How to price salon services in Canada without guessing
Most price lists in this trade are copied from the shop two blocks over, minus a couple of dollars. Here is a method that starts from your own costs, checks them against your own neighbourhood, and then deals with the part Canadian owners ask about most: what happens with GST/HST once you are busy.
Start your 14-day free trialWhy copying the competition goes wrong
A competitor's menu tells you what she charges, not what it costs her to open the door. Her rent in a strip mall in Mississauga is not your rent in a converted house in Halifax, and her product spend on a gel set is not yours if you buy from a different distributor. Matching her number means inheriting a margin you have never seen.
The second trap is speed. An empty chair in your first months feels like a pricing problem, so the price drops. It rarely is one: new businesses are quiet because nobody knows them yet. Dropping a price is easy; putting it back up after clients have anchored on it is the hard part.
Three steps to a price you can defend
Work them in this order. Each one narrows the range the next one has to choose from.
Floor
Work out what one hour of your time costs you
Add up a normal month of fixed costs in Canadian dollars — rent or chair rent, insurance, your booking software, card-reader fees, laundry, utilities, the accountant. Divide by the hours you can realistically sell, not the hours you are open: allow for cleaning, consultations, admin and the quiet Tuesday. Then add what each treatment uses in product. The result is your floor; every service priced under it loses money each time somebody books it.
Band
Map eight to ten comparable businesses near you
Use businesses your clients would genuinely choose between — same kind of work, similar experience, within the same drive. Note the lowest, the middle and the highest price for your two or three core services. Ignore the downtown flagship and the home studio that has not changed its prices since it opened; neither tells you what your street considers normal.
Position
Choose where you sit in that band, and earn it
Sit in the middle only if your photographs, reviews and results are middle-of-the-road too. If your portfolio is stronger, price in the top third and let your booking page show why: real photographs of your own work, the length of each appointment, what is included. A higher price with no visible reason reads as greed; the same price beside proof reads as confidence.
GST/HST at the till: the C$30,000 question
If what you sell is a taxable supply — confirm that for your own services with an accountant — the question is not whether GST/HST will ever apply to you but when you have to start collecting it. The Canada Revenue Agency's answer turns on the small supplier rule.
You remain a small supplier while your taxable sales stay at or under C$30,000 across four consecutive calendar quarters. Two things end that status, and the CRA treats them differently. If you go over C$30,000 within a single calendar quarter, you must charge GST/HST on the very sale that took you over. If you go over across four quarters but not in any one of them, you stop being a small supplier at the end of the month after the quarter in which you crossed, and you charge from your effective registration date.
Below the threshold you may still register voluntarily. Some owners do, because a registrant can claim input tax credits on the GST/HST paid on products, equipment and rent used in the business. Others stay out to keep prices round for longer. That is a decision for you and your accountant, not for a web page.
The rate depends on the province where you supply the service. The CRA's current table: 13% HST in Ontario, 14% HST in Nova Scotia, 15% HST in New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island, and 5% GST in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and the three territories. Provincial sales tax, where your province has one, is a separate question with its own rules.
Showing prices honestly once you charge tax
The Competition Bureau treats drip pricing — advertising a price that cannot actually be paid because mandatory fees are added later — as a concern under the Competition Act. Its own page makes an exception for fixed charges the government imposes on buyers, such as sales tax. So a menu that says C$85 plus GST/HST is fine; a menu that says C$85 and then adds a compulsory booking fee at checkout is the thing the Bureau warns about.
Pick one convention and use it everywhere: on your booking page, your Instagram highlights and the card at the front desk. If your prices include tax, say so once, clearly. If they do not, write the tax line beside the price list rather than in a footnote clients never read. Whatever figure you type into Slotora is the figure clients see when they book, so write it the way you have decided to charge it.
Raising prices without losing your regulars
A price rise is a message, and it lands better when it is short, dated and explained once.
01
Give a date, four to six weeks ahead
Tell clients in the chair and on your booking page: from this day, a full set is this much. A date makes it feel planned rather than desperate, and gives people time to book one more visit at the old price if they want to.
02
Schedule it, so you cannot forget it
In Slotora you can type a service's new price and the day it starts. Any visit on or after that day is quoted the new price, even if the client books it today; appointments that already exist keep the price they were booked at, so nobody arrives to a surprise.
03
Move enough to matter
One rise of eight to fifteen percent once a year is easier for clients to accept than a dollar every few months, and it is far less work for you. Small, frequent rises train clients to watch your prices rather than your work.
04
Watch the next two months
Compare average spend per visit and how many of your regulars rebook against the same weeks last year. If both hold, the market accepted the move. If rebooking falls sharply, look at which services lost clients before you blame the whole list.
What this guide cannot do for you
Said plainly, because pricing advice is easy to over-trust.
- It is not tax advice
- The CRA rules above are summarized from its own pages as they read today. Whether a particular service, product sale or rental arrangement is taxable, and when your registration takes effect, is a question for an accountant who knows your books.
- Slotora does not file or calculate your GST/HST
- Slotora shows the prices you set and records what was paid. It does not work out your GST/HST, register you with the CRA or prepare a return; keep using your accountant or bookkeeping software for that.
- Local prices move
- Any band you map this month will drift. Re-check your eight to ten comparison businesses at least once a year, and every time a new competitor opens nearby.
Pricing questions Canadian owners ask
Do I have to charge GST/HST from my first client?
Not if you are a small supplier: the CRA lets you stay unregistered while taxable sales stay at or under C$30,000 over four consecutive calendar quarters. Crossing it in a single quarter means charging on the sale that took you over; crossing it over four quarters gives you until the end of the following month.
Should my menu show prices with or without tax?
Either can be honest, provided the price a client sees is one they can actually pay apart from the tax itself. The Competition Bureau's drip-pricing guidance excludes sales tax from the problem, but not extra fees you add yourself. Choose one convention and state it beside the list.
How often should I review my prices?
Once a year as a habit, and again whenever your costs jump — a new lease, a distributor's price change, a move to a bigger room. Re-run the cost floor first; it is the step most owners skip.
Can I put prices up for clients who already have appointments?
Slotora will not do that: when you schedule a new price, appointments that already exist keep the price they were booked at, and only visits on or after the day you chose are quoted the new one.
Is a discount for new clients a good idea?
A small, time-limited opening offer can fill early gaps, but a permanent discount just lowers your price for the clients who would have come anyway. If you run one, use a coupon code with an end date and a cap on uses, so it stops on its own.
Sources
The tax and advertising rules on this page come from these official pages, read on the day shown.
- CRA: registering for the GST/HST — https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/gst-hst-businesses/when-register-charge.html · Read on The C$30,000 small supplier threshold, single-quarter and four-quarter tests, voluntary registration.
- CRA: GST/HST rates by province — https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/gst-hst-businesses/charge-collect-which-rate/calculator.html · Read on
- CRA: input tax credits — https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/gst-hst-businesses/complete-file-input-tax-credit.html · Read on
- Competition Bureau: drip pricing — https://competition-bureau.canada.ca/en/deceptive-marketing-practices/drip-pricing · Read on
Put your new prices where clients book
Add your services with the prices you settled on, schedule next year's rise in advance, and share one booking link. 14 days to try it, then a monthly plan in Canadian dollars with no commission on bookings.