Net terms for beauty and salon suppliers
Salons buy little and often, and the owner is usually with a client when your email arrives. Terms Due reaches them in a way that gets invoices paid.
Who your buyers are
Salon and spa owners, often sole traders or small limited companies, ordering colour, care and retail stock every few weeks. The owner buys, the owner pays, and the owner is behind a chair for nine hours a day. An email about an invoice lands in a queue; a text on a Tuesday morning gets read between appointments.
Balances are small and numerous. Fifty salons at $600 a month is $30,000 of trade credit that nobody is watching one account at a time.
What works for salon accounts
- Low starting limits that grow with good payment history.
- A monthly statement so every product order is on one page.
- A text on the due date with a pay link, read between appointments.
- A hold on reorders once an invoice is two weeks late.
- Collection from the saved card for owners who would rather not think about it.
Before and after
Before
- Reminders by email to an address checked at the weekend.
- Three or four small invoices open per salon with no total in sight.
- Reorders going through to salons that are late.
- Chasing fifty small balances by hand, badly.
With Terms Due
- A text to the owner's phone on the due date.
- One statement a month with every order and a pay link.
- A hold at 14 days, released on payment.
- Fifty accounts chased on schedule without a hand touching them.
Suggested starting settings
| Setting | Suggested | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Terms | Net 30 | Matches most salons' monthly bills |
| Default limit | $500 to $1,500 | One to two months of a typical salon's orders |
| New salons | First order on a card | Many salons are new businesses; let them earn terms |
| Grace period | 14 days | One payment cycle, then a pause |
| Reminders | Text at 0, 7 and 14; email at -5 and alongside | Owner on the phone, record in the inbox |
| Collection | On | Owners often prefer it to remembering |
Worked example
A salon, a text, twenty seconds
Lune Street Salons owes $2,240 due on Tuesday. The owner is fully booked. The due-today text arrives at 9:40; at 9:52 between clients she taps the link and pays from her saved card. Before the app, the same invoice was paid on average 12 days late when the weekend email catch-up got to it. Across fifty salons that shift is roughly two weeks of revenue that is now in the supplier's account rather than the salons'.
| Invoice | $2,240 |
|---|---|
| Time from text to payment | 12 minutes |
| Average days late before | 12 |
| Average days late after | 0 to 2 |
Questions
Many of my salons are sole traders. Does anything change?
Limits, holds and reminders work the same. For UK sole traders, statutory late payment interest still applies to business purchases. Recovery if they fail is different, which is a reason to keep limits modest.
Can reminders go to a salon manager as well as the owner?
Yes. Add extra contacts to the company and every reminder is copied to them.
Do I need a different setup for a salon group?
Create one company with a location per salon if they pay centrally, or separate companies if each salon pays for itself. Limits are per company.
Related
Setting credit limits
How to decide credit limits and payment terms for wholesale buyers: order value, trade references, credit checks, starting limits and when to review.
Read moreStatements and pay-now page
Send monthly statements to Shopify B2B buyers and give them one page to see and pay every open invoice. Payments are recorded back on the Shopify orders.
Read morePricing
Terms Due pricing: free for up to three trade accounts, then Starter $49, Growth $99 and Scale $199 a month with a 14-day trial, billed through Shopify.
Read moreStop chasing wholesale invoices by hand
Install Terms Due, set a credit limit for each buyer and let the app hold, remind and collect.
Install on Shopify