consult to find where time or money leaks. If a build looks worthwhile, a paid Discovery Audit checks your platform’s API and your pay rules, then you get a fixed price Schedule of Work with three options: The Minimum, The Recommended and The Complete. Senior engineers lead every build, with updates every Tuesday and Friday during Sydney business hours.

Our closest work is Helen, a Central Coast hairdresser, whose bookings and client records we moved out of handwritten notes into one system; you can watch her story on our client stories page. We haven’t built for a salon group, and we’ll tell you if better setup of your current platform would do the job. This page is general information, not legal advice.