Start The Financial Year Off Right With These 3 Tips

As all business owners are acutely aware, the end of the financial year can feel like climbing Mount Everest. Once tax time is over, you’ll have an accurate, up-to-date understanding of how profitable your business is, making it the perfect time to implement new financial habits to help boost your bottom line. 

Here are three ways to grow and protect your revenue (hint: Timely can help).

Know your worth (and charge accordingly)

Does the idea of increasing your price list make you feel queasy? It’s not uncommon for beauty professionals to undercut themselves by charging less than what their experience demands. Usually, this comes down to a fear of upsetting long-standing clients or losing new business to more affordable salons.

While it’s normal to second guess yourself around big business decisions – let’s be real, we all do it – there is so much to be gained from re-evaluating your price list.

In the short term, charging what you’re worth will lead to more profits. But there’s more to it than that. By bumping up the asking price for your services, you can work smarter, not harder. This can have a big impact on the longevity of your business by preventing burnout and providing a better work-life balance for you and your staff.

Reduce no-shows, maximise profits

No shows are a killer, particularly for businesses still recovering from Covid restrictions. There are two ways Timely Business Management Software can help you reduce no-shows in your business: one) by implementing a deposit policy and two) by sending out automated appointment reminders.

Customers who pay a deposit upfront are far less likely to cancel than those who don’t. (No really, businesses that take a deposit reduce their no-show rate by a whopping 55 per cent.) Salons that use Timely’s online booking service can request a deposit from the client (either a percentage of the total booking or a dollar amount – you choose) in order to secure their spot.

Automating appointment reminder messages (via SMS or email) are a simple-yet-effective way to remind clients of their upcoming bookings so they can plan accordingly. 

Minimise gaps in your calendar

Clients love an online booking – and so do we. Using Timely’s online booking feature, you can group your products and services together, making it easy to upsell when your clients book an experience online.

But sometimes, when you leave bookings in your clients’ hands, it can lead to big gaps in your calendar, which isn’t an effective use of your time. 

Timely has a simple solution. Simply turn on the ‘minimise gaps’ feature and the calendar will only show availability before and after booked timeslots. The result? No more awkward gaps. 

Just quietly, it’s a game-changer. Timely customer research has revealed that businesses that have enabled the ‘minimise gaps’ feature are up to 48 per cent busier with appointments than those that have not.