Services
How to set up your service menu in Nabu — including pricing, duration, and what goes into each service — so Nabu can calculate service-level profitability.
Why services need to be set up
Your service menu is the heart of your financial model. Nabu needs to know what services you offer so it can:
- Match sales records to the correct service
- Calculate the true cost of delivering each service
- Generate service-level profitability reports
- Track which services drive the most revenue and profit
Without services set up, Nabu can still show you total revenue — but it can't break down margins by service, which is one of its most valuable features.
What makes up a service's cost?
When Nabu calculates the profitability of a single service, it adds up:
- Labor cost — the assigned provider's pay model for the service: hourly/salary base labor by provider minutes, commission, flat per-service pay, or per-unit injectable pay when unit counts are available
- Consumable cost — supplies used during the service (e.g., serum, needles, gloves)
- Equipment cost — share of device cost allocated to this service (e.g., laser depreciation)
- Room overhead — share of fixed overhead allocated based on room time used
- General overhead — remaining overhead allocated across all services
What's left after subtracting all of these from the service price is your contribution margin — the money that actually goes toward profit after direct costs.
Setting up a service
When you add a service (or import from CSV), you're filling in these fields:
Basic information
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Service name | Exact name as it appears in your booking software. This is how Nabu matches sales records. |
| Category | Service category (e.g., Facials, Injectables, Laser Treatments) |
| Price | Standard retail price |
| Duration (minutes) | How long the service takes from start to finish, including setup and cleanup |
| Active | Whether this service is currently on your menu |
Labor
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Provider time (minutes) | How many minutes the provider is actively working on the client (may be less than total duration if there's wait time) |
| Assistant time (minutes) | If an assistant is involved, how many minutes they spend |
If you leave labor fields blank, Nabu uses the total duration and assumes one provider at their standard rate.
Consumption
Say what one completed treatment uses, from items you've already added in Products & Supplies. Each thing the treatment uses is a requirement, and requirements add up. For each requirement, enter:
- What it is (for example "Serum cartridge" or "Botox")
- How much: a fixed amount per completed treatment, or an amount per delivered service unit
- Which products can supply it (products in one requirement stand in for each other, like a 50-unit or a 100-unit vial)
- The default product, used when the product actually used is not recorded
For a service sold by the unit (units of toxin, syringes of filler), first set its service unit, so Nabu knows what the quantity on each sale counts.
Example: A HydraFacial might use 1 HydraFacial serum cartridge and 1 set of disposable tips per treatment: two requirements. A toxin treatment uses 1 unit of toxin per unit delivered, from either vial size: one requirement with two products.
If a service uses no products, choose a manual estimate of $0 instead.
Equipment
If a device is required for this service, link it here. You'll select from items in Equipment. Nabu allocates the device's monthly cost across all services that use it, weighted by how much time they use it.
Service notes
Any internal notes about the service — useful for your team but not shown in client-facing reports.
Service name matching
This is important. When Nabu imports sales data (from CSV or API), it matches each sale to a service by name. The service name in your sales records must match the service name you enter in Setup exactly — or close enough for Nabu to recognize it.
For example: If your booking software calls it "Platinum HydraFacial 75min" but you enter it in Nabu as "Platinum HydraFacial," they won't match automatically. You'd need to either:
- Use the same name in both places
- Use the manual sales entry modal to select the right service by searching
If you're using the CSV import for sales, the service_name column in your file should match exactly what you've entered in Setup.
Importing services from CSV
If you have 20+ services, CSV import saves time. Download the Services template, fill it in, and upload it.
Key template columns:
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
name | Service name (must match your booking software) |
category | Service category |
price | Standard price |
duration_minutes | Total duration |
provider_minutes | Provider active time |
active | "Active" or "Inactive" |
Tips for accurate service setup
Start with your top 10 services. You don't have to add every service before confirming this section. Add your most frequently performed services first, since they'll have the most impact on your profitability numbers.
Estimate duration if unsure. If you're not sure of the exact provider time, a reasonable estimate is fine. A 5-minute error in a 60-minute service changes labor cost by less than 10%.
Match service names carefully. Spend a few minutes checking that your service names in Nabu match what appears in your booking software or CSV exports. Small differences (capitalization, punctuation) can cause import warnings.
Services you no longer offer. If you have old services that you don't perform anymore, mark them as "Inactive" rather than deleting them. This preserves the historical data.
Marketing Costs
Track your advertising spend, agency fees, and other marketing investments so Nabu can calculate each campaign's cost per new client and return on ad spend.
Membership Plans
Define your membership tiers, recurring pricing and billing cadence, included benefits, and delivery costs so Nabu can count your members and their recurring billing correctly.