Carter Cook, CPAs

Carter Cook, CPAs Team of beauty accountants serving beauty professionals all over the US.

Paying your $80-an-hour injector to message clients back and forth? You just hired an $80-an-hour admin.Every hour at th...
10/06/2026

Paying your $80-an-hour injector to message clients back and forth? You just hired an $80-an-hour admin.

Every hour at that rate has to be worth that rate.

Confirmations. Reschedules. Product orders. Follow-ups. None of that needs a license, and all of it gets billed at provider rates when your team handles it.

So when is it fine for the team to do admin? When you're small, chairs sit open anyway, and it adds up to maybe an hour a day. Nobody is losing a booked appointment over it.

When do you need a front desk? When your providers' admin hours could be booked hours. If a $20-an-hour hire frees up five booked hours a week at $80, you're ahead by a lot.

Hand the easy tasks to someone cheaper. Keep the expensive hands on clients.

Who answers the DMs at your place?

The first number I check on any salon or medspa payroll isn't total wages. It's what you pay each person divided by what...
10/05/2026

The first number I check on any salon or medspa payroll isn't total wages. It's what you pay each person divided by what they sell.

Pay someone $4,000 in a month and they sell $8,900? That's 45%.

Around 45% leaves room for product, rent, card fees, taxes, and something for you. Your exact target depends on your comp model and your business, but the math works the same everywhere.

At 70%? That person costs you money. Talent doesn't change the math. Loyalty doesn't change the math.

Run it for every stylist and injector, year to date, one at a time. Team averages hide the problem. Individual numbers point give you information you can use to make changes.

Who's your highest number? Go find out.

Sales up, but you haven't paid yourself in months?Doesn't make sense, but it's the most common thing I see.Revenue is no...
10/02/2026

Sales up, but you haven't paid yourself in months?

Doesn't make sense, but it's the most common thing I see.

Revenue is not profit. Profit is what's left after everyone else gets paid. Your team. Your landlord. Cosmoprof. The IRS. Then you.

You can grow sales and still go backwards. It happens when your costs grow faster than your sales do, and payroll is the cost that does it most.

Here's your homework. Pull your P&L and put this year's sales next to last year's for the same stretch. Then do the same for wages. If wages grew by more dollars than sales did, you found your problem.

Which one grew faster at your salon this year? Tell me below.

Spent all year writing off everything so you'd owe nothing in taxes?Congrats. Your lender now thinks your salon makes no...
10/01/2026

Spent all year writing off everything so you'd owe nothing in taxes?

Congrats. Your lender now thinks your salon makes nothing.

When you apply for a loan for that second location or remodel, the bank isn't looking at your appointment book. It's looking at your tax returns, usually the last 2–3 years.

Say your salon does $1.2M in revenue. But between the "business" car, the family trip that was kind of a conference, and every Amazon order, your tax return shows $20,000 in profit.

The loan you want comes with a $3,000 monthly payment. That's $36,000 a year.

The bank sees $20,000 in profit trying to cover $36,000 in payments.

Denied.

Here's what lenders actually look at:

Profit on your tax return. Not revenue. Not what you "really" made. What you reported.
Debt coverage. That's a fancy way of asking, "Does this business make enough to pay its current loans AND the new one, with room to spare?"
Bank statements. They want steady deposits and a balance that doesn't hit zero every payroll.
Your personal credit. For most small business loans, you're personally on the hook, so your credit matters too.

To be clear, legitimate deductions are a good thing. Take every one you're entitled to.

The problem is when "pay less tax" becomes the ONLY goal and shady deductions start creeping on your return. Low taxes and a loan-ready business can pull in opposite directions. If expansion is in your plans, start cleaning up your numbers a couple of years before you need the loan.

Are you planning to expand? What's holding you back from applying?

Launching a new service? You need two numbers before you pick a price.The floor. Add up product cost, provider time, and...
09/30/2026

Launching a new service? You need two numbers before you pick a price.

The floor. Add up product cost, provider time, and the overhead that service has to cover. Then add in profit. That total is the lowest price you can charge and still make money.

Say a new facial uses $30 in product, takes 60 minutes of a $40/hour esthetician, and needs to cover $50 of overhead per hour. You're at $120 before you've made a dime. Want a 20% profit? Your floor is $150.

The ceiling. Your market sets this one. Your results, your reputation, and your waitlist all push it up. A spreadsheet can't see any of that.

