TL;DR:<\/strong><\/p>\n A chart of accounts is the backbone of your bookkeeping: every sale, refund, bill and payout is posted to one of its accounts, and your profit and loss is simply those accounts added up. Generic templates tend to put all sales on one line. That hides exactly what a salon owner needs to see: which services carry the business, how much retail really earns once stock is paid for, how much client money is prepaid but not yet earned, and what accepting cards actually costs.<\/p>\n In Altegio you won’t find a screen called “chart of accounts”. Its income and expense side is the Income and Expenses directory in Finance: every payment is recorded under a payment item, 12 of them come by default and you can add your own. Its cash side is Accounts and Registers, where each cash register and bank account keeps its own balance. The template below shows which line goes where.<\/p>\n How much freedom you have depends on where you trade. In some countries the chart follows a national framework \u2013 France’s Plan comptable g\u00e9n\u00e9ral is one example \u2013 while in others a standard chart such as Germany’s SKR03 or SKR04 is common practice. Either way, the structure below works as a management layer: your accountant maps it to whatever your country requires, and you get numbers you can actually run the business on.<\/p>\n When a client pays \u20ac80 by card, the full \u20ac80 is your revenue and the basis for VAT. The payment provider then keeps a fee and pays out the rest. If you book only what reaches your bank account, revenue and VAT are understated and the cost of accepting cards disappears from view.<\/p>\n The clean way is to book the \u20ac80 as revenue, post the fee to an “Acquiring fees” expense account and reconcile the payout against both. Then the fee is no longer an invisible deduction \u2013 it’s a cost you can see, compare and reduce.<\/p>\n That fee is rarely a single, simple number. Most providers charge a blended rate: one percentage averaged across all the card types your clients use, whether consumer or business, local or foreign. For small appointment businesses it typically lands somewhere between 1% and 3% of each payment.<\/p>\n Once card fees have their own account, the monthly total is right there in your profit and loss. That’s when it becomes worth asking whether you pay more than you need to.<\/p>\n In Altegio, card payments through Adyen aren’t priced as a blended rate. For businesses in the EU and EEA, the rate depends on the card: 0.99% + \u20ac0.20<\/strong> per transaction on consumer cards issued in the EU\/EEA, which make up about 90% of transactions. Commercial cards cost 2.50% + \u20ac0.20 and consumer cards issued outside the EEA 2.90% + \u20ac0.20. The same 0.99% applies in EUR, CZK, PLN, DKK, RON and HUF, with the fixed fee adjusted for each currency. Full rates are on the Altegio and Adyen page<\/a>.<\/p>\n Here’s what that means for a business taking \u20ac12,000 a month by card, with an average payment of \u20ac60 (200 payments), 90% of them on EU\/EEA consumer cards:<\/p>\n\n
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<\/p>\nTable of contents<\/h2>\n
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What a chart of accounts is and why a salon needs its own<\/h2>\n
Income accounts every salon should use<\/h2>\n
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Expense accounts to set up<\/h2>\n
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Card payments: record the gross amount, post the fee separately<\/h2>\n
What card fees really cost, and how to pay less<\/h2>\n