FAQ & how-to

An analytics page for salon owners. You upload your checkout (sales) file and your staff hours, and the account shows the day, the week, the month and the year: revenue per labor hour (RPLH) against your break-even, utilization, labor %, the service mix, and profit after wages and costs. It also has a pay-period bonus calculator and a weekly scheduler.

It does not book appointments, take card payments, run payroll, file taxes, or replace your booking software. To see what it looks like first, open the Sample.

Tangled Solo is built for booth and suite renters: $29 a month after a 7-day free trial, no card needed to start. It shows your take-home per chair hour after rent, product and card fees, the day each month your rent is covered, tips, which services and regulars pay best, and a tax set-aside. It reads your GlossGenius, Vagaro, Square, Phorest, etc. export in your browser. Start your trial on the Tangled Solo page, or try it with Example numbers first.

Salon owners with employee or commission stylists use the Growth Plan: $59 a month plus $15 per additional location.

1. Open Sign up.
2. Enter Salon, Email and Password (at least 8 characters).
3. Choose your Booking software, Payroll software and Transaction software. These choices do not connect the systems; they record which export to expect.
4. Click Create account.
5. If you are asked to check your email, click the confirmation link, then sign in.

You land on your salon page, with Open my analytics and Start 7-day free trial (then $59 / month).

1. Go to Sign in and sign in (or use Start 7-day free trial on your salon page).
2. Click Start 7-day free trial. Stripe checkout opens with your email filled in. You will not be charged until the 7-day trial ends.
3. Pay. Back on the analytics page you may see “Confirming your payment with Stripe…” while it checks.
4. Read the terms, tick I agree to the terms of service. and click Agree and open the tool.

If it says “Payment not confirmed yet. Refresh in a minute.”, wait a minute and refresh the page.

The tool opens after the month is paid and you agree to the terms of service. The agreement is remembered in that browser, so a new browser or device may ask you to agree again.

1. Click Upload CSV / PDF and choose your checkout export. Stylists and services in the file are added for you.
2. Open the Team tab, set each stylist’s Pay type (Hourly (W-2), Commission only, or Hourly + commission), check their Hourly rate $ (stylists added from a file start at $20/hr) and Commission %, and click Save roster.
3. On the same tab, enter your fixed monthly costs and click Save targets & fixed costs, so profit is accurate.
4. Add staff hours if you have them (see how hours get in).

1. On the Daily tab, pick the date.
2. In Stylists today, type each person’s Sched hrs, Billable hrs and Service $.
3. Fill in Daily inputs (retail, tips, client count, new clients, no-shows, pre-books, product cost, and so on).
4. Click Save Day.

Load Day brings back a saved date. Clear only empties the screen; it does not delete the saved day.

1. Open Sign in and type your email in the Email box.
2. Click Forgot your password? under the form.
3. Open the link in the email, type a new password (8+ characters), click Save password, then sign in.

Your sign-in lasts for the browser tab. Closing the tab or the browser ends it. Sign in again and your saved data loads back from your account.

• The Big Three: RPLH (against your break-even), Labor % of Revenue, and Average Ticket.
• Day snapshot: Service Revenue, Labor Cost, Paid Hours, Billable Hours, Utilization, Clients / Services, Retail / Service %, card fees, and Day Profit.
• Stylists today: each person’s rate, scheduled and billable hours, Service $, labor $, utilization and $/hr.
• Daily inputs and Extra daily signals: pre-book rate, no-show rate, revenue per chair, product cost %, new clients, card fees, and a net day margin.

Tiles turn green, yellow or red against the targets on the Team tab. Use Calculate, Save Day, Load Day and Clear to work with one date.

Pick a date in Week of (the tab shows seven days from that date) and click Refresh.

• Week revenue, RPLH, Labor %, Utilization, Retail / service, Pre-book rate, Avg ticket and Week profit.
• Charts: revenue and profit by day, salon RPLH by day with the break-even line, and RPLH by stylist.
• A daily breakdown table, a By weekday card, and Peak capacity.

A read-only look at days you already saved; nothing on this tab changes your data. Use it to see how every Monday (or any weekday) behaved across a year before you post a schedule.

1. Pick the Year.
2. Pick a Weekday (All days, or Every Monday through Every Sunday).
3. Pick what to Chart: Service $, Tickets, Utilization, RPLH, Scheduled hours, Billable hours, Profit, or Stylists on floor.

You get averages by weekday, a trend chart, a year heatmap (gold is positive, red is negative, empty means no saved day), the stylists who worked that weekday, and every matching date.

Pick the Month and click Refresh.

