Services - Adding and Editing Services

Setting up your services

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To get to the Services settings screen choose Menu - Services - Service Add/Edit.

By settings up services in Salon Swift you can book appointments that have the correct time allocation, price and other settings as shown below.  Many users don't fully explore all the options available to them regarding services.  Read below on how to set services with basic settings or with full settings.

Add a new service (basic settings)

Please note, after entering each item below press the TAB key on your keyboard.  This will step you through to the next required item so you dno't have to hunt for them with your mouse.  This will speed up inputting all your services dramatically.

1. Press the Add New Service button at the top of the screen
2. Enter the Service Name (eg: Foils - 3/4 Head)
3. Enter the Service Category (eg: Foils
4. Enter the Service Time (This is how long it takes to DO the service.  IE: How long does it take to put the colour in the hair.  EG: 45 minutes)
5. Enter the Development Time (This is only necessary for services that need it, usually colour services in a hair salon.  EG: 45 minuntes to let the colour process/develop.  During this time Salon  Swift will allow a gap where you can do other services on other clients if need be)
6. If you have entered a Development Time the Finishing Time option will become available.  This is a second appointment block that appears after the development time.  It's recommended to only use this Finishing Time for services like perms where there are multiple parts to the service.  It's not recommended to use the Finishing Time for colours for example, as most colours will have a haircut booked in after them, so you'd have a Finishing Time appointment block AND a haircut block. 
7. The Display order can be skipped if you're ordering your services alphabetically (see Appointment Settings for details on this).  If you HAVE setup your services to order numerically, not alphabetically, set this number to determine in which order the service will appear.  It's recommended for new users to ignore this option and order services alphabetically.
8. Enter the Price you charge for this service.  Note that as you type the price the Hourly Rate underneath lets you know what you charge your time out for per hour as a useful piece of info.

That's all the basic settings that you need to setup your services.  When done press the Save button on the bottom left of the screen.

Add a new service (all the other settings)

The above instructions are all most businesses need when setting up their services for the first time.  In time though you may find you have further requirements.  Please read below descriptions on the other settings for services:

• Resources

Choose a resource that your service requires.  A great example is a facial steamer for a beauty salon.  If you assign the facial steamer to a service and you only have one facial steamer Salon Swift will alert you when booking an appointment if the facial steamer is in use at that time.  To setup Resources please read Service Resources.

• Prerequisite Service

This feature is best described by the hairdressing industries recent requirements in some areas to have skin tests performed before a colour is performed on a client.  You can set a pre-requisite service in this area (EG: a Skintest service) for a colour and if you try and book a colour without the client having had a skintest before Salon Swift will alert you the client has not had their skintest yet.

• Commission Category / Category Name

You can assign each service a Commission Category that can be used when Salon Swift works out commissions for you.  It's not a necessity, but some businesses like to separate their services into different categories (colours, treatments, haircuts for example) and pay commission based on those categories.  Others simply groups all services together and therefore don't need Commission Categories.

• Service Options
  • Is Active. Choose this to de-activate or "delete" a service you don't want in the system anymore.
  • Display in POS.  If you untick this option the service won't appear in the POS screen.
  • Display in Appt Book. If you untick this option the service won't appear in the Appointment Book.  Useful for services that are upsold later and are never booked in advance.
  • Is Taxable. Untick this option to remove tax from the service when reporting tax.
  • Is Tax included in Price.  Untick this option to remove tax from the service price.
  • Can't be discounted. Tick this option if you don't want employees to be able to discount the item in any circumstance.
  • Online Booking Visible.  Tick this option to have this service appear in the online booking system (if setup).

• Optional Settings
  • Public Name. When dealing with the public via the marketing tools such as SMS, it's handy to have a term that they understand.  If I were reminding a client their colour is due, they should receive a message stating their "colour" is due soon, not their "3/4 head foils" is due soon.  Type a name in here that the public would understand so when they receive their reminders it makes sense to them.

• • Rebook Reminder. If you want to have your clients that haven't rebooked reminded their services are due soon, use this dropdown to select how often that service needs doing.  EG:  Waxing may be 4 weeks, colour may be 6 weeks, a men's haircut may be 4 weeks.

• • Colour in Appt Book. If you have set your appointment colouring to be "Service" coloured in the Appointment Settings screen you can use this colour chooser to select what colour you want this appointment to be.

• • Barcode. Some salons like to print out a sheet of services and use a barcode scanner to book appointments with them.  They also like to use the barcode scanner to scan upsold services at the POS screen.  If you would like to do this press the Generate New Barcode button underneath to have a custom barcode added to the service.  You can then print out a Service Barcode Report from the Service Reports area to use this feature.

Advanced Pricing

To get to the Advanced Pricing area, choose the Advanced Pricing Tab at the top of the screen.

• Override Reward Points and Override Redeem Points

If you have a rewards system setup (read Setting up Client Rewards Systems for & Pointsmore info), you can let Salon Swift know that this service has different point requirements to other services.  Simply adjust the figures to suit what you'd like them to be or leave them alone to behave like the rest of the rewards system.

• Adjust pricing based on employee experience level

This is a Tiered Pricing system.  If you've setup your staff to have different Service Levels (read Service Levels here for more info), you can then tell Salon Swift how much each employee should charge for this service. The beauty of this system is you can have a service, called for example "Ladies Haircut" and each staff member can charge a different amount of money for that service based on their skill level (eg: junior, senior, artistic director). Salon Swift will adjust the price of the service for you depending on who does the work.

• Allow employee to purchase at discount?

Tick this box if you'd like staff to be able to purchase this service at a lower price than the public.  Some salons offer their services for free, others charge a smaller amount.  A good example is colour, you may still charge your staff a small amount for this for usage costs.  Enter what you'd like to charge staff for this service (if anything) in this area.