Charitable giving is a staple of any business that believes in humanitarian causes and community engagement. It lets clientele know that the business that they patronize has a heart, and is willing to make a stand for the issues that it believes in. This article will go over the various methods SuperSalon users can use to facilitate charitable donations to any organization or group that they would like.
As of Q4, 2018, the two methods SuperSalon users can take advantage of in order to facilitate charitable donations are the Gift Certificate, and Special Product methods. Whichever method is chosen, users will need to remove the items from the totals in order to get a true number.
Pro: Compartmentalizes donations into a gift account.
Con: The bottom of the receipt will show the salon balance.
Step 1: Enable the Gift Certificate System in the Software Settings, as shown below.
Step 2: Go to Setup -> Payment Methods and create a Gift Type whose name reflects the donation program for tracking purposes, the illustrated example below shows “Operation Reinvent” as the organization.
Step 3: When a sale reaches the Checkout screen, and the client would like to make a donation, choose the Gift Type that was created in the previous step, and use “ORDONFS2016” (without the quotes) for all accounts, as shown below.
Step 4: The donation will be added to the sale as a Gift Certificate item, as shown in the below example.
As shown in the image below, and previously mentioned as the “Con” to this method, the receipt will show the balance and the total raised so far.
The Salon Dashboard report will show the “Gift Cert” value as all Gift Certificates sold. For better accuracy, users will need to check to the Gift report to get a full breakdown if Gift Certificates are being used at the location.
Below is an example of the Gift Report that shows the breakout activity for the “ORDONFS2016” account which reflects the charitable donation revenue.
Pro: Easier to process, and fewer steps for the user.
Con: Product numbers will reflect the donation method.
Step 1: Create a new Product in the system, and use “ORDONFS2016” (without the quotes) as the Product Code.
Step 2: Set the new “product” as non-commissionable, and not tracked as retail in the item set up screen.
Step 3: When a ticket arrives in the Checkout screen, and the client would like to make a donation, scan or search for the new product, and add it to the sale.
The user will need to pull the Product Sales Report at the end of the reporting period to get the sales of the item over a time frame.
Charitable donations are revenue transactions that are exempt from the normal royalty tabulations required by most corporate franchises. As this revenue does not go to inventory, store maintenance, or payroll; configuration for this in SuperSalon has been tricky.
However, a clever workaround has been discovered, and this article has been established as a stand alone guide on how to resolve this issue. The trick is to use the Gift Certificate functionality as a proxy by which the donation can take place, and still be recorded and reported on by the system.
Because we are using the gift certificate system, the first step is to make sure that gift certificates are enabled in SuperSalon by going into the Software Settings and confirming.
Next, go into Payment Methods and setup a Gift Certificate Type. Be sure to give it an easily recognized name.
All salons participating in the charity drive, and within the same account should have a unified code and label for their system’s donation proxy. A possible example from our instance would be to have all salons use the same “MDA” gift account number.
NOTE: The Monthly Financial’s “Gross Gift” column WILL reflect these donations as gift certificates issued / sold, so please inform clients accordingly.
Now that the system has been configured to recognize a charitable donation as a unique gift certificate, royalty tabulations will not take place for these transactions. The checkout process for donating is as follows:
Click the “Gift” Button at the first checkout screen.
The donation proxy should populate
The user should then select the unique code described in Step 3 of the previous section.
Enter the dollar amount.
“Sold For” and “Notes” can be disregarded.
Click “Apply“