QuickBooks for salons, where the model decides whose revenue it is.

It is rental income, and it belongs in its own income account rather than mixed with the service revenue you earn from your own chairs. A booth renter's haircut is not your sale — you did not perform the service and you do not own the ticket. What you earned is rent. Pooling the two produces a revenue figure that describes no business you actually run.

As a customer, not an employee or a contractor you pay. The relationship runs the other way: the renter owes you money on a lease, so a recurring invoice matching their rental terms tracks what is due and what is outstanding, exactly as it would for any tenant. Setting a renter up in payroll is one of the clearest signs a salon file has the two models confused.

Nearly everything. A commission stylist is an employee, so the full service ticket is your revenue, their pay runs through payroll with withholding and employer taxes, and the product they use is your cost. A booth renter's ticket never touches your books at all. Two salons with identical chairs and identical foot traffic will report completely different revenue depending on which model they run.

Yes, and it is a common case. The file needs rental income and service income as separate lines, renters set up as customers with recurring invoices, and commission staff on payroll. What breaks a hybrid salon is not the mix itself but a chart of accounts that never acknowledged there was a mix, so both streams land in one 'sales' account and neither can be read.

Yes. Retail carries cost of goods sold and, if you hold stock, an inventory asset to track and count. Services carry no COGS — the cost of delivering them is labor, which sits elsewhere. Pooled into one income line, you cannot tell whether the retail shelf earns its space or what a service is genuinely worth after the cost of delivering it.

That is a supply cost of performing the service, not retail inventory held for sale, and it should not sit in the same account as the shampoo on your shelf. Keeping them apart is what makes retail margin readable. Where the same product is sometimes used at the chair and sometimes sold, the split follows how it was actually consumed, which is a policy you set and we record consistently.

No, and we are firm about that line. Whether a working relationship is a rental, a contractor arrangement or employment depends on the substance of that relationship, and the determination belongs to you with your CPA or employment counsel. What we do is record the classification you have set, consistently, and tell you plainly when the file shows the same person treated two ways.

We keep the books that those filings draw on — what each renter was billed, what they paid, and what is outstanding — but the rental agreements themselves and any reporting obligations attached to them are yours with your CPA. We will not author a filing position for you. What we will do is make sure the underlying record is complete enough to support whatever position you take.

Yes, and the catch-up can come first. Salons fall behind because the ticket volume is high, the payment mix is messy, and rent often arrives as cash or a transfer with no paperwork attached. A catch-up rebuilds the revenue split, applies rent to the renters who paid it, and gets the retail and back-bar cost separated so the margins mean something.

No. We keep the books — the revenue split, the rent ledger, the retail and back-bar cost — so the file is accurate and current. Your CPA sets tax positions, advises on classification, and files returns. Good bookkeeping makes that work faster; it does not replace it.