Salon Advance

[sedgecl]

Hi All

Have been looking at a new system for the salon. At the moment I have Kronos, but I having been having problems with them. Today, I had a look at Salon Advance, it seems to be a good system, with no hidden charges. You don't have to purchase an update for hundreds of pounds. You do have to pay £25 p/month for support. I know that there are some cheap packages out there, but after the problems that I have experienced, I really don't want have to go through all the problems of this again. Hence, why I am spending a bit more money this time round.

I was just wondering if anyone else has used it and what you thought.

 

[Ruth Mills]

What's the purchase price, and what do you get for your money? And what sort of problems were you having with Kronos? What specific features does Salon Advance offer in particular that you are after?

 

[sedgecl]

What's the purchase price, and what do you get for your money? And what sort of problems were you having with Kronos? What specific features does Salon Advance offer in particular that you are after?

£995 before VAT, remote support £25 p month with constant upgrades and the system appears to do everything that it should do, they are certified MS, so its very similar to MS, if you know what I mean....

Kronos, support is crap, I purchased the software ages ago, so have to comunicate with Australia and not England, the only time they speak to you is when you say you want you money back. They only answer your emails when they can be bothered and don't read the whole thing.

I think that if Kronos communication worked properly, the system woud be quite good, but the , has been down for nearly a week, as the ssubscription had ran out. Then I managed to lock myself out and am still waiting to get in. I can't get the email side to work, but they say if I upgrade it will. Should i trust them??????

 

[Ruth Mills]

Ah, by MS, do you mean Microsoft? So that would mean that they are a Microsoft certified solution provider or something like that?

The Kronos support does sound decidedly flaky though, the way you have described it. At least if you pay £25 per month for support to a UK-based company, you'd expect to get straight through to a human being!

Wouldn't like to comment on the price; the vast majority of these salon software systems seem very expensive to me, yet from what I have heard, the cheap ones tend not to deliver - most that I have heard people describe on here tend to be either very basic, or with non-existent support (or both).

Would still be interested to hear of what features you consider essential though, as it would be a big help for me in terms of turning some fledgling code that is currently sitting on my laptop into something useful...
Posted via Mobile Device

 

[emzlou]

I have ProSolutions from DWB Solutions (here in the UK), I too had cheep software, when I first opened, then I found that it didn’t do what I wanted, I looked on Google and found DWB Solutions, had a demo from them and liked them straight away. They have been great, they put all my client’s records and retail stock in for me and trained my staff. I have been with them 1 year now and have great support from them.
I would recommend them to anyone, their web site is dwbsolutions.com
Give them a try!

Emzlou

 

[sedgecl]

Thanks to all for your advice..I will let you know what I do.

Sedgecl

Hi All

Have been looking at a new system for the salon. At the moment I have Kronos, but I having been having problems with them. Today, I had a look at Salon Advance, it seems to be a good system, with no hidden charges. You don't have to purchase an update for hundreds of pounds. You do have to pay £25 p/month for support. I know that there are some cheap packages out there, but after the problems that I have experienced, I really don't want have to go through all the problems of this again. Hence, why I am spending a bit more money this time round.

I was just wondering if anyone else has used it and what you thought.

 

[boobious]

Do not touch SALON ADVANCE with a barge pole, have had appalling customer service and the system has had problems from the beginning, so we paid £30 a month for support then last week we lost every single appointment, complete and utter nightmare, their response was that the auto backup wasnt switched on, so we asked why it wasnt on and they said because we did not ask them to put it on?? in a nutshell that it wasnt their problem!

 

[Salon Advance]

Do not touch SALON ADVANCE with a barge pole, have had appalling customer service and the system has had problems from the beginning, so we paid £30 a month for support then last week we lost every single appointment, complete and utter nightmare, their response was that the auto backup wasnt switched on, so we asked why it wasnt on and they said because we did not ask them to put it on?? in a nutshell that it wasnt their problem!

We are obviously massively concerned when anything happens to our client's databases and we will do everything we can to sort things out for them.
Backing up is a vital function and we do all we can to ensure that our clients 'backup' both on the system and offsite. This is done during support calls and mail shots.
As part of our customer care process we keep details of all client chats and even though this client was told to back up externally (see image) this was not done.
I can imagine how distraught and upset this client must be and as Clarise's story (below) indicates, we will go out of our way to help, but unfortunately we cannot retrieve data without a backup.

"I purchased Salon Advance software about 18 months ago and put it on a laptop I already had. The software is fantastic and has made a real difference to my salon both in terms of efficiency and profitability.
Everything was going really well until suddenly my laptop refused to switch on! Mass panic! I then realised that I hadn’t done an offsite backup ever!!
The customer care team at Salon Advance had advised me a few weeks ago about the need to back up and I had also received a letter but I just never got round to doing it!
After speaking to Salon Advance my husband drove 30 miles to bring the laptop into their office in Leeds. The technical team initially thought I had lost everything! Client records, appointments, stock, gift vouchers and financial information.
We left the laptop with them and spent two sleepless nights thinking about how I could rescue my business. I had a wedding party booked in but didn’t know when! I could just about cope with people walking through the door unannounced, but I was unable to book in future appointments, as I didn’t know who and what equipment was available.
I then received a phone call from Salon Advance that they had managed to retrieve the majority of my data from the hard drive, so I was back in business! And as an added bonus they even recovered the photographs of my new baby!
I cannot believe how close I came to losing everything! I now backup every day and take the backup home with me."

Clarise, The Nail Base, Snaith Yorkshire
www.thenailbase.com