Frequently asked questions

Luminate costs £69 a month. That covers every feature, unlimited staff accounts, unlimited tills and 300 SMS credits each month. There's one plan, so a salon with one chair pays the same as a salon with ten.

There's no setup fee and nothing hidden. You pay £69 a month for every feature, unlimited staff accounts and 300 SMS credits. The only other costs are the 2% + 20p card processing fee on an online payment and any SMS you send beyond the 300 included.

Every feature is in the £69, including online booking with deposits, commission automation, skin test records, rostering and reporting. There are no tiers, so nothing sits behind a premium plan.

Staff accounts are unlimited and included in the £69. A salon with eight staff pays £69 a month, and software that charges £30 per user would cost the same salon £240 a month, or £2,880 a year.

Luminate charges 0% commission on bookings, so you keep everything your clients pay. Marketplace platforms take a cut when a new client finds you through their directory, but Luminate has no directory and no booking fees. The only transaction cost is the 2% + 20p card processing fee on an online payment.

There's no contract, no minimum term and no exit fee. Billing is monthly, so you can cancel at any time if Luminate isn't right for your salon.

Yes. The free trial lasts 30 days with every feature included, and you don't enter a credit card to start. If you cancel before the 30 days end, you pay nothing.

You get 300 SMS credits each month, and extra credits cost from 7p each. A WhatsApp reminder uses one credit, and once the client replies, follow-up WhatsApp messages are free for 24 hours. Email costs nothing extra.

One SMS credit covers a standard message of up to 160 characters. A longer message splits into more than one credit automatically.

Your SMS credits reset at the start of each billing cycle, so unused credits from one month are not carried into the next.

You can cancel at any time, and there are no exit fees or cancellation penalties. You pay only for the months you've used, and you can export your client records before you go.

You choose which services need a deposit and set it as a fixed amount or a percentage. The client pays by debit or credit card when they book online, before the booking confirms. If the deposit isn't paid within 30 minutes, the booking cancels itself and the slot goes back into your diary.

Each online payment costs 2% + 20p, which covers card processing. A £20 deposit costs 60p to take and a £50 deposit costs £1.20. There is no monthly gateway fee and no setup cost, so you pay only when a payment is collected.

Yes, you set deposits service by service. You could take £30 flat for a colour correction, 50% for bridal hair and nothing for a quick trim.

The deposit comes off the bill at checkout automatically. If the bridal hair bill is £150 and the client paid a £50 deposit, the till shows £100 to pay.

Yes. Every appointment has a Take Deposit button for phone bookings and walk-ins, and it opens the till with the deposit amount already filled in.

Yes, you need a separate card machine to take contactless and chip-and-PIN payments at reception. Luminate takes the online payments and records every payment at the till, whether the client pays by card, cash or gift voucher.

Yes. Take £50 in cash and the till updates the balance ready for the card payment. Any mix of cash, card, gift voucher and other payment types works the same way.

Yes. Tips have quick buttons for 10%, 15%, 20% and 25%, or you type a custom amount. Discounts go on as a percentage or a fixed amount.

Yes, you sell and redeem gift vouchers at the till. If a client spends less than the full value of a voucher, the remaining balance stays on the voucher for their next visit.

Yes. You open the till with a float and close it with a count, and Luminate shows any difference between the cash you counted and the cash the till expected.

Yes, you can run Luminate on as many tills and devices as you need. There's no per-device fee, so a second till at reception doesn't change your £69 a month.

Yes. Clients book online at any time of day through your own booking link, which you can share on Instagram, your website and your business cards. Every client confirms their email or phone number with a one-time code before they book, which stops fake bookings.

Yes, clients can reschedule or cancel online up to a cutoff time you set. With a 24-hour cutoff, a client who wants to change a booking inside the last 24 hours has to call the salon.

Yes. You set how far ahead clients can book, how much notice you need before an appointment, and a buffer between online appointments, such as 15 minutes to clean up and prepare.

