Applying the Spa Benchmark Report

18 July 2014/in Articles, Business Intelligence, Les Nouvelles Esthetiques, Spa /by chris

In my previous article I looked at the idea of benchmarking and how you can benchmark against yourself (previous performances), your competitors (those that are near you) and the industry as a whole.

All of this is in context of the South African Spa Benchmark report and how it can be put to practical use for you as an owner of either one or many spas.

The benefit of benchmarking against yourself is fairly evident, ie when you compare your current performance is it better or worse than previous performances.

Faster, Easier Email – With Stats

18 July 2014/in Software /by chris

For many years now ESP Marketing Assistant has offered salons and spas the ability to bulk email their clients. There is a feature to create an email and the ability to filter the recipients from your ESP client database.

However, when it comes to delivery of the emails it can get a little tricky because you are sending them through your normal email service provider. The upside of this is that you don’t have to pay for the emails in the same way that you would through a third party bulk email provider but the down side is that most email service providers have a limit of how many emails you can send through their servers in a given period of time and if you exceed this they may block you as a spammer.

Green Spa Rating

15 July 2014/in General News /by chris

ESP is proud to introduce the Green Spa Rating tool, which has been developed by combining our expertise in Spa Management Software with the innovative leadership of Green Spa Company in the area of green spa business, to assist the wellness industry to save resources and operate sustainably.

Catch me if you can

10 July 2014/in Uncategorized /by Karl Markwald

Is this you: “I trust my staff, but how can I be sure that they are not stealing from me?”

In my seventeen years at ESP there has been one thing that has always been present in the businesses of our clients, and that is employee theft. In this month’s article I would like to look at this issue, what causes it and what possible steps can be taken in order to avoid it.

The One Thing!

10 July 2014/in Uncategorized /by Karl Markwald

For a long time in my own home I had the feeling that no matter how hard my wife and I worked we could just not keep our house clean. Even on days when the housekeeper had worked the house somehow still felt messy – and it drove me crazy!

Spa Benchmarking

14 May 2014/in Articles, Business Intelligence, Les Nouvelles Esthetiques, Spa /by Arno Steijn

Wouldn’t you like to know?

Salon and Spa owners have often joked with me over the years about me giving them their competitor’s data. This is usually said with a big smile and a laugh afterwards, but I often wonder what they would do if I said, okay, I’ll get it for you… I think that they would actually take it!

On the other hand I have had many owners threaten about the consequences of their data being shared with anyone else as if it contained secrets that if revealed could lead to the end of the world as we know it.

Important Notice for ESP Wage Assistant Users

5 March 2014/in Software, Wage Assistant /by Arno Steijn

Remember to set your Wage Annualisation start date to 01/03/2014!

If you use the annualisation feature in Wage Assistant then remember to change your annualisation start date to 01/03/2014 for the new financial year. This should be done before starting the MARCH 2014 payroll run but only after completing your FEBRUARY 2014 payroll.

How to change your Annualisation Start Date:

· In Wage Assistant select Set Up
· Then set Annualization Start to 1/03/2014
· Ensure that the Enable Annualization box is ticked in order to make use of this feature

What is Tax Annualisation?

5 March 2014/in Software, Wage Assistant /by Arno Steijn

Tax annualisation on staff salaries is when the tax calculated in a particular month takes the staff members salary and tax for the entire year into account in order that when the current months tax is calculated the staff members tax for the entire year (up to that date) is in line with their earnings.

This is necessary because beauty therapists and hair stylists generally earn commission and as a result their earnings differ from month to month. Therefore they often fall into different tax brackets each month, which means that by the end of the year the tax that they have paid does not tie up with the salary that they have earned for the entire year. The staff member will then either need to get a refund from SARS or pay in if they have been undertaxed.

Setting the standard

24 February 2014/in Articles, Hairdressers Journal /by Karl Markwald

If you were offered an opportunity to franchise your salon tomorrow would you be ready for it?

Over the years ESP has worked with more and more salons that either have multiple salons and want to consolidate information and processes or that plan to open more than one salon and require integration of data and processes.

It has been very interesting to observe those for whom it has been easy and those for whom it has not. One thing we have learned is that structure and standards are a non-negotiable when opening more than one salon.

Many salon owners are not confronted with the extent of how problematic a lack of standards and structure is until they consider integrating their data and processes across multiple salons.

Business Processes & Standards

24 February 2014/in Articles, Hairdressers Journal /by Karl Markwald

As a software company that is tasked with solving the problems faced by running a salon much of what we do involves identifying, mapping and streamlining the various business processes that occur in a salon. In order to write software to accommodate these processes there needs to be some level of standardization in place that we can write the programs around.

In this month’s article I thought I would comment on some of the salon business processes that we often encounter and that present challenges to salon owners. The goal will be to provide some insights that hopefully result in less frustration being experienced by salon staff and better results for owners.