How to price your services

Work out what one hour of your time must earn, then price each service by the time it really takes, cleanup included, plus the materials it uses. That hour is your monthly costs plus the income you want, divided by the hours you actually spend with clients. A competitor's price list only tells you what clients nearby are used to paying; it does not tell you what your time costs.

• Monthly costs: rent or travel, materials, tools, your phone, the app you book with.
• Income: what you want to take home that month.
• Hours: only the hours with a client in the chair, not the hours you spend at the workplace.

Check it against real pay, not a guess. For scale: in the United States, the median pay for manicurists and pedicurists was $17.19 an hour, or $35,760 a year, in May 2025, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, and 23 percent of them were self-employed. When you work for yourself, you pay rent, materials and quiet days out of the price, so what a client pays for an hour of service has to sit well above the take-home pay you aim for.

Yes. A 60-minute manicure rarely costs you 60 minutes. You also set up, sanitise and tidy before the next client walks in. In Beauty Booking each service has two lengths: the duration the client sees, and a cleanup time only you see. The calendar books both, so the time you spend tidying is protected. Price the whole block, not only the part the client is in the chair.

• Duration: what the client books and sees.
• Cleanup: your buffer between clients, booked on your calendar and never shown to the client.
• Price: what the client pays for the service, in your workplace currency.

Gel, pigments, lash extensions and single-use tools are real money on every visit. Put a number on what each service uses and make sure the price carries it with room to spare. In Beauty Booking each service also has a materials cost, and Finances subtracts it from what you earned to show your margin. When a supplier raises a price, that is a reason to review yours, not to absorb the difference quietly.

Fixed prices. Clients choose faster from a short, clear list. Name each service the way a client would say it, and keep one price per service. Where a longer or more complex version exists, make it its own service with its own price and duration, rather than a vague "from" that is settled in the chair. A free consultation is fine too: leave the price at zero and it reads as Free.

Review them at least once a year, and sooner when your costs move. Prices that never move quietly shrink: in the United States, prices for haircuts and other personal care services rose 3.7 percent from September 2025 to September 2026, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index, the same as prices overall. A price left alone for that year lost that much of its value.

• Pick a fixed rhythm, for example twice a year.
• Tell clients in plain words a few weeks before a new price starts.
• Past visits keep the price they were booked at, so your history stays exact.
• For visits already booked at the old price, the app asks whether to keep that price or move them to the new one, so your regulars never get a surprise at the end of a visit.

On a page they can open before they write to you. A price list that lives only in your head gets asked about in every chat. On the Lite or Pro plan, Beauty Booking gives you a public page with your services, prices, free times and address, built from the prices you keep in the app, so the page never shows an old number. Clients book from it, and every booking arrives as a request you confirm.

Look at the month, not the day. A single quiet day says little. Finances shows what you earned this month and last month, and your margin after materials. Divide the month's margin by the hours you spent with clients: if it lands below the hour you worked out at the start, your prices are telling you something.