(For those new to the column, Forward Migration is our term for companies moving from Wintel machines to Macs — or at least adding or increasing the number of Macs they use. A Forward Migration Kit is an overview of Mac OS products for a particular occupation, such as photography, optometry, etc.)
This week by request we’re looking at Mac software for tanning salons. Hands down, the solution most recommended by MacCentral readers was STX from Salon Transcripts.
STX
In fact, the product was runner-up for Best Mac OS X User Experience at the 2002 Apple Design Awards. In presenting the awards, Apple described STX as “a powerful, integrated business management tool with timesheets, payroll, inventory, billing and accounting capabilities.”
With STX, you can automatically search and book resources and client Info Button links to the entire client card. STX automatically updates the cancellation list and offers automatic booking alerts and you can store unlimited digital pictures of each client with dates and comments. You can also track past and future appointments from the client card; unlimited billing info for speedy check-in/check-out; unlimited service; and retail history.
STX users can apply promotions to individual services and products. The application has an “Include Tickets” tab that, for instance, allows mom to pay for their daughters, even on separate tickets. It also supports unlimited payment types and tip tracking, as well as automatic tip allocation on multi-employee tickets.
STX offers links to inventory control and purchase orders, the ability to adjust pricing by margins or retail price, and support for an optional commission for each service. And there are many other features, as well.
Pricing ranges from US$595 to $2,495. You can learn more at the product Web site.
SalonXpert
The Jireh Consulting Group makes an online-based, tanning salon management package called SalonXpert that runs on Macs.
“We have developed the most user friendly and innovative package that runs indoor tanning salons all across the United States,” Anthony Lunsford, president of Jireh Consulting Group, told MacCentral. “We are the only package that allows multiple salons to share client information, thus allowing a clients to tan at different locations. The multi-site version of our product allows a salon to run totally off the Internet. No more worries about losing data if the machines hard drive crashes, the data is completely safe on our servers.”
Implementing SalonXpert costs US$495 for a one-time setup fee (Jireh Consulting will set up your database and migrate your existing salon data) and $24.95 per month (for upgrades, tech support and hosting). More info and contact data can be found at the Jireh Consuting Web site.
Miscellaneous
There are folks and companies out there who will make a custom solution for clients. Tony Yazbeck of ABT Data Consulting said they are “prepared to build a customized FileMaker Pro solution for anyone interested.” Phillip Smith of Applied Evolution said he could create a solution using FileMaker Pro and AppleScript.
Meanwhile, Peter Lindberg of Sweden thinks a good tanning salon solution would be to use Team Agenda, a full-featured group scheduler and collaboration tool, with FileMaker.
“The whole thing could be hooked up to a central server,” he said. “And it would also be quite easy to enable customers to check availability and make reservations over the Internet by surfing into a FileMaker-generated Web page. We’ve built a similar solution for gym classes, etc.”