Salon management software for a Canadian team
When a salon grows past one chair, the booking app stops being the hard part. The hard part is the rest: who works which Saturday, which room is free, what the person on reception may open, and what each stylist is owed at the end of the month. Slotora's salon account keeps all of it in the diary your clients book into, for teams in every province outside Québec — with 14 days to try it before you pay anything.
Set up your team's accountWritten for the salon with staff, not the solo chair
This page is for owners in Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, the Prairies, Atlantic Canada and the territories who run a team: employees on commission or an hourly wage, a booth renter or two, a receptionist, perhaps a second address across town. If you work alone, the simpler account on our Canadian booking page is the better fit, and you can grow into this one later without moving your clients.
When you sign up and say you work with colleagues, Slotora creates the salon account rather than the one-person account. The difference is not a different app: it is the screens a team needs switched on — the rota, the rooms, the logins with permissions, the pay statement and the reports split by person.
Québec is the exception. Our French version for Québec is not finished, so a business with a Québec address is offered the waiting list at sign-up instead of an account.
The eight things a team account adds
Each has its own page further down, written for a Canadian owner, with what it does not do said as plainly as what it does.
A calendar with a column each
Every stylist, esthetician or RMT has a column, her own hours and her own days off. Alternating weekends are set once, not retyped every fortnight.
Rooms, chairs and machines
Tell Slotora you have one treatment room and two pedicure chairs, and it stops offering a fourth booking at the same hour even when three people are free.
A front desk login
Reception runs the diary and takes payment without seeing the salon's takings or the settings. Six switches per login let you give more, person by person.
Booth renters beside employees
Asked per person, so a mixed salon is described as it really is. Once a renter connects her own Stripe account, her clients' card payments go there, and her rent is recorded, never collected by us.
What each person is owed
Commission on services and retail, bands, product cost, hourly pay from clock-ins, worked out for last month and explained line by line. Slotora does not run payroll.
Reports by person
Booked, collected and tips per stylist, for thirty days, ninety days or the month — and a stylist sees only her own figures unless you decide otherwise.
A rota and time off
Everybody's week on one grid, a week copied forward, a warning when a day is short, and time-off requests you approve with the clashing bookings in front of you.
A second address
Up to twenty further premises on one account, each with its own hours and closures, as long as they share one time zone.
What is different about running it in Canada
Statutory holidays are set by your province's employment standards, not by Ottawa, so Slotora reads the province from your postal code and offers that province's list on the opening-hours page. An Ontario salon sees Family Day and Boxing Day; a salon in Saskatoon sees Saskatchewan Day; a salon in St. John's sees Newfoundland and Labrador's shorter list. You tick the days you close, and online booking closes with you.
The time zone follows the postal code too, including Newfoundland's half hour and Saskatchewan's year-round standard time. One account runs on one zone, which matters if your second salon is across a provincial line — the multi-location page explains exactly where that line falls.
Reminders to Canadian clients go by email. Text messages are not sent to Canadian numbers yet; we will say so on this page the day that changes, rather than letting you discover it from a client who never got a text.
A first week, in the order most teams do it
Nothing here needs a call with us, and every step can be undone.
Day 1
Your services and your people
Add the menu, then each team member with her own hours. Say for each one whether she works for you or rents her place; leave it blank and nobody becomes a renter by accident.
Day 2
Your clients from the old system
Upload the export from the software you are leaving. The importer reads the columns, shows you a dry run, and notifies nobody.
Day 3
Logins for the team
Invite each stylist to her own login and give reception the front desk seat. Decide, switch by switch, who may refund, discount or see reports.
Day 4
Statutory holidays and rooms
Tick the provincial holidays you close on. If treatments compete for a room or a chair, add the room and attach it to the services that need it.
Day 5
The booking link goes out
Put the link on Instagram, Google and your website. From here the diary fills itself, and the rota is where the week is changed.
