Salon inventory calculator

How hours become money

Three things decide the figure, and you can change all of them.

• Your hours. How often you order, multiplied by how long one order takes, plus the weekly time you spend matching invoices to payments.
• Whose hours. Each of those is priced at the hourly wage of the person who actually does that work. Both wages sit under Show additional settings — $20 and $25 to start with.
• How many places it happens. All of it is multiplied by your number of locations, then a flat rush-order cost per site is added on top.

That gives what the process costs you today. The green figure is the share of it an inventory system takes off your hands — the last two fields set how big that share is, and you can move them.

An invoice never arrives for any of this. It comes out of somebody's afternoon, which is why it stays invisible in a P&L.

Why ordering costs more than you think

$9.84 — the all-in cost of processing a single supplier invoice, per Ardent Partners, 2025 State of ePayables. That is an average across businesses with actual accounts payable teams. In a salon it lands on whoever was also meant to be doing the 2pm.

11–15 vendors — in the retail area alone, for about a third of spas surveyed by the International SPA Association in March 2024. Each with its own minimum, lead time and portal.

Thirteen suppliers ordered from monthly is over 150 invoices a year.

What to do with the number

If the figure is bigger than you expected, three things bring it down — in order of how quickly they work.

• Order less often, from fewer suppliers. The fastest saving on this page, and you keep buying the same product.
• Work out what is sitting on the shelf. A different number, and usually a bigger one.
• Stop doing the parts that depend on remembering. That is what our guide to salon inventory management is for — or start with salon inventory management software.