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Spa Marketing Made Easy | Spa Business Growth
SMME #411 Save Thousands on Your Spa’s Credit Card Processing Fees with Tippy
00:27:21
Save Thousands on Your Spa’s Credit Card Processing Fees with Tippy
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- [00:00]
Danielle Warner
Are you an APA member yet? December is the last month to be a founding member of the ADDO professional association. With APA, you get free access to all of our 12 monthly masterclasses and recordings, invites to Smallpod mastermind groups that meet monthly, discounts on all offerings and live events from adoesthetics, a digital monthly magazine, and so much more. All of that for the very low price of $300 per year. And as a founding member, we guarantee that the price will never go up as long as you remain a continuous member. Go to attoesthetics.com and click on the ATTO Professional association tab to learn more and join today.
- [00:52]
Daniela Warner
Welcome to Spa Marketing Made Easy, a podcast for spa owners who want to step up their leadership and business skills and step into the role as spa CEO. I I'm your host, Daniela Warner, CEO of ATTO Aesthetics and founder of the Growth Factor Framework program, where we teach, coach and guide spa owners in scaling their spas to the next level of growth and unlocking freedom in their life and their business. I'm so glad you're here. Now let's dive into the show.
- [01:22]
Danielle Warner
Hello, my dears. Danielle here, and I'm just gonna start this episode with a huge thank you to Tippy. So we invited them on the podcast after so many of our Growth Factor students were just raving about their offering and Marcy brought so much value and they showed up in such a huge way for our community. In fact, they are offering every single one of you in this incredible community one year totally free with their service. And if you're not sure what Tippy is, you may not have any idea why that is such a big deal, but this offering has the potential to save you thousands of dollars in credit card processing fees for tips. So anyway, listen to the episode and when you're done, be sure to click on the link in our show notes so you can try Tippy for one year free.
- [02:17]
Marcie
Literally.
- [02:17]
Danielle Warner
No strings attached, no credit card, no risk on your part. This is a great way to save some money. Listen to the episode, see what they're about, and just huge shout out and thank you to Tippy for supporting the Atto community.
- [02:35]
Unknown Speaker
All right, Marcie, I'm so excited to have you here on the Spa Marketing Made Easy podcast. It's going to be like, I don't even know what, like when you find $20 in your purse and you're like, oh my gosh, I didn't know I had that. And you're just feel like you're winning at life I feel like this is going to be one of those episodes where people are like, oh, my gosh, I was just able to find so much money that I had no idea that I could even save in my business. So with that kind of preface, why don't you, you know, I talked a little bit about you in the intro, but tell me what it is that you do at Tippy.
- [03:14]
Marcie
Yeah, absolutely. So I am the sales manager at Tippy. I have been with Tippy, you know, from very early on. So I truly just know Tippy. Love Tippy. Passionate about the industry, so I handle a lot of the sales side of things. I also work a little bit in the marketing side of things, and I work closely with a lot of different areas within our team here at Tippie.
- [03:41]
Unknown Speaker
So what is Tippie? Why are we so excited about this?
- [03:46]
Marcie
Tippy is. It's just amazing. It's this, like you said, this thing that people don't even know sometimes that they're missing out on. Right. It's this magical tool that is great. It's, it's, it's. There's literally not a business that it's not a good fit for. It is a way for businesses to have credit card tipping but to still save money because they can help save on the credit card processing with tips. There's huge benefits to their staff because what Tippy does, and we really call it like a win, win, win, because like I mentioned, the owners can save money with Tippy, the staff members, we see higher tips and of course, everybody loves more money. And when, when your staff is happy, they're, you know, more likely to stay with you. And so then we also have some recruiting and retention pieces that, that Tippie helps with. And we've also discovered, even though it was really built originally for salon owners and service providers, clients actually love Tippy too. It really was amazing to learn how when we migrated from cash to credit cards and plastic and how much of that personalization of tipping was lost and how much of that we didn't even realize that people missed out on. As people transitioned and they were writing their tips on a credit card slip or just pressing a button, people, people started to wonder, you know, does my service provider even know that I'm leaving her a tip? You know, first of all, does she get the whole thing or does this go to some bucket where it gets split? It just. There were so many unknowns on that side that we didn't even realize until we really started to get into, you know, dig deeper into the tipping industry. So it, you know, it's. It's a terminal that just gets added into a service, into part of your checkout process at your business. And it's seamless. It's easy. It's. It just makes sense, but it provides a ton of benefits.