• Month revenue, RPLH, Labor %, revenue per chair per day, product cost %, fixed costs for the month, card fees, Month profit, Profit margin, new clients, revenue per stylist, new-client and all-client retention (90-day and 180-day), client frequency, average ticket and days logged.
• Charts: daily revenue and profit, salon RPLH trend, RPLH by stylist.
• Named clients this month and Client fields (filled from stored names; you can type over them), plus By weekday and Peak capacity.

Pick the Year and click Refresh.

• Year revenue, year labor, Labor %, RPLH, year-to-date revenue, profit and margin, a yearly profit projection, annual fixed costs, logged-year profit, and months with data.
• Charts: monthly revenue, monthly profit, RPLH by stylist; a monthly summary table; By weekday; Peak capacity.
• Top 3 clients by spend and top 3 by visits, from stored client names.

• Pick a Range (Today, This week, This month, This year, All saved) and click Refresh.
• Charts: most performed, highest revenue, and best revenue per booked hour.
• Manage services: your menu with name, category, price and minutes.
• Today’s service counts: counts for the date on the Daily tab, with booked and actual minutes.
• Booked vs actual time: after you enter Actual min and Save Day over several tickets, it flags services that run long or short and suggests a new book time (rounded to 5 minutes), with an Apply button.
• Mix ranking: each service’s share of jobs and revenue, hours and $/hr.

It works out RPLH bonuses by pay period. It does not run payroll.

1. Under Pay period settings, set Period length (days) (14 by default) and the Anchor start date (the first day of a pay period).
2. Choose a Bonus mode: Highest tier % of full production, or Progressive % of $ over each threshold.
3. Edit the RPLH bonus tiers (defaults: $50 → 10%, $55 → 25%). Use + Add tier or Remove.
4. Click Save pay settings, then Refresh periods.

The Pay periods table (last 4 to 26 periods) shows each stylist’s hours, production, RPLH, tier and bonus; the summary below totals them. Bonus RPLH is production ÷ scheduled hours for the period.

• Targets & assumptions: break-even, goals and rates that drive the colors and checks (see changing targets).
• Fixed monthly costs: rent and other fixed costs used for profit (see fixed costs).
• Stylist roster: names, pay type (hourly W-2 or commission), hourly rates and commission %.
• Revenue per stylist: hours, production, labor, RPLH and utilization from saved days, for this month, this week, this year or all time.

On Weekly, Monthly and Annual. It shows the peak hour, peak weekday, peak week, peak month and busiest day, and a heat table of tickets by checkout hour. The hour is when the ticket checked out in your booking system (usually near the end of the service), in this computer’s local time. It needs a GlossGenius line-item upload, which carries checkout times. Tips are left out.

• They come from full client names (First Last) in the GlossGenius line-item file. Walk-ins and first-name-only tickets are ignored.
• A visit is a day with a service. A retail-only checkout adds spend but not a visit.
• Spend is services + retail. Tips are never included.
• New clients (90d) is the share of first-time clients (first visit 90 to 180 days before the month ends) who came back within 90 days.
• New clients (180d), shown right next to it, is the share of first-time clients (first visit 180 to 360 days before the month ends) who came back within 180 days. It shows a dash until there is about a year of client history.
• All clients (90d) counts everyone who came in during the 90 days before the last 90 days, new and regular clients alike, and shows the share who came in again in the last 90 days. All clients (180d) does the same with 180-day windows. Both sit next to the new-client cards and show a dash if client history does not reach back far enough.

Revenue per labor hour: service revenue (tips left out) ÷ scheduled (paid) hours. For one stylist it is their Service $ ÷ their scheduled hours.

On the Daily tile, green means at or above your stretch goal, yellow means at or above break-even, and red means below break-even.

The RPLH break-even ($) you set on the Team tab ($42 until you change it). It is drawn across the RPLH charts. Hours or days under the line bring in less per labor hour than your break-even.

Stylist RPLH charts also show a labor-cover line: the cover wage × (1 + employer burden), what an hour must bring in to cover that hour’s pay. Leave Cover wage $/hr blank to use the most common roster rate.

Billable hours ÷ scheduled hours. The Team tab target is 80% with a warning below 65% until you change them. The scheduler separately aims for 90% when it sets hours.

Day profit = service revenue + retail − labor − product cost − the day’s fixed-cost share − other variable costs − card fees.

• Labor = (scheduled hours × hourly rate + the stylist’s service sales × commission %) × 1.0765 (7.65% FICA added). Works for W-2 hourly, commission-only, and hourly + commission stylists. Commission is on service sales only, never tips or retail, and changing a pay type or % re-figures every saved day.
• Card fees are 2.6% of service + retail by default. Change the rate on the Team tab, or for one day on the Daily tab.
• Tips are a pass-through and are not part of profit.

