Shiftelio for salons, spas and beauty parlours
Salon staff attendance and payroll. We do not touch your appointment book.
Your booking software knows the client. It does not know that Priya covered the other branch on Tuesday, took 3,000 rupees in advance on the 14th, and is two colour services short of her bonus. That is the half Shiftelio does.
The month-end hour every salon owner knows
- Nobody starts at the same time, because nobody has the same first appointment, so a fixed 9 to 6 marks half your floor late every day
- Morning and evening shifts on a twelve hour day show up as somebody leaving early at 2 and arriving late at 5
- A stylist worked Tuesday at one branch and Friday at the other, and now there are two records and one person
- Advances went out of the drawer in cash and only exist in a diary that lives in your handbag
- The bonus you promised for hitting a target gets recalculated from memory on payday, and disputed on the same day
- Your POS knows exactly what everyone sold and nothing at all about who was actually on the floor
What a salon actually gets
Staff who start when their day starts
Put a stylist on a day length instead of a clock: eight and a half hours, six days, start when you like. The day is judged on hours worked, not on the minute they walked in. A fixed shift stays available for the receptionist, who really does have one.
Split shifts, both halves paid
A split shift is two patterns on the same weekday, not one long stretch with a hole in it. Somebody on 10 to 2 and 5 to 9 is not flagged for leaving early or arriving late, and the monthly report tells you how many split days each person worked.
Two branches, one person, one payslip
Attach a stylist to as many branches as you like. Each branch carries its own coordinates and its own radius, 100 metres where you have not chosen one, and the check-in is matched to the branch she is standing in. No duplicate employee, no dropdown to pick wrong.
Selfie check-in, no machine at reception
GPS plus a selfie from the employee phone, geofenced to the branch. Nothing mounted where clients wait, and nothing that stops reading fingers that spent the day in colour, bleach and water.
Bonuses that pay themselves
Set a monthly target, choose all or nothing, pro rata or milestone slabs, require a photo as proof if you want one, and the earned amount settles into payroll when the month closes. Once paid it locks, so re-running payroll cannot pay it twice.
Advances that deduct themselves
Record an advance against the person with an EMI. It goes through approval, then comes off payroll every cycle on its own, split into interest and principal, with a running balance the employee can see in their own app.
Why a normal attendance app is wrong for a salon floor
Almost every attendance product assumes a factory or an office: a shift starts at a time, everybody is measured against that time, and lateness is the difference. A salon does not work like that and never has. The stylist with a 10:30 colour comes in at 10. The one whose first booking is at 12:30 comes in at 12. Both did a full day. On a fixed-clock system one of them is marked late roughly twenty-five times a month, and after the second month the owner stops looking at the late report, which means the report has stopped existing.
So a person here does not have to carry a clock at all. There are three shapes, and a salon usually uses all three at once. A fixed shift with a start and an end, which is what the receptionist and the housekeeping staff have. A day length with no clock, meaning eight and a half hours a day Monday to Saturday, start when you like, which is what most of the floor should be on. And a day length where the employee also picks which days, meaning any six days a week, which suits a therapist who arranges her own week around a second job or a family.
Once there is no clock, the only honest thing to judge is the total, so the app judges the total. The defaults are eight hours expected, fifteen minutes of shortfall forgiven, and a floor of five hours below which the day stops being worth a full day and becomes a half. All three are yours to change per business rather than ours to impose. That single rule is what makes flexible starts safe to allow: somebody expected to do eight hours who does one is still caught, which is the failure mode that makes owners nervous about flexible timings in the first place.
The twelve hour salon day is the other half of it. Ten in the morning to nine at night is not one shift, it is two, and the afternoon gap is real time off rather than an absence. Modelling it as two patterns on the same weekday, instead of one long window, is what stops the system telling you your best therapist left four hours early and then came back late. It also means each half is paid as worked, and the monthly view shows you a split day count per person, so a rota that has quietly drifted into everybody working splits is visible before it becomes a resignation.
What this is not, and where the line is
The shelf you are probably standing in front of is salon POS and booking software: Zenoti, Fresha, Vagaro, Salonist, MioSalon, Dingg. Those products exist to run the appointment book and the bill. Shiftelio does not compete with them and cannot replace them, and pretending otherwise would waste your evening.