- [05:44]
Unknown Speaker
So I started hearing about Tippy probably around a year ago. A lot of our growth factor students, it's kind of, you know, one person talks about something and they try it and they're sharing their experience, and then it kind of cascades, and then we end up on these group calls, having conversations of how it's working and showing the setup and all of these things. And I think it's really important, especially now. This has been a rough year for all industries. You know, business wise, it's an election year. There's recession fears, all of these things. And in times. It really should be in all times. But I feel like in times of constriction, when people are really focused on like, wow, how am I going to get my revenue? They're really looking at what payments can I bundle, what, you know, like, where can I save? How can I save from both ends? Not only like, trying to bring in more revenue, but trying to cut expenses. And one of the big expenses that we see are credit card processing fees. And when you. It's not a big deal for the patient because it's, you know, cents. It's usually less than a dollar that they're paying. And I know for me, like, it's so convenient to be able to pay on. I have left hair stylist because the salon would not take credit cards and I don't carry cash. And so it was an inconvenience for me to either not feel like, you know, like, I don't want to not tip my stylist, you know, and. But then I'm like, now I have to go figure. I have to go to the atm, I have to get cash, and I'm paying the ATM fees. And it's this whole thing that if I forget to do that, you know, so I will gladly pay 50 cents on a. A credit card processing fee to save me that amount of time. I'm going to pay three bucks on an ATM fee anyways, right? So it allows. There's the convenience factor of that. There's the benefit that the tip is going directly. You guys have. We'll have to include a picture of the platform when we do this episode. So we'll include that over on the show notes page on our website. But essentially, you have your point of sale and then is it a little iPad, like a mini iPad or so?
- [08:19]
Marcie
Yep. So we call it the kiosk, but it's essentially just an iPad and a little stand that sits right at your front desk at your checkout area.
- [08:27]
Unknown Speaker
So you've got a picture of the provider. You can click on that, you can add the amount. And what we've seen with spas, the way that they're doing the checkout is they're saying, all right, I'll go ahead and do your service on the card that we have on file, and I'll turn this around here. If you'd like to leave a gratuity, you can do that right there. And so it really becomes this whole seamless process now for these spas that are seeing, you know, hundreds of patients and clients every single month, it can save 20, 30, $40,000 a year in credit card processing fees.
- [09:08]
Marcie
It's significant. It can be very significant. It's. And it's amazing, too, because even though people know their numbers, they know their business. Obviously, you know, that's part of, you know, running a business is understanding all your finances. But when people TR really start to break down what they're paying for those credit card just. Just on tips alone, it's right. Or even mind blow, you know, it's like, wow. What? That's crazy. And to then just be able to save that by implementing something so simple, it just makes sense. It just really makes sense to do.
- [09:40]
Unknown Speaker
Now, I know that you guys cannot give financial advice, any of that type of stuff. I want to preface that. But there are also accounts that they are moving this away from their payroll taxes as well. They still are required to pay payroll taxes, but they're putting that on the employee. Correct. So how is this all working? Because this is something that. Where it comes up a lot, and it may be state by state that a CPA needs to answer, but what is the payroll tax situation? That happens with gratuities as well.
- [10:18]
Marcie
Yeah, yeah. Great. Great topic. So. And you're absolutely right. My whole background is all in beauty and sales. So the last thing people want me doing is giving them tax advice. But I can tell you that what we do is we make that part of the process really easy. You know, unfortunately, everybody's got to pay taxes, and that is just, you know.
- [10:38]
Unknown Speaker
It'S part of doing business. You pay tax.
- [10:41]
Marcie
So what we do with our system is we just make that easier by providing that information. And it's very easily accessible at two different points. So as a. As a user or service Provider, the person receiving the tips. I can go right into my tippy app. I can check out my tip history. I can actually see where those tips came from, which is another cool feature. But so I can see all my tip history. I can export it with a click of a button. I can do it by certain dates, I can customize. However I want to pull that report, it will download to a basic CSV file and I have all that information right there at my fingertips. Same thing from the business side. The business also has access to all of those, all of the tip information through their company. So they can pull company wide reports, they can pull reports that break down every individual. So we just make all that information easily accessible and then we just advise people, check in with your cpa, check in with the person that does your taxes. They'll advise you the best way to include that into payroll, to wrap that up, to figure out what the best practice is going to be for your business in reporting those tips and how to do it.
