Accepting Credit Card Payments in your Salon

It’s becoming more common for clients to have a credit card on hand but sometimes they *forget* cash. Streamline your payments by accepting credit cards or sending your clients a link to pay. This process starts out on Salon Accounting by navigating to Setup > Setup Client Pay. You can configure your default tip options (ie. 15%, 20%, 25%), specify your sales tax, and then decide who should pay the Credit Card Surcharge. Consumers don’t recognize that when they use a credit card, they are actually forcing the business to accept a ~3% charge. Since 2013, there was legislation in the US that allowed businesses in most states to forward that transaction charge to the client. If you haven’t accepted payments before, credit card surcharges can add up to hundreds of dollars a year! You can inform your clients that you prefer cash or check and that the surcharge would be added to credit card payments.

Salon Accounting partners with Stripe for securely handling credit card transactions. You need to setup stripe by clicking on Setup Auto Bank Deposit and walking through the onboarding steps for configuring Stripe. This will ask personal and business information to ensure this isn’t a fraudulent company. In one of the setup questions, if you don’t have a website, simply use SalonAccounting.com as your business domain. After you are approved, you can start accepting credit cards for appointments and ad-hoc as client’s buy merchandise and receive services.

Now that you have setup Stripe, you can accept credit card payments! On the dashboard, there is a button “Client Pay w/ CC“, which will allow you to key in the service and merchandise totals. You can also launch this page from an appointment.

You have multiple choices to have the client start their payment.

1. Text Message – if the client has a phone number on file, we can text them a link to start the process on their phone.
2. Barcode – have the client take a photo of the QR code to launch their web browser.
3. Copy Link – copy a link locally and text your client through email, text message, or other app.
4. Use My Device – start the process on your own device and have the client hand you their credit card.