Stylist Keeps Cash, Explained

Stylist Keep Cash is one of the highest-leverage settings in Perceny, and one of the easiest to turn on without understanding.

It lives at Features Configuration → Payment Settings → Stylist Keep Cash.

The problem it solves

In many shops, a client pays cash and the stylist simply puts it in their pocket. Nobody walks it to the drawer, and at the end of the period the shop and the stylist settle up.

Without Perceny modelling that, the numbers lie: the ticket says it was paid, the drawer says it never saw the money, and the stylist's commission is calculated as though the business is holding cash it never received.

What the setting actually does

With it on, when a stylist closes a ticket in cash:

1. The ticket is paid. The client owes nothing.
2. The stylist keeps the physical cash.
3. Perceny records that they took it. That amount is deducted from their commission payout.
4. If the deduction is more than they are owed, the remainder is recovered from their next card payment.

So the stylist has already been paid, in cash, at the chair — and the ledger catches up afterwards.

A worked example

A stylist is on 50% commission.

• Ticket 1: $100, paid cash. They keep $100. They earned $50. They are now $50 ahead of the shop.
• Ticket 2: $80, paid by card. The shop receives $80. They earned $40 — but the $50 from ticket 1 is recovered first, so instead of receiving $40 they still owe $10.
• Ticket 3: $60, paid by card. They earn $30, the outstanding $10 is recovered, and $20 is paid out.

At every point the ledger is right, and nobody had to walk cash across the room.

The three refinements

Keep Product Cash in Business. Retail is usually the shop's, not the stylist's. Turn this on and the product portion of a cash payment stays in the drawer; only the service portion goes to the stylist.

Keep Membership Cash in Business. Same reasoning: membership money is the business's obligation to fulfil.

Add Stylist Keep Cash to Register. Records kept cash in the register for tracking. Read this carefully: the stylist still keeps the cash and still owes the same amount. Nothing about the money changes; it only becomes visible in the register. Some owners want that visibility, others find the drawer easier to reconcile without it.

There is a fourth on the Invoice tab: Keep Invoice Cash in Business.

What it looks like in the Period Summary

The Period Summary shows a kept-cash breakdown, so a stylist can see exactly which tickets put them ahead and how it is being recovered.

Two Summary and Statistics settings adjust it:

• Hide Stylist Kept Cash Breakdown removes the dropdown. Only do this if the detail is causing more questions than it answers.
• Stylist Pays Salon relabels a negative balance from "balance" to "Pay The Salon". If your stylists routinely end a period owing the shop, this reads far better than a minus sign.

When it goes wrong

"Their commission is zero and they did plenty of work." They have collected a lot of cash. The commission is being recovered against it. Open the kept-cash breakdown.

"The drawer is short." It should be. Kept cash never entered the drawer, unless you turned on Add Stylist Keep Cash to Register.

"They left owing money." That is a debt, and Perceny tracks it. See Track and settle stylist debt.

Should you turn it on?

Turn it on if cash genuinely stays with your stylists. Leave it off if all cash goes into a drawer at the desk.

The wrong answer here is not a small error — it changes every commission figure in the shop. If you are switching an established business, do it at the start of a pay period, not in the middle of one.