- [11:45]
Unknown Speaker
Because I know there's industries like the restaurant industry, right? There's a long history of people getting cash tips and typically they get the tips and then it is the waiter or waitress's responsibility to report those on their taxable income is what I always understood. And so in spas, you know, when we're trying to keep our payroll percentage down, if you're paying the tips out through payroll, you are also additionally paying extra on those on the tips that are essentially not, you know, it's supposed to be like a bonus thing.
- [12:28]
Marcie
Yeah, so they do. Yeah, you're absolutely right. So when, then when you include them in your payroll like that, then you get, it is taxed on both sides. So it's, it's, you know, it's looking at as, as, as part of the income, right. So whether it's cash, you know, check if anybody still writes checks, any of those things whenever they get reported, you know, into your system, then everything is included for tax purposes. So then everything is recorded and taxed on both the employee side and the business side.
- [12:56]
Unknown Speaker
So I, I think it's as a business owner a really important topic to sit down with your cpa, your financial advisor, someone that understands the, the laws in your state. What you know, some states will have like a minimum required amount. Like they're just all different states or all different requirements in the different states. So sit with your cpa, make sure that you're bringing this to their attention and saying what is the process that I can make sure I'm not breaking Any rules. Right. We don't want the irs, you know, coming after us for anything. You. That is not your money. You got to be able to pay your taxes to be able to operate your business, all of that. But is there a way legally that we are able to, you know, provide the reports, educate our staff, etc, to make sure, you know, similar to how other industries are doing it? It's a. It is an interesting conversation, I think, to make sure that you have with your cpa.
- [14:02]
Marcie
Yes, exactly. And, you know, to be fair, there are so many people that are just confused on the topic, and that's what your CPA is there for. Talk to them and let them bring clarity to that, because it is. It's confusing. You know, people feel sometimes like they're not sure, you know, am I doing it right? Am I not doing it right? And they live in this kind of constant state of like, almost anxiety, like, I don't know. And they can. That is their job. And they will provide the most correct and accurate information to make sure that people are reporting properly and that they're safe.
- [14:34]
Unknown Speaker
And what we as business owners need to communicate to our staff. Right. To be able. Yeah, because there's, you know, our industry has a long history of tipping as a normal part. And, you know, we're seeing. That's another thing in the past couple of years, this, like, what are they calling it? Tip creep.
- [14:57]
Marcie
Oh, there's all kinds of names.
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Unknown Speaker
Yes.
- [14:59]
Marcie
Yeah. Everywhere you go, it's everywhere you turn now. And it's so unfortunate to our industries where tipping has always been such a significant, vital part of, of the income, of the compensation.
- [15:12]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah.
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Marcie
And then. And then you've got these other things where you've never in your life been asked if you wanted to tip on. And now all of a sudden everybody's.
- [15:20]
Unknown Speaker
Questioning, like, for takeout when you pick up the.
- [15:24]
Danielle Warner
I'm like, really?
- [15:26]
Marcie
Really?
- [15:26]
Unknown Speaker
And even I was in a taxi the other day and they wanted to meet it. It was like 25, 30 or 35 were my options. You know how it's usually like 15, 20, 25. No, they moved it up for the taxi. I was like, oh, my gosh.
- [15:42]
Marcie
Everywhere you. It really is now it is. You know, and being. Being a company that considers ourselves experts in tipping, you know, it is hard because we, you know, we stand behind, you know, the purpose of our product is to benefit these companies where we, we are traditional tipping businesses, you know, and, you know, so it is.
- [16:01]
Unknown Speaker
Where there's a service, you know. There's a service.
- [16:05]
Marcie
Yes, exactly. Yeah. I know. It's even, you know, I've watched somebody literally just, like, tap my coffee, you know, just out of a. And same thing, and they're like, you want a tip larger than my coffee? Like, I don't. It doesn't make sense, you know? Yeah, so it is. It is a tough, tough time in tipping where there's a lot of, I think, confusion and. And then people get this almost guilt because you're like, I don't. Am I supposed to. Am I expected to tip on this? I don't. I've never tipped on this before, but now I'm getting this option. So I think the thing that really helps with our side of things is, is it also kind of legitimizes, like, our. Our part of, you know, the tipping. Because it's, you know, you don't always know the person bringing your takeout food up to the counter, you know, but that person you're coming to regularly or you're seeing for important things that make you feel good, it's a totally different scenario. And so for that, I think that's one area where people don't question. You know, I want to leave a tip. I want to show my appreciation for a job well done and for helping me and making me feel good.