Shiftelio has no appointment calendar, no online booking page, no client or customer database, no card machine or customer payments, no retail stock and no client membership packages. If any of those is the thing costing you money, close this page and go and buy salon software. It will be the better purchase and we would rather say so here than after you have signed up.
| The job | Salon POS and booking software | Shiftelio |
|---|---|---|
| Appointment book and calendar | Yes | No |
| Online booking page for clients | Yes | No |
| Client history and contact database | Yes | No |
| Taking payment from the customer | Yes | No |
| Retail stock and product inventory | Yes | No |
| Who was on the floor, verified by place and face | No | Yes |
| Split shifts and staff with no fixed start time | No | Yes |
| One employee across several branches, one payslip | No | Yes |
| Salary advances with automatic payroll deduction | No | Yes |
| Target-based staff bonuses that settle into payroll | No | Yes |
| Indian payroll: payslips, PF and ESI figures | No | Yes |
| Offer, appointment, warning and experience letters | No | Yes |
Do not buy Shiftelio if this is you
Commission, tips and advances: what software can honestly know
This is the section most pages in this category would fudge, so it is worth being exact. A salon pays its floor in three or four streams at once, and only some of them are things an attendance and payroll system can see.
The part we cannot do, and why
If your arrangement is ten percent of everything a stylist personally billed, Shiftelio cannot compute that on its own, because it never sees a bill. Service revenue per staff member lives in your POS and nowhere else. Anybody selling you attendance software that claims to calculate revenue commission without touching your invoices is either reading your POS through an integration or guessing, and there is no integration here. At month end you read the figure off your POS report and enter it as a one time bonus, and it flows into the payslip like everything else.
The part we do, which covers more than owners expect
What Shiftelio owns is the goal: a target expressed as a count, over a month or a fixed window, assigned to whichever staff you choose. Forty colour services. Twenty five product sales. Thirty client feedback forms collected. Three payout shapes are available and they behave differently on purpose. All or nothing pays the full amount only when the target is fully met. Pro rata pays in proportion to progress and accepts a ceiling so a runaway month cannot cost you more than you planned. Slabs pay at milestones, so fifty percent of target pays one figure and eighty percent pays a bigger one, which is how most salon owners actually think about a monthly incentive.
Progress is logged by the staff member from their own phone, and you decide whether it counts immediately or waits for a manager. On approve each mode, every entry sits as pending until reviewed, can be required to carry a photo, and keeps a record of who approved it and when. That is what turns a bonus dispute into a list somebody can scroll rather than two people remembering different months.
A monthly goal can repeat, and when it does you choose what happens to an unfinished month: discard it, or carry the progress forward into the next one. If it carries, the settlement pays only the difference between what the chain is now worth and what earlier months already paid, and it can never go below zero, so lowering a target after a payout cannot claw money back off somebody who has already been paid.
Tips and cash advances
Tips handed over in cash are not something any software can witness, so Shiftelio does not pretend to track them. Advances are different, because they come out of your drawer and against your payroll, and those are recorded properly. An advance is either a salary advance or a loan, carries an EMI and an interest rate where zero is the ordinary case, and passes through a request and approval step. After that the deduction happens by itself each payroll cycle, each repayment is split into interest and principal, and every entry is stamped as having come from payroll or having been paid by hand.
The practical division of labour
Setting up a two-branch salon, in the order you would actually do it
Not a marketing sequence. This is the order that avoids redoing work, and the whole thing is an evening rather than a project.
- Add both branches and draw the fencesEach branch gets its own coordinates and its own radius. A first floor salon in a market street wants a tighter fence than a standalone spa with parking. Where you set nothing, 100 metres is used.
- Add people, and choose a shape per person rather than one for everybodyThe receptionist and housekeeping go on a fixed shift. The floor goes on a day length with no start time. Anybody arranging their own week goes on a day length with flexible days. Splits are set as two patterns on the same weekday.
- Attach the people who move to both branchesOne record, two branches. She checks in wherever she is standing and the fence decides which branch it was. Nothing else to maintain when the rota changes next week.
- Set the money rules onceWages and any per shift rates, then the monthly goal and its payout shape, then any advances already outstanding so the balances start correct rather than being backfilled later.
- Run one payroll cycle before you trust itClose the first month with the old method beside it and compare. Attendance, overtime, goal payouts, advance EMIs and the PF and ESI figures all land on the same payslip, so a disagreement is visible in one place.
- Hand the staff their own appCheck in, see their own hours, their bonus progress and their outstanding advance balance, in any of nine languages. Most of the month-end conversation disappears here rather than in your office.
Questions salon and spa owners actually ask
Is Shiftelio a replacement for my salon software like Zenoti, Fresha or Dingg?
No, and you should not buy it as one. Shiftelio has no appointment book, no online booking page, no client database, no customer billing and no retail stock. If the thing costing you money is no-shows, client history or the front desk taking payments, buy salon software and do not buy this. Shiftelio covers the other half: who actually turned up, at which branch, for how long, what bonus they earned, what advance they owe you, and what the payslip says at month end. Most salons that use both keep the POS for the chair and Shiftelio for the staff, and the two never need to talk to each other because they answer different questions.
My stylists start at different times because their first appointment is at a different time. Can attendance handle that?