Smart reminders go out automatically before each appointment, and card deposits give clients a reason to turn up. A booking with an unpaid deposit cancels itself after 30 minutes, so an unpaid slot can't sit in your diary.

Yes. Add the services together and Luminate builds the timeline, including the processing time for the colour. Each service can have a different stylist, and when you move one service you can move the whole group with it.

The diary warns you when you try to book over an existing appointment. You can override the warning when you mean to, for example to fit a blow-dry into a colour development gap.

Yes. You add clients to the waitlist with their preferences, such as mornings only or a specific stylist, and give each entry a priority. When a slot opens, you drag the entry onto the diary and the booking form fills itself in.

You get 300 SMS credits each month for reminders, and email and WhatsApp messaging are included. Two-way messages from every channel arrive in one inbox, and you can also send marketing campaigns and automated birthday messages.

Each customer profile holds contact details, allergies, visit history, preferences, colour formulas and skin test records. Customer badges such as VIP, Prefers Silence and Often Late tell your team at a glance how to look after each client.

Yes. You record gram-accurate colour recipes on the client's profile, and when a service uses more colour than planned, Luminate charges the extra automatically.

Yes. Visit analytics show which clients are overdue for their next appointment, so you can contact them before they drift away to another salon.

Yes, you send email and SMS campaigns to the clients you pick, schedule the send, and track the results. Birthday messages with a time-limited offer can go out automatically.

Yes, and commission automation is included in the £69. You set the commission rates once, and at the end of the month you export the figures for payroll.

Yes. You set weekly shifts and breaks for each member of staff, and staff request holiday and sick leave for you to approve. The rostered hours are ready to export for payroll.

Yes. Staff levels such as Junior, Senior and Director each carry their own price for a service, so the price follows the stylist the client books with.

Yes. There are five access levels: Owner, Admin, Manager, Staff and Receptionist. You can hide client contact details from staff, and stylists can still message a client through the app without seeing the phone number.

Yes. Staff performance reports show revenue, commission and tips for each team member, ready for payroll.

Yes. Multi-salon support is included, so one login covers all your locations and you switch between salons in two clicks. Revenue reports show each site separately.

Your data is encrypted, hosted in the UK and EU, and backed up regularly. GDPR tools cover consent tracking, data requests and anonymisation, and you can hide client contact details from staff.

Your clients own their personal data, and your salon is the data controller responsible for looking after it. Luminate stores the data for you and gives you the tools to export or anonymise a record when a client asks.

Yes. The client completes the screening questionnaire and signs on screen or at home by QR code, and the record stays on their profile with an expiry date of 3, 6, 9 or 12 months. You choose whether a missing test is ignored, gives a warning, or blocks the colour booking.

Yes. Product inventory tracks stock levels, alerts you when a product runs low, and shows the profit margin on each product. Stock goes down automatically when you sell a product at the till.

The free onboarding call helps you set up your diary, services, staff levels and rosters. After the call, the video tutorials and the help documentation cover every part of Luminate.

Yes, the support team runs the migration for you. It brings across customer records, appointments, services, staff, colour formulas, skin test records and gift vouchers. Start the migration on a new, empty account, before you add any services or staff by hand.

Yes. You can try the demo on the website, or start the 30-day free trial and set Luminate up with your own services and staff.

Luminate is for hair salons in the UK and Ireland, from a stylist working on their own to a group of salons. Salon owners built it, so it covers colour formulas, skin tests, staff levels and commission, which general booking tools often leave out.

Lumen is the AI assistant inside Luminate. You ask it a question about your salon in plain English, and it answers from your own salon data, showing each person only what their access level allows.

Email support@luminate.salon, or look in the help documentation and the video tutorials. Inside the app, Lumen answers questions about your salon.

No. Luminate Online is nonprofit fundraising software from Blackbaud, a different company. Luminate Salon Software is hair salon software for salons in the UK and Ireland.