- [17:09]
Unknown Speaker
So talk to me about how your fee structure works. Like, if someone is interested in bringing tippy into their practice, do you guys. The equipment. I think you guys have an annual fee that you're paying. What kind of support do they get? Like, what is the whole process around this?
- [17:31]
Marcie
So, and I just have to preface this by saying, people always, when I go through this portion of it, they're like, okay, what are you hiding? Because it really. We have done everything we can to make it as simple as possible for people to bring this in and make sure it's a good fit for them. You know, we're not, you know, trying to, you know, force people into anything, and we don't want you stuck with something if you don't feel like it's a good fit. So how are our pricing works is we do have an annual subscription fee. It's 400 a year per kiosk, so that includes your equipment. So we send you that iPad in the stand, the cords, everything that you need to run our system, we provide for you, and that's all then included on your ongoing subscription. So, you know, technology is great, and over time, it starts to not be as great. So, you know, all that's included. We swap out your equipment as needed. If we upgrade equipment that kind of thing, that's all included in that. So the hardware, software and support is all included in that annual subscription and that is the only ongoing cost to the business. So the banner, the business pays no transactional costs for those, for all those tips that run through, they're just paying that subscription fee.
- [18:40]
Unknown Speaker
So it's pretty easy to calculate like if this is going to be an ROI or not. I mean, you just have to look at what did I pay in credit card processing fees and if it's less than 400, then you're winning, right?
- [18:53]
Marcie
Absolutely, absolutely. And, and so there's also a, typically a, so we, we charge just a shipping fee and when they first get started and then in situations like this. So, you know, because you've been so gracious and invited me on your podcast. So anybody that hears this would also get their first year total with no there, we don't have a contract. So what that means is they can literally bring this in. Say, you know, why not? There's literally no risk involved. I'm going to bring it in, I'm going to run it side by side in my system, you know, see how it goes in my business. If at any point they're like, you know what, I'm not seeing it. I just don't, you know, I don't, I don't get it. I don't get what's so great about it. No problem. We send you a shipping label, you send it back and then after that first year, you've literally paid nothing. And then you can really sit down and look at that number and see, okay, I've saved so significantly not only, you know, from this first year free, but also in my credit card processing fees. And then it's again a no brainer to just continue on with the service.
- [19:49]
Unknown Speaker
So they literally can try it for free for a whole year.
- [19:53]
Marcie
Absolutely no money down. Like nothing then. No hidden costs, nothing at all. We just send it out to you totally, totally free. And like I said, there's no, there's no strings attached. There's no, you have to process for six months, nothing like that. It's, it's bring it in, see if it's a good fit for your business. You know, we want to, we want you to be able to try that and not feel that pressure and then, you know, we'll go from there.
- [20:16]
Unknown Speaker
That is such a no brainer for everybody in the spa industry right now. I mean, it's, this is an opportunity to, you're essentially like, you will make the money to even pay the $400 for the next year. So I highly, highly encourage those of you that have practices that have spas, regardless of the amount of revenue that you're doing, whether you. Because you know what, you can grow really fast. So even if you're a solo taking tips, you want to be able to do it on the credit card. Even if it's just you, that is a great opportunity. And if you have a practice with five or six providers. Now, you had mentioned $400 for each terminal. Is there a limit? Because we have SPAs that have 15, 20 providers. Is there? How does that work?
- [21:18]
Danielle Warner
You can.
- [21:18]
Marcie
Unlimited amount of people on a kiosk. So we have businesses with upwards of 50 people on one. One terminal. So you can. There's. You could. You don't have to have a certain amount of people per terminal.
- [21:33]
Unknown Speaker
It' of like the. The checkout desk. If you have multiple checkout desks, you want to be able to have.
- [21:40]
Marcie
Yes. Yeah. You know, some businesses have multiple areas where people can check out, you know, if they've got multiple floors or different. So that's just so that, you know, they're. They can have one at every area where they would need one.
- [21:52]
Unknown Speaker
Okay. Well, I think you're gonna get a lot of business that is like, free money. Free money, which I think people really is a welcome thing in the. In the industry, especially after the year that we've had in 2024 with just the challenges. And so it's really like every little bit helps, for sure. So what else do we need to know about Tippy?