Yes, and this is the specific thing generic attendance apps get wrong. A person does not have to be on a fixed clock. You can put someone on a day length instead: eight and a half hours a day, Monday to Saturday, start when you like. The app then judges the day on the total hours worked, not on whether they walked in at 10:00. You can go further and let them pick the days too: any six days a week, employee chooses which. A fixed 9 to 6 stays available for the receptionist, who genuinely does have a clock.
What happens when someone works a split shift, morning and evening, with the afternoon off?
Both halves are paid and the day is reported as a split. In Shiftelio a split shift is two shift patterns on the same weekday rather than one long stretch with a hole in it, so a therapist doing 10 to 2 and then 5 to 9 is not read as having left early at 2 or arrived late at 5. The monthly cost estimate counts those days separately and shows how many parts the day had, so you can see at a glance who is actually on a split rota.
One of my stylists works Tuesday at one branch and Friday at the other. Do I create her twice?
No. One employee record is attached to as many branches as you like, and she checks in at whichever one she is standing in. Each branch has its own coordinates and its own radius, defaulting to 100 metres where you have not set one, and the punch is matched to the fence she is most clearly inside rather than to the nearest map pin. Nobody picks a branch from a dropdown, so nobody picks the wrong one, and both days land on one payslip at month end.
Can Shiftelio calculate commission on the services and products my staff sell?
It can pay against a count, not against a percentage of a bill, and the difference matters. Shiftelio never sees your invoices, so it cannot know that a stylist billed 84,000 rupees this month and owe her ten percent of it. That number has to come from your POS. What Shiftelio does own is the goal: set a target such as 40 colour services or 25 product sales in a month, choose how it pays, and the money settles into payroll automatically when the month closes. Three payout shapes are supported. All or nothing pays the full amount only at 100 percent of target. Pro rata pays in proportion to progress, with an optional ceiling. Slab pays at milestones, so 50 percent of target pays one amount and 80 percent pays a larger one. If you want a true percentage of revenue, read the number off your POS at month end and enter it as a one time bonus.
How do I stop staff claiming a bonus they did not earn?
Every goal has an approval mode. On approve each, nothing counts until a manager reviews it, and you can require proof on submission, including a photo. Progress arrives as individual events with a status of pending, approved or rejected, each stamped with who reviewed it and when, so a disputed bonus is a list you can scroll rather than an argument about memory. On auto approve, entries count immediately, which is fine for something you can verify elsewhere anyway. Once a payout has settled into a payroll cycle it is locked and marked as paid, so the same bonus cannot be paid twice by re-running payroll.
Staff take advances in cash mid month. Can the app keep track instead of my diary?
Yes, and it deducts them for you. An advance is recorded against the person as either a salary advance or a loan, with an amount, an EMI and an interest rate, where zero interest is the normal case for a salon. It goes through a request and approval flow rather than appearing by magic. From then on the EMI comes off payroll automatically, each deduction is split into its interest and principal parts, and every repayment is stamped as coming from payroll or having been paid by hand. The outstanding balance is visible to you and to the employee in their own app, which removes most of the month-end conversation before it starts.
I rent a chair to a freelance stylist who is not on my payroll. Does this handle that?
Partly, and here is the honest boundary. Shiftelio has no chair rental ledger and does not raise a rent invoice, so the money side of a rental arrangement is not something it does. What you can do is add that person as staff on a per shift or hourly pay basis purely so their attendance and their days on the floor are recorded like everyone else, or leave them out of the system entirely if the only thing you want from them is rent. If you are unsure which side of the employee line a person sits on, that is a question for your accountant rather than for software, because the answer changes your PF and ESI position.
Do I need a biometric machine at the reception desk?
No, and in a salon that is a real saving rather than a talking point. Staff check in from their own phone with GPS plus a selfie, verified against a geofence around the branch, so the record is tied to a place and a face rather than to a device on the counter that a colleague can press for somebody. There is nothing to buy, nothing to mount at the front desk where clients wait, and nothing that stops reading fingers that have spent the day in colour, bleach, wax and water.
What does it cost for a salon with 12 staff across 2 branches?
The Growth plan, 5,999 rupees a year, which covers up to 25 employees and 3 locations. That works out at about 500 rupees a month for the whole salon, not per person, so hiring a twelfth or a twentieth stylist does not change the bill. A single chair operation with up to 2 staff at one location is on Basic at 999 rupees a year and starts with 3 months free. Above 25 people or beyond 3 branches, Business is 14,999 rupees a year for up to 100 staff and unlimited locations. All figures exclude 18 percent GST. Attendance, geofencing, payroll, goals and rewards, and loans and advances are in every plan rather than sold as tiers.
Flat yearly price for the whole salon, never per chair.
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