Salon payroll
Replaced a 24-tab Excel workbook. Weekly stylist commissions and semi-monthly hourly pay, with California overtime rules built in. Payroll close went from an afternoon to one screen.
I work with small businesses and build the processes and tools they run on.
Operations consulting for owner-run businesses of 1 to 25 people. Most of what I build replaces spreadsheets, subscriptions, or a job you were doing by hand.
Twenty years in operations · Marina Del Rey, California
Who this is for
Owner-run, one to twenty-five people.
- Most of how your business runs lives in your head and a few spreadsheets.
- You're starting out and want the structure right the first time: pay periods, time tracking, inventory, licenses, where things get filed.
- You pay for software nobody on your team opens.
- You've grown past the point where you can personally check everything, and things have started to slip.
If you have an IT department, I'm probably not the right call.
Everything I build assumes you don't.
What I do
Find out what is actually slowing you down.
I look at how the business runs today, not how the org chart says it does: how money comes in and goes out, how people get scheduled and paid, how stock gets counted and ordered, what has to be filed and when. You get a short written plan: what to fix first, what to leave alone, and what each piece will take.
Put the processes and structure in place.
Pay periods and time tracking. Inventory counts and vendor ordering. Licensing and tax calendars. Where documents live and who touches them. Written plainly enough that a new hire can follow them, and kept simple enough that the current team will.
Build the tools that run them.
When a spreadsheet or a monthly subscription is the problem, I build a small app that does one job for your team: a time clock, a payroll calculator, an inventory count, an order form, a compliance report. It runs on the phones and tablets you already own.
How it works
- 01 Book a call. You'll get a short questionnaire first, so the call starts with your business instead of an introduction.
- 02 We talk. I ask where time and money leak. You tell me what you've already tried.
- 03 You get a written plan. What I'd change, in what order, what I'd build versus buy, and what it costs. No obligation past that.
- 04 I build and set it up. Most tools go live in weeks, not months, and I train your team on them myself.
- 05 I stay as long as you need. Some owners want me around every month. Others want to run it themselves after the handoff. Both are fine.
Work
Every tool below is in daily use at a business I run or advise. I don't name them here. Once we're talking, I'll tell you who they are.
Bar and café time clock
Replaced a scheduling subscription. Staff clock in with a PIN on their own phones, and the hours flow straight into payroll with no retyping. Works when the wifi doesn't.
Distillery barrel tracking
Replaced a distillery-software subscription. Every barrel from fill to dump, bonded receipts, and the monthly federal report in the format the agency wants.
Weekly bar inventory and ordering
Replaced a spreadsheet. Counts by station, par levels, a suggested order grouped by vendor, and a 52-week history to catch drift before it costs anything.
Member bottle claims
Replaced a five-step manual process. Pulls eligible members from one store, verifies them in another, issues one-time codes, drafts the emails, and logs every run.
Video production scheduler
Replaced a generic project board. Built around a four-week production cycle, with a lane per person, a publishing calendar, and sponsor slots.
About
I'm not a developer who picked up business. I'm an operator who learned to build.
I'm Brandon Day.
For twenty years I've been the operations person: footwear, legal cannabis, spirits, bars, a YouTube channel. The companies had eight to twenty-five people and no IT department. The software assumed two hundred and a CTO. So I ran things on spreadsheets like everyone else, until I learned to build the tools myself.
For the last three years I've run operations for a craft distillery: production planning, sourcing, label development, licensing, taxes and finance. I brought its brewery and winery licenses online and file the monthly state and federal reports. I run its café and bar, open twelve hours a day, six days a week, and I've taken more than one bar from permit application to opening night. I also handle planning and sponsor relations for a YouTube channel with more than half a million subscribers.
Every tool above is in use today. I don't ship anything I can't explain.
Book a call
Tell me about your business.
When you book, you'll get a short questionnaire. It takes a few minutes and means the call starts in the right place.
Book a callPrefer email? brandon@daysllc.com