Hair salon booking software for stylists in Canada
A root colour is ninety minutes on the booking page and forty of them are yours to sell: the colour develops, you cut someone else. Slotora knows that gap, keeps every client's formula on her card, and — for a salon that rents chairs — keeps track of who has paid this week's rent. 14 days on trial, then billed monthly in Canadian dollars per bookable stylist, with nothing taken from the services you sell.
Start 14 days of SlotoraThe colour appointment, set up properly
Four settings that turn a colour into a diary that sells its own waiting time.
Gap
Tell the service when the colour is developing
A service can carry a processing window: it starts so many minutes in and lasts so many minutes. During it the stylist shows as free, so a cut or a blow-dry can be booked into the middle of a colour.
Patch
Put a patch test in front of a first colour
Require a valid test on the colour service and a new client without one is offered the test instead, at least 48 hours ahead unless you shorten it.
Toner
Make toner a priced extra
An extra underneath the colour carries its own price and its own minutes, so the time is booked rather than given away at the basin.
Formula
Write the formula where the next stylist will find it
The treatment card keeps colour formulas visit by visit on the client's record, and the booking opens with the last one in view.
When the salon has more than one chair
A column per stylist
Each person has her own hours, breaks and services. Clients choose a stylist or the first one free.
Own takings, if that is your model
A salon can be set up so each person keeps her own takings, with her own Stripe account and her own card reader, which is how many rental salons already work.
Tips split by name
A tip taken at the counter can be divided between the stylist and the assistant who did the wash, and the split reaches the period report.
Statutory holidays for the whole team
Close Family Day or Boxing Day for everyone in one tick, or for one stylist only.
Chair renters, the CRA, and one rule that surprises salon owners
A stylist who rents a chair, sets her own prices, books her own clients and keeps her own takings looks self-employed for income tax, and the Canada Revenue Agency's usual tests would agree. Employment insurance is the exception. Paragraph 6(d) of the Employment Insurance Regulations makes work in a barbering or hairdressing establishment insurable when the person provides the services such a place normally provides and is not its owner or operator.
The CRA's own example is a renter paying a fixed monthly sum for a chair and access to the sinks: she is still in insurable employment, and the owner or operator pays both the employee's and the employer's share of EI premiums, while the renter remits her own CPP contributions and income tax. That is a payroll question for your accountant, not a booking setting, but it is worth knowing before you set the rent.
What Slotora can do is the bookkeeping around it. The chair-rent screen holds each renter's agreement, weekly or monthly, and answers the one question an owner asks every Monday: who has paid and who has not. A payment can be recorded as cash, transfer, card or other; or the renter can save a card and the rent is taken on its due day through the salon's own Stripe account, tried again three days and seven days later if it is refused.
Tip pooling in Ontario
If your stylists are employees in Ontario, the Employment Standards Act says an employer may not withhold or take a deduction from their tips, with an exception for a pool shared among employees. An owner may only take part in that pool as a sole proprietor, partner, director or shareholder who regularly does substantially the same work as the employees sharing it. Slotora's tip split records who got what; it does not decide whether your pool is lawful.
A compulsory trade in five provinces
Hairstyling is one of the few beauty trades that Canada's apprenticeship systems treat as a real trade, and where you work decides whether a certificate is optional. The federal Job Bank lists certification as compulsory for hairstylists in Alberta, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Saskatchewan, and voluntary in British Columbia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island and the territories.
Skilled Trades Ontario states it plainly for Ontario: hairstylist is a compulsory trade, its Certificate of Qualification is issued after the certifying exam, and it is renewed every year. Slotora does not ask for your certificate or check it, and a salon owner hiring in Ontario should check it herself.
Honest limits for a hair salon
- No text reminders in Canada yet
- Confirmations and reminders go by email. We do not send texts to Canadian numbers at the moment.
- Booksy is the bigger name in hair
- Booksy's Canadian pricing page, read today, lists $29.99 a month plus $20.00 for each additional staff member, without saying whether that is Canadian or US dollars. It also runs a consumer marketplace that Slotora does not have here.
- Québec salons have to wait
- Registration is closed in Québec until our French version for Québec exists.
Hair salon owners ask
Can another client be booked while a colour is processing?
Yes, when the colour service has a processing window. The stylist is free during it and the booking page offers that time for a service short enough to fit.
I rent chairs. Does Slotora take the rent for me?
It can take it from a card the renter saves, on the due day, through your own Stripe account. Or you record cash, transfers and other payments by hand. Either way the screen shows who is paid up and who is behind.
Is a chair renter self-employed in Canada?
For employment insurance, a barber or hairdresser renting a chair is treated as insurable under the EI Regulations, according to the CRA. For everything else, ask your accountant. Slotora records the rent; it does not decide anyone's status.
Each stylist wants her own booking link. Is that possible?
Every stylist appears on the salon's booking page, and a client can pick her by name. Each bookable stylist is counted in the monthly subscription.
Does Slotora check that my stylists are certified?
No. In provinces where hairstyling is compulsory, checking a stylist's certificate is the salon's job, not the software's.
Sources
Federal, provincial and competitor pages, all read on 10 November 2026. Not legal or tax advice.
- Job Bank — hairstylist requirements — https://www.jobbank.gc.ca/marketreport/requirements/16450/ca · Read on
- Skilled Trades Ontario — Hairstylist — https://www.skilledtradesontario.ca/about-trades/hairstylist/ · Read on
- Justice Laws — Employment Insurance Regulations, SOR/96-332, s. 6 — https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/SOR-96-332/section-6.html · Read on
- CRA — barbers and hairdressers, payroll — https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/payroll/payroll-deductions-contributions/special-situations/barbers-hairdressers.html · Read on
- Ontario ESA guide — tips — https://www.ontario.ca/document/your-guide-employment-standards-act-0/tips-and-other-gratuities · Read on
- Booksy — Canadian pricing page — https://booksy.com/biz/en-ca/pricing · Read on Figures shown with a dollar sign; currency not named.
Give your colours their processing time back
Add a processing window to your colour services and see the gap appear on the booking page. Run the salon on it for 14 days before the subscription begins.