Written from inside a working med spa
We opened a clinic. Nothing could tell us what to fix first.
Nabu did not start as a software idea. It started because we were running a med spa, staring at revenue reports and exports, and still could not say which services were making money, where the margin was going, or which of a dozen possible moves was worth making that week. So we built the thing that decides. Not a prettier dashboard. A system that reads your real numbers and hands you the next call, with the figure behind it.
2021
the year we started planning the clinic
2024
the year we opened and hit the wall
2025
the year we stopped waiting for a tool
That clinic is still open, and Nabu still runs on it. Every feature ships there first. Anything that does not survive a real Monday does not reach anyone else.
A good month, on paper
Best month yet$128,400
Revenue, straight off the booking report.
This is the number the clinic celebrated. It is also the only number any system would give us. Everything to the right we had to assemble by hand, one export at a time.
Assembled by hand from
What came out of it
Provider compensation
-$41,800
Products and supplies
-$22,300
Device lease payments
-$14,200
Payment processing
-$3,600
Rent, staff, and overhead
-$28,900
Marketing spend
-$8,500
Total cost of running the month
-$119,300
What was actually left
$9,100
7.1%
AmSpa puts a healthy med spa somewhere near 20 percent net. We could not tell whether we were close to it, and even once we worked it out by hand, nothing told us which of forty services to go fix first. That second gap is the one Nabu was built to close.
Illustrative figures, shaped like the month that started this.
Where it started
The operations were handled. The decisions were not.
Planning the clinic meant working through EMR systems. Some were too limited for how a real clinic operates. Some were expensive and complex and still needed hours of manual work to get anything useful out of the reporting side. We landed on Zenoti because it had the most complete feature set for clinic operations: scheduling, memberships, inventory, providers, services. On the operational side it beat everything else we looked at.
A strong EMR still does not tell you what a service costs to deliver after provider compensation, products used, device allocation, and room time. It does not rank providers by margin per hour, or say whether memberships survive their own fulfillment costs. Most of all it never gets to the part an owner actually needs, which is which of those things to go fix on Monday. That layer did not exist in a form that worked for a clinic our size.
So in 2025, we started building it ourselves.
What the EMR handles
Books the appointment
Charges the card
Tracks the membership
Holds the service menu
Reports the revenue
The line it stops at
What the service cost to deliver
Which provider earns the most per hour
Whether the device covers its payment
Where the margin is leaking this month
What to fix first, and what fixing it is worth
Everything below the line is what Nabu was built to answer, and the last one is the reason the rest matter.
How we got here
From operator to builder.
Five years from wanting to open a clinic to shipping the tool the clinic needed.
2021
The idea started.
We began seriously exploring what it would take to open a med spa. The clinical vision was clear. The business visibility was not. From the beginning, whether a clinic like this could be truly profitable was hard to answer with any confidence.
2024
We opened the clinic.
Once we were operating, the blind spot became concrete. Revenue reports were easy to find. True profitability, after provider pay, product costs, device payments, processing fees, and marketing spend, was a different story. The numbers existed somewhere. They never came together in one place.
2025
Nabu took shape.
After working through systems, exports, and reporting options, we started building the financial layer we wished existed on day one. Something that sits on top of the operational data and produces the numbers that decide how the clinic gets run.
2026
Opening it to other clinics.
What began as an internal tool for our own clinic is now available to other med spa owners who want clearer numbers without living inside a spreadsheet every month.
We did not build Nabu because the market needed another dashboard. Charts were never the problem. We built it because every Monday we had to decide where to put our time, and nothing we owned could tell us.
Founder of Nabu, and still running the clinic
The walls
The problems we kept running into.
Every clinic owner we have talked to hits the same four.
Revenue is not profit
A booking report can show a strong month while the real picture says otherwise. Revenue does not account for what it cost to deliver each service, run each membership, or fund each campaign. It also does not suggest a single thing to do about any of it.
$128,400 booked
and no line for what it cost
Good EMRs have limits
A strong EMR handles operations. It does not tell you what each service truly costs to deliver, which providers generate the most margin per hour, or whether memberships survive their own fulfillment costs.
Operations solved
economics untouched
Outside help is not a handoff
A fractional CFO runs $5,000 to $12,000 a month in this market, and it still is not a handoff. You explain your membership structure, your provider comp model, and your device contracts to someone who has never run a clinic. The effort moves rather than disappears.
$5,000 to $12,000
per month, and you still do the explaining
Nothing tells you what to do next
Say you get the numbers. The question underneath them is which of forty services, six providers, and three devices to touch first, on a calendar that is already full. Ranking the options is the actual job of running a clinic, and no report ranks anything. Gut feel covers it for a while and then it does not.
40+ services
and no order of operations
The name
Nabu
Mesopotamian god of writing, wisdom, and scribes.
Why Nabu?
Our family roots trace back to Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq, so the name felt personal. It also fit what we were building. The whole product runs on the same idea: turning scattered records into something an owner can act on.
For us the name is not decoration. It is a reminder of what this is supposed to do, which is help clinic owners read the truth inside their own numbers.
What we built
A decision engine, not a prettier report.
It connects to your booking system and your financial data, then maps the cost of delivery for every service: provider compensation, product cost, device amortization, room time, processing fees. That part is the plumbing. What it is for is the question on the other side of it.
Which service is quietly losing money. Which provider hour is worth protecting. Which device is not covering its payment and what closing that gap would take. Which membership looks healthy until you subtract the redemptions. Nabu works those out against your own cost model and puts the answer in front of you, with the dollar figure that says why it is the one to act on.
We built it for the clinic we run, and we are making it available to every clinic with the same problem.
Find the leak
True margin by service, provider, room, device, and membership, after every delivery cost.
Rank what to do about it
The move worth making next, with the figure that says why it is that one and not the other four.
See whether it worked
The same math run again next month, so a decision gets graded instead of forgotten.
Early access
Stop guessing what to fix.
Nabu connects to your booking and financial data, maps your real cost structure, and tells you where the margin is going and which move is worth making next. The price is on the pricing page rather than behind a call.
About you
Your clinic
Book the demo
Built for med spa and aesthetic clinic owners who want a decision, not another generic dashboard.