Weekly, Monthly and Annual add up the saved days. Profit margin compares profit with revenue.

Labor cost ÷ service revenue. By default it shows green at or below 50% and red above 55%; set your own on the Team tab.

The tool treats gratuity as a pass-through, not salon revenue. Tips are tracked on their own line in Daily inputs and are left out of Service $, RPLH, profit and client spend.

On the Annual tab: the year’s run-rate × 365, minus the full year of fixed costs. It is a straight-line estimate from the days you have saved.

1. Open the Schedule tab and pick Week starting (it snaps to Monday).
2. Click Add employee. Enter Name on the grid, Full name and Hourly rate; tick Fill-in for occasional staff. Click Save employee. The person is added to the Team roster too.
3. Click + add in a day to add a shift: Clock in, Clock out, Lunch start (unpaid), Lunch end. Click Save.
4. Click a shift to change it or Remove day.

The totals show week hours, estimated labor (with FICA), stylist-days and the average on the floor. The schedule does not change your saved Daily days.

It reworks the week’s hours from the shifts on the grid and your saved Daily history: the same week last year, your weekday trends, and the last 8 weeks. Each day’s hours target is billable hours ÷ 90% utilization.

• The Why these hours box explains each day: tickets, revenue, profit, utilization and the target.
• Easter, July 4, Thanksgiving and Christmas stay closed.
• It replaces hand edits for the week, so make hand changes (or use Apply note) after it.
• With no saved history yet, it keeps the usual days.

1. Type plain notes in Notes for Apply note, for example: “Tuesday is slow.” “Close at 5 Monday.” Or a grid name with “off Friday” or “add Saturday”.
2. Click Apply note.

It changes the posted week and lists what it read; the notes box clears afterwards. Notes can also cap the people on a day (“only 3 people”), even out hours, cut or add hours by a percent, start a day later, close a day, or open a holiday.

1. Untick Hours and/or Pay to hide them first, if you like.
2. Click Print one page for your browser’s print dialog, or Text message JPEG to download a .jpg picture (a preview also appears on the page).

Show fill-ins shows or hides fill-in staff. Remove under a name takes that person off the posted schedule; saved Daily history is not deleted.

1. Open the Team tab.
2. Under Fixed monthly costs, fill in Rent / lease $, Utilities $, Insurance $, Software / POS $, Marketing $ and Other fixed $. Total monthly fixed adds them up.
3. Click Save targets & fixed costs. The status line shows the math and how many saved days were updated.

Change them whenever rent or utilities change, and save again.

When you save, the monthly total × 12 is spread evenly over this calendar year’s operating days: every day with a saved record, plus the rest of the year projected at the salon’s observed open rate. Days with no record (closed days, such as holidays) carry $0.

• Every saved day of the current year is updated right away; only its fixed-cost share changes.
• The line under the fields shows the result, like “Applied for year: $…/yr ÷ … operational days … = $… per operational day.”
• Newly uploaded days get the current daily share. After adding many new days, click Save targets & fixed costs again to recalculate.
• Save Day keeps whatever is in the Daily Daily fixed OpEx share box.

1. On the Team tab, under Targets & assumptions, edit any of: RPLH break-even ($), RPLH stretch goal ($), Cover wage $/hr, Employer burden %, Utilization target (%), Utilization warn below (%), Labor % green at/below, Labor % red above, Retail / service target (%), Txn fee % (card processing).
2. Click Save targets & fixed costs.

Reset defaults restores the starting values (break-even $42, stretch goal $50, utilization 80% / warn 65%, labor green ≤ 50% / red > 55%, retail 12%, card fee 2.6%, burden 7.65%). It also sets fixed costs back to $0.

1. On the Team tab, under Stylist roster, click + Add stylist.
2. Type the name, choose the Pay type, and enter the Hourly rate $ and/or Commission %. Use Remove to take someone off.
3. Click Save roster.

Rate changes apply to new daily entries; days already saved keep their rate. Stylists added from an upload start at $20/hr, so set their real rate. Add employee on the Schedule tab also adds to the roster.

1. On the Services tab, under Manage services, click + Add service.
2. Fill in Name, Category, Price $ and Minutes (the booked menu time).
3. Click Save catalog.

Services found in an uploaded checkout file are added automatically. Clear list empties the menu; saved days keep their counts.

Set Txn fee % (card processing) on the Team tab (2.6 by default) and click Save targets & fixed costs. For a single day, change Txn fee rate % on the Daily tab; Card / collected sales for fee $ sets the amount the fee applies to (blank means service + retail).

