If your massage business software is not doing all of the following for your business, it is time for an upgrade to something better:
- Saving you time
- Saving you money
- Enhancing your customer service
- Pampering your clients
The best massage business software will always do all four of these things. You could easily set up a system that covers all the administrative bases from payroll and employee time clock to inventory and invoicing, but you would have files scattered everywhere and would spend far too much time taking care of each task separately.
Massage business software should save you time by folding all administrative tasks into one convenient system. As your business becomes more efficient with tracking employee hours, inventory, and invoicing, you will save money. You may spend more for your business software, but you will save money by not overpaying employees, not losing track of your invoicing, and not sending out invoices for inaccurate amounts.
Are you interested in learning more about efficient massage business software? If so, there are five essential features that you should be looking for in a software program. Without all six of these features, no system will be efficient for your massage business:
1. Automated Scheduling and Calendar Features
You earn your income with your time and by filling your schedule. Managing a calendar can be time consuming, but it need not be. Moreover, your calendar is an asset that needs to be managed efficiently and accuarately.
How much time do you or members of your staff spend communicating with clients over the phone or in shop just to set appointments and change appointment times? How often do you have to call around to clients who may be interested in moving their times when someone else cancels and leaves a hole in your schedule? If you are like most massage businesses, scheduling issues take up a lot of your time and your massage business software does very little to help.
The solution is to find better massage business software with powerful scheduling capabilies (i.e. plenty of automation) or give up the pen and schedule book for a software program. The most efficient programs put your scheduling on autopilot by allowing clients to book their own appointments through the Internet and automatically updating all versions of your calendar or schedule book the moment changes are made.
Self-booking online
Many clients may opt to go online and book their own appoints if the option were made available to them. This saves them time and allows them to schedule their appointments from work and other places where they may not be free to make a phone call for personal matters. Not all clients will take advantage of this, but many will and that takes some of the work load off of your staff as they won’t receive nearly as many scheduling phone calls.
When an appointment is booked, all schedules are updated automatically so you do not have to change multiple calendars manually. You save tons of time with this type of massage business software and your scheduling process becomes more efficient, which serves your clients better.
2. Efficient Payment Processing – Collect Payment Online
You have no problems accepting a variety of payment options in shop, but your massage business software should allow you to accept payment online as well. If payment processing is integrated in with your online scheduling software, your clients can be prompted to pay for their massages at the time they book their appointments. When they come in for their massages, the money is already handled and your staff has less to do when they walk in the door.
Imagine ushering clients straight from the door to the massage table, without asking them for money. That can happen when your clients are encouraged to schedule and pay online before their appointment.
3. E-Commerce Features
What products do you sell in shop? Would you like to start selling those products online from your own website, accepting payment online? This is a secondary source of revenue for many small businesses, and it could work well for your massage and personal pampering related products. You can even offer gift cards or gift certificates, or give clients the opportunity to pay for products online with their scheduled massage sessions and receive the product when they come in for their appointment.
Make sure your massage business software offers e-commerce solutions, and ensure they are integrated in with the payment processing, scheduling and client data systems. Everything should be in one centralized location so all administrative functions feed off of one another.
4. Payroll and Staff Management Features
You should be able to track all of your employees and easily process payroll accurately from your massage business software. If you do your payroll manually and haul tons of paperwork to your accountant to take care of tax matters, you will save tons of time by switching to a fully integrated, centralized business software program.
The best massage business software will allow you to track the hours of your employees, the payment agreements or pay rates for each employee, and to process payroll quickly so you always know who is owed what amount of money come payday. You won’t lose money overpaying employees, and you won’t have to worry about inaccurate paychecks causing problems with disgruntled employees.
5. Optional Swipe Card Technology
Could swipe card technology seriously be used in a massage business?
Yes. In fact, I’m surprised it’s not used more. You could offer bulk discounts. For example, get 9 massages and the 10th one is free. This foster loyalty and can likely increase visit frequency of existing clients.
I’d rather have fewer clients who come for massage at regular times than many clients who attend sporadically.
Moreover, swipe card technology enables you to track client attendance. You can see trends among your clients which may provide marketing opportunities. For example, if you see a slowing trend among some clients, you could offer exclusive discounts at slower times. This is best done with integrated e-mail marketing software (see feature number 6 below).
6. Marketing Platform – E-mail and Text Messaging Integration
Actually, the best scheduling capability is one that makes it easy to market to prospective clients as well as communicate automatically with existing clients.
For example, you want the ability to send out reminders via e-mail and/or text automatically. This way you can reduce clients not showing up for massage appointments (nothing is worse than clients who fail to show up).
Another example is the ability to send automated e-newsletters to prospective clients and existing clients. Perhaps when you run a discount, you can send an e-mail to prospective and/or existing clients (perfect for slower times).
Is there massage business software that does all this?
Yes. MindBodyOnline is a web-based, fully integrated massage business software.
Check MindBodyOnline out here and get your first month free.
If you can find a massage business software program that also integrates marketing tools, you will have the perfect program to automate all administrative duties of your business. For instance, look for programs that include email marketing packages including an autoresponder.
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