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Nail salon break-even calculator
Your break-even point is the number of appointments a month that pays your fixed costs. Each appointment leaves its price minus product cost, commission and card fees, and your fixed costs divided by that amount is the break-even. Add the pay you need to take home to see your real target, then check it against how many appointments your hours can fit. Everything runs in your browser.
Updated
Your month
Rent, utilities, software, insurance, marketing, loan payments and fixed wages.
Set 0 to see the bare break-even.
After discounts. Last month's service takings divided by appointments.
0 if you work alone or pay fixed wages.
Your bookable hours
Include cleanup between clients.
Your break-even
- Appointments a month to cover fixed costs
- 42
- 1.9 per working day
- Appointments a month including your pay
- 93
- 4.2 per working day
- Left from each appointment
- $48.63
- Appointments your hours fit per month
- 123
- Share of those needed, with your pay
- 76%
Left per appointment = price × (1 − commission % − fees %) − products. Appointments needed = (fixed costs + your pay) ÷ left per appointment, rounded up. Capacity = people × hours × days × 60 ÷ minutes per appointment. Before income tax.
How to use it
- Enter your fixed costs for a month: rent, utilities, software, insurance, marketing, loan payments and any fixed wages. The starting numbers are only an example.
- Enter the pay you need to take home each month, or 0 to see the bare break-even.
- Enter your average price per appointment after discounts, the product cost per appointment, and any commission and card fees as a percentage of the price.
- Enter how many people take clients, their bookable hours per day, your working days per month and the average appointment length, cleanup included.
- Read the appointments you need per month and per working day. If the target is above what your hours can fit, or uses most of it, change the price, the costs or the hours and compare.
Questions
How is a nail salon break-even point calculated?
Margin per appointment = average price × (1 − commission % − card fees %) − product cost. Break-even appointments per month = fixed costs ÷ margin per appointment, rounded up. With 2,000 in fixed costs and 50 left from each appointment, you need 40 appointments a month; adding 2,500 of pay for yourself makes it 90.
Should my own pay be included?
Break-even only means the salon stops losing money. If you work in the salon and live from it, the number that matters is the second one: fixed costs plus the pay you need, divided by the margin per appointment.
My technicians are on a wage, not commission. What do I enter?
Put their wages, with employer costs, in fixed costs and set commission to 0. If some appointments carry commission and others do not, for example your own, enter an average rate across all appointments.
Why does the calculator warn above 80% of my capacity?
A calendar is never completely full: gaps between appointments, no-shows and quiet days take part of every week. The calculator uses 80% as a warning line, not as a benchmark. If you track utilization, compare the result with your own figure.
Is my data saved or sent anywhere?
No. The calculation runs in your browser and nothing you type is sent to a server.