Industry · Salon & beauty
POS system for a salon or barbershop in Kenya
A salon sells two things with nothing in common. A wash-and-blow-dry has no stock and takes ninety minutes of a named stylist's time. A tub of relaxer is stock, has a cost, and walks out of the door if nobody is counting. The bill at the end usually has both on it.
Most salons run this on a diary and a cash box. The diary knows who did what and the cash box knows the total, and neither knows whether the stylist who is always busy is actually the profitable one, or how much retail product left without being sold. Commission gets calculated from memory at the end of the month, which is where the arguments start.
What solves it
Services and products on one bill
A treatment priced by appointment and a retail product priced per unit go on the same sale, on any combination of tenders.
Sales attributed per staff member
Each service line carries the stylist who performed it, so commission is a report rather than a reconstruction.
Retail stock actually tracked
Product sold over the counter reduces stock; product used in a treatment can be recorded as consumption. The two are different and should look different.
Repeat customers on record
Purchase history per client, which is what makes a reminder message worth sending rather than a guess.
Manager-gated discounts
"Friend of the salon" pricing is the most common leak in this trade. Gating it puts a name against every one.
A worked example: which chair actually earns
Two stylists. Grace is booked solid and everyone assumes she is the best earner. Mary is quieter. At month end the salon has taken KES 480,000 and nobody can say who brought in what, so commission is split on a rough sense of who was busy.
With service lines attributed, the picture is usually different from the assumption. Grace did 96 appointments averaging KES 2,600 — KES 249,600 — but 70% were washes and trims at the bottom of the price list, and she gave nine discounts. Mary did 61 appointments averaging KES 3,800 — KES 231,800 — mostly treatments and colour, with no discounts and KES 34,000 of retail product sold alongside.
Mary is the more profitable chair on materially fewer appointments, and the salon was about to reward the other outcome. The fix is not to demote anyone: it is to move Grace's booking mix towards treatments and to notice that retail attach-on is a skill some staff have and others do not. Neither insight exists without attributing the line to the person.
- →Grace: 96 appointments, KES 249,600, 9 discounts, low retail
- →Mary: 61 appointments, KES 231,800, no discounts, KES 34,000 retail
- →Busier is not the same as more profitable
- →Commission calculated from records, not from memory
The features this trade leans on
Each one goes deeper than this page does — start with the first.
Branches, staff and control
Shared catalogue, separate stock, transfers that are movements, and permissions per branch.
Customers and loyalty
Credit accounts that do not go missing, loyalty that returns, and a debtor list you can actually chase.
Selling at the counter
Split payments, held orders, manager-gated discounts and a drawer count that reconciles.
Stock you can trust
Batch and expiry, serial numbers, reorder levels, stock takes and the formulas behind them.
Questions from this trade
Can I sell a service and a product on the same bill?
Yes. A treatment priced per appointment and a retail item priced per unit sit on one sale, settled with any combination of cash, M-Pesa, card or store credit. Only the product moves stock, which is the distinction that matters.
Can I see how much each stylist brought in?
Yes. Service lines carry the staff member who performed them, so takings per stylist, average ticket, discounts given and retail sold alongside are all reportable. Commission stops being a monthly negotiation.
How do I stop retail products disappearing?
Track them as stock and separate sale from consumption. Product sold to a client reduces stock as a sale; product used during a treatment is recorded as consumption. When both are recorded, the remainder is a real variance you can ask about.
Does it handle appointments?
Services are priced and sold per appointment and attributed to the staff member who delivered them. For salons that need heavy diary management, the strength here is the money side — pricing, attribution, retail stock and commission — rather than replacing a booking calendar.
Can I run more than one branch?
Yes. Branches share the service and product catalogue but hold their own stock and staff, and permissions are scoped per branch so one manager does not see another branch's numbers.
Can I use it for more than one shop?
Yes. Branches share one product catalogue but hold their own stock, so a transfer between them is a recorded movement rather than a re-count. Reports run per branch or across all of them, and staff permissions are set per branch — a Kisumu supervisor does not need to see Nairobi's margins.
Can I stop staff from giving discounts or deleting sales?
Yes. Discounts, voids and refunds sit behind a manager PIN, and every one of them records who authorised it and when. Staff accounts carry role permissions, so a cashier can sell without seeing cost prices, editing products or opening reports. A void that reverses stock is a movement in the audit trail, not a gap in it.
What does it cost?
Plans run from KES 1,499/month for a single-branch till to KES 14,999/month for unlimited scale, with the online shop, M-Pesa checkout and KRA eTIMS receipts included from KES 2,999/month. Every plan starts with a 14-day trial and no card. There is no hardware to buy — sell.ke runs on a phone, tablet or laptop you already own.
Try it in your salon & beauty
Fourteen days, no card, no hardware to buy. Import your product list or let Amina build it from a photo of your price list.