Simple steps like optimizing your schedule can give your spa a firm foundation for future success
For spa owners, there are never enough hours in the day. Inventory management, schedule building, staffing, and more can make it hard to take a step back and ensure things are headed in the right direction — let alone find time for spa training.
To master spa management, you need to get your feet on solid ground. That’s where these best practices come in. By following the suggestions in this guide, you can lay a solid foundation across your many responsibilities. When you do, you’ll be able to worry less about the day-to-day and spend more time planning for success.
Essential spa management practices
Optimizing your schedule
Efficiency is the name of the spa management game, and that starts with your schedule. Any time your providers spend sitting around with nothing to do is a revenue black hole. One way to avoid that kind of cash leakage is to make sure your schedule is as tightly wound as an elegant watch. Start by nailing down exactly how long each service on your menu takes, including time for prep and clean up. If you’ve got real-world data to work with, your numbers will be even more accurate. Make sure your scheduling software reflects those times.
Now that you’ve got the building blocks for an optimized schedule, you can start to stack them. When clients book with you, you can subtly nudge them toward times that help to fill your schedule in an efficient way. For example, if a client calls the front desk about a massage, you can suggest times that fill lulls in your books. If the client hasn’t already got a time in mind, there’s a good chance they’ll take your suggestion. If they’d rather choose another time, no harm done.
This strategy works just as well in online booking. When a client selects a lavender sea salt scrub, you can show them some suggestions for booking times. None of those work? No worries; you’ve included a link to all the availabilities at the bottom of the list. Even if your recommended times don’t work for every client, there’s a good chance they’ll work for some, and every bit of efficient scheduling counts.
Acing your inventory
Next on the efficiency docket is inventory management. If you order too much, you risk being stuck with deadstock. Order too little, and you can disappoint clients and lose out on potential revenue. Both problems compound when you don’t know what you have on hand — or where it’s stored.
Level up your spa management by taking a thorough inventory and building a comprehensive map of where each item lives. Next, update that inventory as frequently as you can. Daily inventory counting is a strong start, but modern spa software can help you make real-time updates to your inventory. Integrating with your booking system can automatically update your inventory after an appointment to reflect what your providers used and what your clients bought.
Here’s where things get exciting. Over time, your inventory software can collect data about how quickly items move through your inventory. By reviewing that data, you can learn the best cadence for re-ordering, leading to less waste and healthier cash flow.
Running reports
If you’re looking for actionable insights, there’s no better way to find them than through reporting. Let’s start with revenue. Yours likely fluctuates throughout the year as holidays and seasons come and go. By running regular revenue reports, you can learn the swells and ebbs of your business and plan around them. If you know there’s a slow stretch coming, you can use the downtime to prepare for the next rush; if you know when you’ll be flush, you can safely reinvest your extra earnings and make your business better over time.
But reports are about more than mapping your revenue trends — they can also help you grow that revenue. Use reports to spot your most profitable products and services, and then project how much those margins would change if you adjusted your prices. You can also see how price changes might affect your average client spend. You may find that raising your prices could lead to healthier margins even if it slightly slows your sales.
Ok, but what about inventory usage? Marketing? Staff performance? Yes, yes, and yes. Reports can show you data around sales velocity and supply usage rates, making it easier to establish a healthy cadence for orders. You can use them to transform client data into marketing segments and analyze the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.
Good spa management solutions will include templates that make it easy to run these reports. Truly great solutions will let you customize your reports so you can focus on what matters most to your business.
Supporting your staff
Spa management is about more than optimizing operations. Your staff is the lifeblood of your business, and no spa management training program would be complete without tips for keeping them at the top of their game. Great providers are the key to great client experiences, and they’ll need your help to bring their A-game.
Before you do anything else, you need to make sure your employees get paid their full wages on time, with no exceptions. One of the best ways to check this box is to use spa software that can read staff hours and automatically pay them via direct deposit.
Build on that momentum by setting your providers up for success. Want your clients to think their providers are mind readers? Start collecting notes on each client and building robust client profiles. What scents does this client prefer? What do they want to drink while they wait, and what kind of music do they want to hear during their appointment? What injuries should a massage pay special attention to? If your provider can review this info beforehand, they can prepare the perfect experience without the client saying a word.
Great spa management doesn’t have to be complex, but it does require the right tools and strategies. By implementing these best practices, you can keep your bases covered and your eyes on the prize.