- [22:23]
Marcie
So I should probably explain how we save on the processing fees. So I know you kind of mentioned it earlier. What we do is we pass along a convenience fee to the person leaving the T. So rather than the business taking that fee on, it's passed along as a convenience fee, and it's minimal. And it's so funny because, like you mentioned, it's. It's for the convenience. Right. So it. Once they know that it's going right to their service provider, that they're going to know that it came from them. Clients don't even bat an eye at that minimal fee. It doesn't even phase them, to be honest.
- [22:55]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, it's. It really is a convenience piece that makes such a difference for the provider. Excuse me, for the patient or the client to be able to have the convenience to put that on their credit card to know that it goes directly. And something that I really like about Tippi is there's the. The provider's face is Right there so you can see them, you can know, okay, this is going directly to that person. They know it's coming from me because there is that like, like I remember I didn't want to, I'm like, oh, my stylist is going to think I didn't leave her a tip or didn't. And it's like this guilt happens. I'm like, I'm in this spa industry, I'm not going to not leave a tip, you know. Okay, so how do people take advantage of that offer there a special link, a special code like how are we going to do this? So we can make sure that we've got it all linked up properly under the show.
- [23:55]
Marcie
Yes. So I'll share a special link that will just send them to a page where they just put in some of their basic information so that we can reach out to them and that will lock them in for that deal. The other thing that I should probably mention too, aside from, from higher tips for service professionals, anybody receiving a tip to our system, they actually get their tips instantly as well. So there's the other part of the benefit is, is people have instant access to these, these funds as well, which is a nice, just a nice perk to have. But so it is really great. And you know, all around it's, it's, it's kind of covered every base where, you know, all these different areas of tipping that people have concerns about, you know, I, you know, is it going to benefit my staff? You know, like there are businesses who are like, okay, I'm just getting rid of tipping. Well, you know, then that hurts your.
- [24:43]
Unknown Speaker
Staff members and a lot of people just included into the, the price, you know, and I've seen that because there has been this like tipping fatigue among the, the patient base. But we are an industry that, that's normal, you know, it's, it's normal where we are acceptance of that, you know, from we're service based industry and we're not seeing restaurants be like no tips. You know, it's just these other types of businesses that you're like, why are there tips now on here? But for us I think that in certain business models, sure it can work. But I don't think that we need to go to a no tipping model because that is a significant amount of revenue for our providers.
- [25:39]
Marcie
It is, it is and it really does impact them so much. And you know, we've even heard from businesses. You know, I get the pleasure of talking to a lot of different businesses across the US and you know, we've heard from businesses where they're like, oh, gosh, I thought, you know, I just needed to make a business decision and cut tips. And I lost so much staff where I had so many people like coming to me saying like, I'm going to have to leave if you don't, you know, this, that, that was such a, you know, significant part of my compensation and my income. And now I'm missing that. You know, it's almost like you, you know, demoted me. You know, I know you didn't mean intend for it to be that way, but that's how it felt. And so, you know, it is a lot bigger of, it's a much more important piece I think too, than some, sometimes people realize. So to be able to have a solution that really doesn't impact anybody in a negative way, whether you're looking at the patients and clients or the people receiving the tips or the business owner, I mean, it really does. Like you said, it's just a no brainer to, to have that wonderful.
- [26:43]
Unknown Speaker
Well, be sure to check out all the links. We've got everything linked up below. This is a absolute no brainer, no risk for you guys. Test out Tippy, make some money, save some money. See how it works in your spa, in your practice. And if it doesn't work for you, you have no, no contract. No, there's literally no risk. So this is a great way to save some money and really be able to get those tips directly to your providers. All right, Marcie, thank you so much. This has been incredible. What a great offer. You know, I just, I, I feel like in the times right now we need to be out there helping our industry as much as possible, providing as much value as possible because it is a challenging time. And so for all of us working.
- [27:39]
Danielle Warner
Together like this, I love it.
- [27:40]
Unknown Speaker
Thank you so, so much. I really appreciate it.
- [27:43]
Marcie
This is wonderful. I appreciate it.
- [27:47]
Danielle Warner
As always, if you want to keep the conversation going, I want you to head on over to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Facebook group, the number one free resource out there for estheticians focused on business building. We've got weekly marketing tips, a monthly goal setting and planning session, monthly esthetician business book club, plus a community of thousands of estheticians committed to business building in the spa industry. I'll see you there.