Track and Settle Stylist Debt
When a stylist owes the shop or the shop owes them: where the balance comes from, and how to clear it in both directions.
A balance between the shop and a stylist can point either way, and Perceny tracks both.
Where the balance comes from
The stylist owes the business when they have taken more than they have earned. The usual cause is Stylist Keeps Cash: they pocketed cash at the chair, and their commission has not yet caught up with it. Other causes include an advance, a product taken from stock, or a refund on a ticket they were already paid for.
The business owes the stylist when commission has been earned but not yet paid out. Perceny calls this Business to Stylist Debt: "the outstanding balance the business currently owes the stylist based on commission and payment history".
Where to look
The Stylist Debt Summary shows the position per person. It is also visible in the Period Summary, where the kept-cash breakdown explains how a stylist ended up ahead.
Stylist Pays Salon (Summary and Statistics) changes how a negative balance reads: "Pay The Salon" rather than a minus sign against "balance". If your stylists routinely owe the shop, turn it on — it is the difference between a figure people understand and one they argue about.
Settling it
Two actions, and they are not the same. Read the description on each before you use it:
Collect Stylist Debt — "By completing this form, you are confirming that the stylist already paid the business the amount provided in the form." Use this when they have handed money back to the shop.
Clear Business to Stylist Debt — "By completing this form, you are signaling that you already paid the stylist the amount provided in the form." Use this when the shop has paid them outside Perceny.
Both are records of something that already happened in the real world. Neither moves money by itself. Do not use them to "tidy up" a balance you have not actually settled — the balance is the only thing standing between you and a disagreement at the end of the month.
Automatic recovery
Under Stylist Keeps Cash, you often do not need to settle anything by hand. The debt is deducted from their commission payout and recovered from their next card payment, automatically, until it is gone.
Manual settlement is for the cases automatic recovery cannot reach: someone who has stopped working, an advance that has nothing to do with tickets, or a balance you have agreed to write off.
When someone leaves owing money
- Close out their tickets — nothing open, nothing pending.
- Look at the Stylist Debt Summary for the final figure.
- Settle it in the real world.
- Record it with Collect Stylist Debt.
- Disable the membership rather than deleting it. Deleting removes the person from the history that explains the balance.
Where it shows in reports
Debt movements are their own ledger. If a balance does not look right, read the movements in order rather than trying to reverse-engineer it from the total — the sequence usually makes the cause obvious.