New accounts get a 7-day free trial, no card needed. After that, the Growth Plan is $59 a month, collected by Stripe.

1. Open the Stripe billing portal.
2. Sign in with the email you paid with.
3. Update the card, download a receipt, or cancel.

Under the terms, you may cancel any month. A month already paid is not refunded, and access lasts through the paid month.

Canceling does not delete your data. To remove it, sign in and use Delete my data or Delete account.

Under the terms, the account can close until the month is paid again. Update your card in the Stripe billing portal.

While you are signed in, a small bar sits at the bottom right of the page with your email, Sign out, Delete my data and Delete account.

Click Sign out. Any pending change is saved to your account first, then the copy in this browser is cleared and you return to the sign-in screen.

1. Click Delete my data in the bottom-right bar.
2. Confirm. This deletes everything saved for your account (uploaded days, hours, roster, settings, schedule) from your account and from this browser.

Your account and billing stay open. The export still sitting in your booking software is not touched.

1. Click Delete account in the bottom-right bar.
2. Type DELETE and confirm.

This deletes your account and all its data, and cancels your subscription. If you see “Could not delete the account…”, try again or write to us.

1. Open the Contact page and pick a topic.
2. Fill in the form and click Open in email. Your email app opens with the note ready to send.

Or write directly to [email protected]. Please don’t send passwords or client lists.

Yes, on a paid account. The tool keeps a working copy in your browser and saves it to your account automatically a few seconds after each change, and when you leave the page. When you sign in, it loads back, so you can sign in from another computer.

This covers saved days, the roster, settings and fixed costs, the service list, the schedule and stored client names.

No. Each account can read only its own salon’s data. Under the terms it is one salon, one login: don’t share your password or upload another shop’s file.

From the terms: you keep the client list. Tangled does not sell it and does not use a salon’s guests to market to another salon. Files are used to build that salon’s read and to keep the archive for that account.

The file itself is not kept. The tool stores the numbers it reads: each day’s totals, each stylist’s hours and Service $, service counts, and checkout-hour counts. From a GlossGenius line-item file it also stores full client names with visit dates, stylist and spend (services + retail), for the client counts. Walk-ins and first-name-only tickets are ignored.

1. Click Export JSON at the top of the analytics page.
2. A file named like tangled_analytics_2026-03-09.json downloads.

It holds the roster, saved days, settings (targets, fixed costs, pay settings) and the service list. It does not include the schedule grid or stored client names.

1. Click Import JSON and choose a backup .json file.
2. Wait for the “Imported” message.

Days in the backup are added, or replace the same dates. The roster, settings and service list are replaced by the backup’s.

1. Wait a minute and refresh the analytics page. It checks with Stripe and opens once the payment is confirmed.
2. Make sure you are signed in with the same email you paid with, and that you started billing with Start 7-day free trial (or Pay) from your account.
3. If you see the terms step, tick the box and click Agree and open the tool.
4. Still locked? Write to us from Contact (Account / login help).

No data rows: the file is empty or has only a header. Export again with a date range that has sales.

No usable rows: the tool could not find dates or values it understands. Use the GlossGenius line-item export, or the daily summary format with its exact headers.

The tool reads .csv, .txt and .pdf. Open an Excel file and save it as CSV, then upload the CSV.

The PDF reader loads from the internet the first time you upload a PDF. Connect and try again, or use a CSV export, which imports more accurately.

• Check the date range of the export, and that you exported whole days.
• Tips are kept out of Service $ on purpose.
• If you uploaded an hours-only file after the sales, the sales for those dates were set to zero. Upload the checkout file again.
• For a non-GlossGenius file, check the headers against the daily summary format.

Hours may have been estimated from ticket times. Upload real hours, or type Sched hrs and Billable hrs on the Daily tab and click Save Day. Also check each stylist’s rate on the Team tab.

The tool matches staff by first name (or a matching roster name), so two people who share a first name are counted together. If this affects your salon, write to us from Contact.

That saved day includes someone who is no longer on the roster. They still count toward that day. Add them back on the Team tab if you need to edit their rate.

There are no saved days in that period yet, or a needed input is zero (for example, no hours). Pick a period that has data and click Refresh.

Fixed costs may not be entered or saved yet. Enter them on the Team tab and click Save targets & fixed costs. Also check stylist rates and the day’s product cost.

The file is not a Tangled Analytics backup, or it was changed. Use a file made with Export JSON.

Changes save to your account a few seconds after you make them. When you finish, click Sign out; it saves any pending change first. Then sign in on the other computer.