PolishBook: every client's color, service and wear time on one card · Updated September 8, 2026

How PolishBook works, in four unglamorous steps

Step one is the shade shelf. The studio enters its polish inventory once: brand, shade name, code, bottle photo. PolishBook says this takes 45 to 90 minutes and that most studios are working on live clients the same day. It is the only genuinely tedious part, and it is the part everything else rests on.

Step two is closing the set. At the end of the appointment the technician taps the products used and the service type. Two taps, per the site, which is roughly the amount of admin a human being will actually complete while a client is putting on a coat. Anything longer gets skipped, and a record keeping app that gets skipped is a spreadsheet with worse manners.

Step three is the wear time. At the next visit the app asks one question: how did the last set hold? That single answer is the piece that usually goes unrecorded anywhere, and it is what turns a list of colors into something you can reason with.

Step four is the nudge. Rebooking reminders go out by text or email on each client's own wear pattern rather than a flat calendar rule, so the person whose sets last two weeks and the person whose sets last five are not chased on the same day.

What is actually on the card

PolishBook lists six things on a client card: shade history, wear time on every set, a rebooking nudge tuned to that client, product usage with reorder points, allergy and lift and prep notes, and a chair and technician view that reports retention and lift per technician. The stated point is that the card opens hands free from the chair, because nobody is scrolling with wet nails in front of them.

The product usage and reorder points are the least glamorous entry on that list and probably the most quietly useful one. If the app knows which bottles closed which sets, it knows which bottles are emptying, which is a different and more honest signal than counting what you last ordered.

The allergy, lift and prep notes deserve a flat description, because this is the one field people read too much into. It is a text box. PolishBook does not screen a product, test a client or assess a reaction, and it does not claim to. It stores what one human typed so another human reads it before opening a bottle. Anything involving skin, nails or a reaction is a conversation between the client and a clinician, not a job for software that remembers a shade code. Treat the note as a note.

Pricing, and the parts you are not locked into

PolishBook publishes three plans, all billed monthly in US dollars: Booth Renter at $19 a month for one technician, Salon at $49 a month for up to 8 chairs, and Salon Group at $99 a month for up to 5 locations. The site says price is set by chairs rather than by how many clients or records you store, with no contract and no setup fee, and that canceling takes two clicks in account settings with no notice period and no cancellation fee. No free trial is advertised.

It does not have to replace your booking system, and the site says so plainly. PolishBook lists connections to Square Appointments, Vagaro, GlossGenius, Acuity and Google Calendar, which positions it as a memory layer over the calendar you already run rather than a migration you have to survive.

On data, PolishBook states that you own the records, that they sit on encrypted servers in the United States, that client information is never sold, rented or shared, that your history exports to a spreadsheet whenever you ask, that deleted records are purged from backups within 30 days, and that a canceled account stays dormant for 60 days before deletion. The export clause is the one to test on day one, because it is the clause that decides whether you can ever leave.

The numbers on the site, and who counted them

PolishBook publishes results it attributes to studios using the product: 412 US studios, 1.9 million service records stored, a 31% increase in confirmed rebookings, 9 minutes saved per returning client, 42% fewer free repair visits, $620 less stock sitting on the shelf, and 68% of nudged clients rebooking within four days. Those are the company's own figures, reported by its own customers, collected by the company selling the subscription. We have not verified any of them, and neither has this leaderboard.

That is not an accusation, it is a category. Vendor numbers describe the studios that stayed, never the ones that entered half a shade shelf and gave up in week two. Before you sign anything, ask how the 31% was measured and against which baseline, ask what happens to the reminders when a client replies to the text, and ask to see a spreadsheet export.

Which is the honest place to stop. This board sold a listing, not an audit. PolishBook either fits the way your chairs actually run, or it does not, and no amount of money changing hands on a leaderboard can tell you which.