A package sold is cash received and service owed. Most beauty businesses in Malaysia and Singapore run on them, and most track them loosely enough that the balance a client believes and the balance the salon believes eventually diverge. Here is how to keep them the same number.
Quick answer
A salon package is prepaid service sold in advance — a block of sessions, a value credit, or a recurring membership — and it should be tracked as a liability, not as revenue already earned. The system needs to hold an exact remaining balance per client, redeem against it at the point of service, apply expiry and transfer rules consistently, and report total unredeemed value across the business. LABÉAU handles session packages, prepaid credit and recurring memberships with per-visit redemption and multi-branch balances from RM174.92/month; Aoikumo and WESS are strong here too, while Fresha and Booksy offer only limited package handling.
Last updated 27 August 2026 · Written and maintained by the LABÉAU team, Kuala Lumpur
They fail in different ways, which is why a system that models only one of them causes trouble. A count-based package sold as credit invites arguments about price changes; credit tracked as sessions cannot handle a client who wants to put the balance towards a product.
Session packages — a fixed number of a specific treatment, bought at a discount. The balance is a count.
Prepaid credit — a value topped up in advance and drawn down against any service or product. The balance is an amount.
Memberships — a recurring fee that buys either an allowance (two facials a month) or a standing benefit (15% off everything, priority booking). The balance resets on a cycle.
Unredeemed value is a real liability
The money for a ten-session package arrives on day one; the cost of delivering it arrives over the following months. Treating that receipt as profit is how a salon ends up cash-rich and margin-poor — busy delivering services that were paid for in a quarter that has already been spent.
The number worth watching is total unredeemed value across all live packages. It tells you how much service you owe, and a sharp rise means you have effectively borrowed from next quarter. Any system holding package balances can report it; almost no salon running on a notebook can.
The rules to decide once, in writing
Almost every package dispute traces back to a rule that was never set, so it got improvised differently by two members of staff:
Expiry — does a package lapse, and after how long? Enforced silently by the system, or flagged to the client in advance?
Transfer — can a client give a session to a friend or a family member?
Refund — is unused value refundable, creditable, or neither?
Price protection — if the service price rises mid-package, does the client get the remaining sessions at the old price?
Branch scope — can a package bought at one outlet be redeemed at another? For a multi-branch business this is the one that causes the most friction, and the one most often left unanswered until a client turns up somewhere new.
Redemption belongs at the point of service
The balance should be visible when the appointment is booked and drawn down when the service is delivered, in front of the client, with the remaining balance shown on the receipt. Anything less — a note in a file, a card the client carries, a spreadsheet checked afterwards — eventually produces two different numbers and no way to say which is right.
Where staff are on commission, package redemption also needs an agreed commission treatment: paid on the sale of the package, on each redemption, or split. Deciding this at the point the package is designed avoids relitigating it every month.
Package and membership handling compared
Capability
LABÉAU
Aoikumo
WESS
Fresha
Booksy
Session packages
Yes
Yes
Yes
Limited
Limited
Prepaid value credit
Yes
Yes
Yes
Limited
No
Recurring memberships
Yes
Yes
Yes
Limited
Yes
Expiry & transfer rules
Yes
Yes
Yes
Limited
Limited
Redeem across branches
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No
Unredeemed liability report
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No
From (MYR/month)
174.92
Quote
Quote
45–68 +comm.
~130
Indicative as of August 2026 — confirm current details with each vendor.
The bottom line
Model packages as the liability they are, decide the expiry, transfer, refund and branch rules once, and redeem at the point of service so the client and the salon always see the same balance. LABÉAU does this for session packages, prepaid credit and memberships across every branch from RM174.92/month.
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The receipt is deferred revenue — money held against service still owed — and it should be recognised as it is redeemed, not when it is sold. Practically, this means tracking a live balance per client and a total unredeemed value across the business, and giving your accountant that figure at period end. Confirm the exact treatment with your accountant, as it depends on your reporting basis.
Many salons apply a 6- or 12-month expiry to stop indefinite liability accumulating, but the rule matters less than stating it clearly at the point of sale and enforcing it consistently. Expiry applied retroactively or selectively is the fastest route to a public complaint. Check local consumer-protection rules before enforcing forfeiture of prepaid value.
Only if the system holds balances centrally rather than per outlet. LABÉAU keeps package and credit balances at the business level so a client can redeem anywhere you operate, with the redemption attributed to the branch that delivered the service for reporting and commission. Fresha and Booksy do not support cross-branch redemption.
There are three common approaches: pay on the sale of the package, pay on each redemption, or split between the two. Paying on redemption aligns commission with the work actually performed and avoids paying out on packages that are later refunded. LABÉAU lets you configure which applies, so the rule is applied identically every month rather than renegotiated.
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