How a team is priced in Canada
Slotora is a paid subscription in Canada, after a 14-day trial with every screen open and no card asked for. The monthly price counts the people a client can book, and it stops climbing at a cap, so a large team does not pay for each extra chair for ever. A receptionist who takes no appointments is not counted.
| The first bookable person | C$19 a month |
|---|---|
| Every further bookable person | + C$10 a month |
| Three people clients can book | C$39 a month |
| From 6 bookable people | C$69 a month, whatever the headcount |
| One person, paid yearly | C$190 a year |
Prices in Canadian dollars. No GST/HST is added at present. Locations, logins and rooms add nothing to the price. There is no commission on bookings; card payments are charged by Stripe directly to your own account at its Canadian rates.
How the team software you may be comparing is sold
Most salon systems built for teams in North America charge by the location as well as, or instead of, by the person. Square's Canadian pricing page states its paid Appointments plans are charged per month per location, and puts commissions, staff scheduling and room booking in the Premium plan only.[1] Mangomint's pricing page combines a monthly price per location with a charge per user.[2] Boulevard's pricing is per location.[3] Phorest's Canadian page gives no prices and asks you to request a quote.[4]
None of that makes one of them wrong for you. It means the cost of a second address, or of moving from one plan to the next to get commissions, belongs in the comparison from the start.
Where we fall short for a Canadian team today
Read these before you move a busy salon over.
- No text reminders in Canada yet
- Email reminders only. If your clients expect a text the day before, that gap is real until the Canadian text route is switched on.
- We do not run payroll
- Slotora works out what each person is owed and explains it. Source deductions, vacation pay, statutory holiday pay, T4s and the pay itself stay with your payroll provider or your bookkeeper.
- One time zone per account
- A Calgary salon and a Vancouver salon cannot share one account, because their clocks differ by an hour and every booking time would be wrong at one of them.
- Some team screens arrive on the phone later
- The rota, the pay rules and the premises screens were built for the browser first. The owner's phone screens for several of them come with later versions of the Slotora app.
Whose data, and where it is kept
Slotora is run by Belavin Limited, a company registered in England and Wales. Your salon's data is stored in a database in London, United Kingdom (Amazon Web Services, region eu-west-2), and the providers that send your emails and texts, take card payments and deliver app notifications process some of it in the United States.
Your client list is your business's, not ours and not your stylists'. If a team member leaves, her clients' records stay with the salon. Export everything at any time from Settings.
What owners of Canadian salon teams ask
Is this a different product from the Slotora booking page for one person?
It is the same Slotora, set up as a salon account. Answer that you work with colleagues when you sign up and the team screens are switched on from the first day.
Do I pay for my receptionist?
Not if she takes no appointments. The price counts bookable people — the columns a client can book — and a front desk login without a column is not one of them.
Does Slotora take a percentage of my team's bookings?
No. There is no commission on any booking, on either an employee's or a renter's clients. Card payments go to Stripe accounts in your salon's name or the renter's, and Stripe charges its own fee.
Can I run a salon in Québec on it?
Not yet. A Québec address is offered the waiting list at sign-up, because the French version Québec requires is not finished.
Will it calculate vacation pay and statutory holiday pay?
No. Those are payroll calculations under your province's employment standards, and Slotora does not run payroll. It gives you the commission, retail share and hours behind them, by person and month.
What happens when the trial ends?
After 14 days you choose a monthly or yearly subscription in Canadian dollars from the plan page. You can cancel at any time and the plan runs to the end of the period paid for.
Sources
Every fact about another company on this page comes from that company's own page, read on the day shown.
- Square — Appointments pricing (Canada) — https://squareup.com/ca/en/appointments/pricing · read
- Mangomint — pricing — https://www.mangomint.com/pricing/ · read The page does not state a currency.
- Boulevard — pricing — https://www.joinblvd.com/pricing · read The page does not state a currency or mention Canada.
- Phorest — pricing (Canada) — https://www.phorest.com/ca/pricing/ · read
Bring the whole team over in a week
Add your people and services, import your clients, and send the link. 14 days to see it working with your own Saturday before you choose a plan.