Price below the floor and you lose money on every booking. Price straight off the spreadsheet and you leave money on the table with every client who would have paid more.

We build the floor for you down to the dollar. Our CFOs help you find the ceiling.

Comment CALL and we'll send you the link to apply.

Your revenue is up 47%. Retail is over 10% of sales. Costs are down and you're building equity.On paper, your salon is s...
09/29/2026

Your revenue is up 47%. Retail is over 10% of sales. Costs are down and you're building equity.

On paper, your salon is strong.

So why are you exhausted?

Because most of that service revenue is yours. You're behind the chair morning to night, five days a week and educating on the weekends, while your stylists' books have gaps you could drive a truck through.

I see this a lot. The growth is real. It's also 100% dependent on your two hands.

You have two options.

Option 1: Keep carrying the team. Stay exhausted and let the resentment build.

Option 2: Trim your hours. Hand your team the open appointments AND a revenue goal per chair.

I know this feels like an impossible decision. Cutting back your hours behind the chair means that you will make less money. That's true initially.

Your own chair pays you this month. A team takes training, marketing, and a few months of quiet books before it pays. Then it pays for years.

That trade is the difference between you being able to run a salon another ten years and closing when the lease is up.

If your growth looks great on paper, but feels like a treadmill in person, pick a direction. Then change your schedule to match.

Nothing changes until you make a change.

You know your total revenue. Do you know what each chair has to bring in before it stops costing you money?Most salon ow...
09/28/2026

You know your total revenue. Do you know what each chair has to bring in before it stops costing you money?

Most salon owners I work with don't.

The math takes five minutes.

Overhead ÷ number of chairs ÷ gross profit %

Gross profit % is what's left of every dollar after you pay for payroll, backbar, and retail product. If those eat 50 cents of each dollar, your gross profit % is 50%.

Say your overhead is $40,000 a month, you have 8 chairs, and your gross profit % is 50%.

$40,000 ÷ 8 = $5,000 per chair.
$5,000 ÷ 0.50 = $10,000.

That's the number. A stylist doing $10,000 a month covers her commission, her product, her processing fees, AND her share of the rent, the front desk, the software, all of it. Below that, you're paying for the privilege of having her there.

Now pull each stylist's monthly revenue and line it up next to your number.

Above the line? They're carrying the salon.
Below it? You need a plan.

Save this and run your numbers on your next slow Monday. How many of your chairs clear the line?

Your rent might not be too high.Here's the test. Take your monthly rent and multiply by 10. That's the revenue your spac...
09/25/2026

Your rent might not be too high.

Here's the test. Take your monthly rent and multiply by 10. That's the revenue your space needs to produce.

$4,000 in rent means the space needs to generate $40,000 a month. Hit that number and rent sits at a healthy 10% of revenue. Fall short and the same lease starts eating 15%, 18%, 20% of every dollar.

The lease didn't get more expensive. The chairs got emptier.

Before you shop for a smaller space, look at how full you are. Booked chairs, rented chairs, extended hours. There could be more revenue sitting in your current square footage than you think.

And if you're about to sign a lease, run this math first. If the space can't realistically produce 10x the rent, keep looking.

We help salon and medspa owners make calls like this with real numbers. Comment CALL to see our services page.

You are the biggest risk in your business. Not your rent. Not your no-shows. You.About half of salons close within five ...
09/24/2026

You are the biggest risk in your business. Not your rent. Not your no-shows. You.

About half of salons close within five years. Medspas aren't far behind, tracking near the 45% failure rate that hits new businesses across the board. The pattern is usually the same. The owner works morning to night, skips their own paycheck, and builds something that can't survive a week without them. Then they burn out, and there's nothing left to sell.

Growth is good. Growth that costs you your health, your family, and your paycheck is just a slow, losing battle.

Build a business that pays you every month and runs without you in the building. That's the version worth growing.

We help salon and medspa owners get there. Comment CALL for our services page.

You can withhold the right amount all year. Clean books, accurate payroll, no surprises on the business side.The surpris...
09/23/2026

You can withhold the right amount all year. Clean books, accurate payroll, no surprises on the business side.

The surprise can come from a spouse's paycheck. A six-figure salary with almost nothing withheld.

Your tax return combines every paycheck in the house. One wrong W-4 and the whole household writes a check in April.

So check every pay stub, yours and theirs. Find the federal withholding line. If the number looks small for the salary, update the W-4 now. There are months of paychecks left in 2026, which could be enough time to close most of the gap.

Been caught by this before?

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