Beauty businesses lose more than one day a week to admin tasks

Beauty businesses could be losing a full day of treatment time to admin tasks, according to new data.

The research, conducted by Square, surveyed 400 beauty and personal care businesses in the UK, revealing the biggest time and energy drains on Britain’s £36 billion beauty and personal care sector. 

The results from the data showed that nearly half (43%) of British barbers, spa and nail salons, personal trainers, tattoo parlours and piercing studios are not using tools to automate bookings, ultimately losing over a full day each week to administrative tasks.

These findings come at a time where 39% of beauty and personal care businesses in the UK admit that filling down time between clients and appointments is the biggest challenge they faced over the last year. 

The research also revealed how four in 10 clients look to schedule appointments after opening hours, using their evening and weekends to plan and book their next beauty treatment. This means that beauty businesses still using pen and paper to organise their schedules could be missing out on business.

For those who have yet to implement an automatic booking system, the suvery revealed that the reasons for this included preference of traditional ways of working (42%), preference of working manually (35%) and worries about training staff and management on the new platform (27%).

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By automating bookings, British beauty and personal care businesses could gain a day’s time back each week and say they would treat themselves to a better work-life balance, and also invest in their skills or business. 

By streamlining admin, those surveyed shared that they’d aim to finish work on time (48%), identify new services to offer (40%), look at training for their team (40%) and marketing for the business (34%). 

Have you implemented an automated booking system for your business? Let us know in the comments….

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