The end of the financial year doesn’t need to be a time of stress and uncertainty. Instead, you can use it as a great opportunity to evaluate your prices and audit your salon, setting yourself up for the new financial year.
We spoke with Samara Scott-Hunter, principal mentor at Salon Rising and owner of La Sorella in the Gold Coast, where she shared her tips for getting on top of your salon’s finances and preparing for the end of the financial year.
Project your numbers
“Always be looking forward,” said Samara. “It’s really important when you look at your numbers to look forward and project what you want for your business. Don’t get me wrong, you must also look behind at past numbers and see where the numbers have come from, but it’s really important to focus forward on what your numbers can be. This is where I use the projections inside of Kitomba software.”
“One of Kitomba’s reports that I absolutely love is the Business Summary Variance report, it allows you to compare any date and time. For example, you can compare last year to this year, compare last week to this week, and last month to this month. Showing you not only the breakdown of numbers but also the percentage that is either higher or lower based on the previous month or week.”
What numbers do I need to be looking at for EOFY?
“This is where I’d be using your Business Summary Variance report to see your numbers versus this year and last year. This means when you get to the first of July, you can go back in your reports and see how you did last year to the year before to see what your numbers end up like,” Samara explained.
“It’s also really important to look at your wages to see if your wages have increased or decreased, because if your wages have decreased and so has the amount of money that’s been made, you may still find that you’ve made some sneaky profit in that!”
How can I find out if I need to do a price increase in my salon?
“I think it’s always important at the end of the year to be looking at price increases for your business,” Samara said.
“However, I think the most important thing with a price increase is knowing exactly how to do it and why you’re doing it. Rather than just picking numbers out based on what everybody else around you is doing, coming back and knowing what your bottom dollar is, what your capabilities are, and then pricing off that is what I recommend.”
What should I do about my stock?
“As well as looking at my numbers I love this time of year for a good stock clearout. This means anything that’s been sitting on your shelves, you can put a two-for-one sale in or you can reduce prices,” Samara explained.
“You have to remember that it’s all money sitting on your shelves, so it’s great to provide your clients with incentives to stock up. Plus, if there’s anything that’s no longer needed it’s also awesome at this time of year to remove it off your shelves too.”
When should I talk to my accountant?
“I think it is super important this time of year to make an appointment with your accountant, and not for this year’s tax funnily enough, but for next year! It’s preempting next year’s tax, because we need to make sure before the 30th of June, we’re having a meeting with our accountant to see if there’s anything we can do to minimise our tax for that end of year,” Samara advised.
“They should be able to preempt what your tax will be and what needs to be paid for the following year, and you can start putting away that now.”
Free EOFY masterclass for Kitomba customers
If you want more information on how you can prepare and learn some actionable steps that you can take to make this end of financial year your best yet, Salon Rising is partnering with Kitomba to host a free live masterclass, Financial Clarity with Kitomba, for Kitomba customers to learn how to prepare for the EOFY.
To join us for the Financial Clarity with Kitomba masterclass on Monday 17th July at 12pm -1pm
