How to Build Barbershop Management Software Like Squire

Squire is a YC-backed company worth well over a billion dollars. It does one thing: barbershop management software. Not salon software. Not spa software. Barbershop software.

That focus is not an accident. Generic platforms like Fresha and Vagaro were built for salons. They handle appointment booking, stylist scheduling, and retail POS. That covers 80% of what a nail salon or hair salon needs. It covers about 40% of what a barbershop needs.

IBISWorld's 2024 Barbershops industry report puts US barbershop revenue at $5.1 billion annually, with over 88,000 locations. The vast majority run on generic scheduling tools that weren't designed for their workflows.

The other 60% is where barbershops bleed revenue and lose clients.

A walk-in client sees a long line, has no way to know their wait time, and leaves. That is $45 gone. A barber leaves for the shop down the street. His 200 loyal clients go with him, and the old shop has no way to follow up with them because their records were tied to the location, not the barber. A shop owner has six chairs rented to six independent contractors, all paying different rates on different schedules, and he collects it all in cash every Monday because no software handles the chair rental model correctly.

This is the problem Squire built into a category-defining business. This article explains how to build something comparable.

Who builds barbershop software

The most common clients we see for this build are barbershop chain owners who have 10 or more locations and need a system that works across all of them without forcing every barber to use a tool built for hairstylists.

Beyond chains, there are barbershop franchise systems looking for a branded, white-labeled booking experience for their franchisees. There are men's grooming brands that want their own app, not a third-party platform where their clients see competitor ads. Hotel barbershops, athletic clubs with barber suites, and hybrid concepts that mix barbershop with retail goods also come up regularly.

All of them share the same core problem: no off-the-shelf tool handles the specific workflows of a barbershop correctly.

The two booking systems a barbershop needs

This is the first and most important architectural decision. A barbershop runs two parallel booking flows, and both must work. Square's 2023 Future of Commerce report found that 61% of barbershop appointments are still walk-in rather than pre-booked, compared to 29% for traditional hair salons. Building appointment-only software for a walk-in business is building for the wrong customer.

Appointment booking is standard. A client opens the app, picks their barber, picks a service, and books a time. Marcus is off Mondays. Derek does not start until noon on Wednesdays. The system shows each barber's real availability, not just the shop's open hours. This part is similar to any service booking system.

Virtual walk-in queue is where barbershop software diverges from everything else. Many barbershop clients never book ahead. They drive by, they walk in, they want a cut now. When they see a long line, they leave. That is lost revenue with no recovery mechanism.

The queue system works like this. A client arrives at the shop. There is a QR code posted outside the door. They scan it, enter their name, pick their barber, and join the queue. The app shows them their position: third in line for Marcus, estimated wait 22 minutes. They go to the coffee shop next door. When they are next, they get a text message from Twilio. They come back.

Walk-away rates drop because the client is not looking at a line. They are looking at a number and a countdown. That is a different psychological experience. They will wait 30 minutes at a coffee shop. They will not stand in a barbershop for 30 minutes.

Both systems must share the same barber availability state. If Marcus has an appointment at 2:00 PM, the queue cannot route a walk-in to him at 1:40 PM if that walk-in's service will run over. The scheduling engine must account for service duration across both modes.

How client records work in a barbershop

A client's relationship with a barbershop is not a relationship with the shop. It is a relationship with the barber.

"When a barber leaves, they don't send a goodbye email. Their clients just start showing up at the new shop. The only way to retain those clients is if the platform makes the barber want to stay, not if you own the client data." -- Guy Barakat, co-founder of Squire, in a 2021 interview with TechCrunch.

This is one of the most fundamental differences between a salon and a barbershop, and most software gets it wrong by tying client records to the business account rather than the individual barber.

When a barber leaves, they take their clients. This is expected, accepted, and nearly universal in the industry. The barber's client list is their professional capital. A software system that ties client records only to the shop will cause the barber to leave and take a photograph of every client's contact information on their way out the door. That is the current state of things at shops using generic software.

The right model is this: each barber owns their client list within the platform. The client profile lives under the barber's account. It contains:

The client's name, phone number, and preferred contact method. Their cut history, written as notes or structured tags for cut style, length, and special techniques. The date of their last visit and how frequently they come in. Their lifetime spend at the shop. A photo of their last haircut result, attached to the visit record.

When a client books with Marcus, Marcus sees their full history before they sit down. When the client arrives for a walk-in, the front desk can pull up their profile and tell Marcus what they usually get. That is the kind of service that creates loyalty.

When Marcus eventually leaves the shop, his client list is his. The shop retains anonymized visit data for business analytics. The individual client records follow the barber. This is not a technical limitation. It is a deliberate design choice that mirrors how the industry actually works.

The chair rental model: the billing system most platforms skip

Many barbershops do not have salaried employees. The barbers are independent contractors. They pay the shop owner a weekly fee for the right to use a chair, the address, the wi-fi, and the foot traffic. Rates vary from $200 to $400 per week depending on location and demand.

Generic salon software assumes the business pays the employee. The chair rental model flips this. The barber pays the business.

The software must handle this differently at every level.

Revenue tracking must be per barber, not per location. The owner needs to see that Chair 1 generated $1,400 in services this week, the barber in that chair owes $300 in rent, and the shop's net from that chair is $300. Not a combined shop total that obscures individual chair performance.

Each barber manages their own schedule and their own clients. They are running a micro-business inside the shop. The software must give them that autonomy while giving the owner visibility into the aggregate.

Weekly rent collection must be automated. The current state at most shops is a manual process: the owner tracks it in a spreadsheet, reminds barbers every Friday, collects cash or a Venmo. A Stripe-powered automatic debit from the barber's connected bank account on a recurring schedule removes the awkwardness and the risk of non-payment.

POS and checkout

A barbershop checkout involves more moving parts than a standard retail transaction.

The service itself: haircut, beard trim, hot towel treatment, shampoo. Each is a separate line item with its own price. Some services require two people (the barber does the cut, an assistant handles the shampoo). Tips are common and must be split correctly between the lead barber and any assistant.

Retail products are sold at the front desk: pomade, beard oil, styling wax. These are separate from services and need inventory tracking.

Payment goes through Stripe Terminal for card payments. The client taps their card on the reader. The system handles the split: tip to the right barber, product revenue to the shop, service revenue logged under the barber's account for chair rental reconciliation.

Cash payments must also be recorded, because barbershops still do significant cash volume. The system cannot require cashless.

Membership subscriptions

The unlimited cut membership has become a standard barbershop offering. A client pays $40-$60 per month and gets as many cuts as they want. For regulars who come in every two weeks, it is a good deal. For the shop, it is predictable monthly recurring revenue and a strong retention mechanism.

Stripe Subscriptions handles the billing. The client signs up via the app or at the front desk. Their card is charged on the same date every month. When they come in for a cut, the front desk checks their membership status via the app or a QR code scan. Active membership shows a green indicator. Expired shows red with the last payment date.

The system must also handle membership pauses, because clients travel and go on vacation. A Stripe subscription pause holds the billing cycle without canceling the account.

Tech stack and build timeline

The client-facing app is React Native. It covers both iOS and Android and handles appointment booking, walk-in queue joining, membership management, and cut history viewing.

The front desk and admin experience is a React web application. It shows the live queue for each barber, manages appointments, handles checkout, and gives the owner the revenue breakdown per chair.

The backend is Node.js with PostgreSQL. PostgreSQL handles the relational complexity of barbers, clients, appointments, queue positions, memberships, and transactions.

Stripe covers three distinct payment needs: card payments via Terminal, recurring membership subscriptions, and automated chair rent collection from barber bank accounts.

Twilio handles queue position SMS alerts. This is the mechanism that lets clients wait off-site, so it needs to be reliable. Twilio's delivery rates and infrastructure make it the right call here over email or push notifications alone.

Firebase handles push notifications for the client app: appointment reminders the day before, your-turn alerts from the queue.

The build takes 10 to 14 weeks. The range depends on how many locations need to be supported from day one, whether the admin dashboard needs multi-location roll-up reporting, and how many custom workflows the shop owner has that need to be accommodated in the queue logic.

Cost runs $100K to $160K for a full production build. That includes both the client app and the admin dashboard, all payment integrations, queue infrastructure, and the membership system. It does not include Stripe fees, Twilio message costs, or ongoing hosting.

What you are actually buying with this build

Squire's growth was not driven by being a better booking system. It was driven by being the only booking system built for how barbershops actually operate. RaftLabs has built booking, queue, and POS systems for service businesses, and the lesson from every one of them is the same: the hardest part isn't the technology. It's modeling the actual operational logic of the business.

The walk-in queue alone justifies the investment for a multi-location chain. If a shop sees 30 walk-ins per day and converts even 5 more of them by showing a wait time instead of a line, that is $225 per day per location. At 10 locations over 250 operating days per year, that is $562,500 in recovered revenue annually.

The chair rental automation saves 2-3 hours of owner time per week per location and eliminates the tension around rent collection. At scale, that time savings is worth more than the software cost.

The barber-tied client records reduce churn when barbers move between shops, because the platform becomes the place where client relationships live rather than a notebook in a barber's pocket.

This is not a feature list. It is a business case for why custom software in this vertical outperforms the generic tools.