Most salons have one screen at the front desk, and most salons run it the same way. Someone logs in at eight in the morning, usually the owner, and the tablet stays logged in as that person until closing. Everyone who walks past it books, cancels and takes payment as "the owner".
It works, until the day you need to know who did something. This post explains what a shared login costs you, how the PIN on a shared tablet works in F9.contact, and why we think it is one of the most useful small things in the product.
What a shared login costs you
Receipts carry the wrong name. A receipt should say who issued it. If the whole team works under one login, every receipt of the day says it was issued by the same person, including the ones issued while that person was at lunch. In some countries that is more than untidy bookkeeping. In Croatia, a fiscal receipt names the operator who issued it, and the operator's personal tax number (OIB) is sent to the Tax Administration with every receipt.
The cash drawer has no owner. When the count at closing is twenty euros short, a shared login tells you nothing. Everybody rang up sales, and on paper nobody did.
Nobody can answer "who cancelled this booking?" A client arrives for an appointment that is no longer in the calendar. The history of the booking shows who cancelled it, and under a shared login the answer is always the same name.
Everyone has the owner's access. The apprentice who started on Monday can open the reports, the staff list and the client export, because the tablet is logged in as someone who can. Under GDPR, which applies to every salon in the EU, limiting who can see client data is the salon's responsibility.
The password becomes a shared secret. It is on a sticky note, or everybody simply knows it. When someone leaves, you either change it and tell everyone, or you do not change it.
The obvious fix, everyone logging out and back in with their own email and password, does not survive a busy Saturday. Nobody types a twelve-character password with a client waiting at the desk. So the shared login stays.
How the PIN works
The idea is to split one login into two questions: is this the salon's tablet, and who is standing at it right now?
Setting up the tablet, once
A manager opens Settings → Devices on their own login, adds a device ("Front desk tablet") and gets a setup code. The code is shown once and can be used once. Someone types it into the tablet, and the tablet then waits: it cannot be used until the manager confirms it in the list of devices. A code that was overheard or photographed is useless without that confirmation.
There is no special hardware. Any tablet or computer with a browser can be the salon's device.
Everyone sets their own PIN
Each staff member logs in once with their own email and password and chooses a PIN, confirming it with their password. F9 refuses the obvious ones: repeated digits, sequences such as 1234, and other common choices.
A manager cannot see anyone's PIN and cannot set one for them. If someone forgets theirs, the manager clears it and the person chooses a new one. The PIN stays something only its owner knows, which is the whole point of attributing work to a person.
The working day
From then on the tablet opens on a screen that asks "Who's at the till?" and shows the team. You tap your name, type your PIN on the on-screen pad or a keyboard, and you are working as yourself. When you step away you press Lock, and the next person does the same.
If nobody touches the tablet for a few minutes it warns that it is about to lock, and then locks itself. An unattended tablet goes back to the "Who's at the till?" screen on its own.
What it changes for bookings
Every booking created, confirmed, cancelled or marked as completed on the shared tablet is recorded under the person who did it, and so is a change to the services on it. When a client says "but I never cancelled", the history of that booking shows who did and when. That is rarely about blame. More often it means you can ask the right colleague what was agreed, without asking the whole team.
The second change is access. The tablet shows each person what their role allows. A receptionist sees the calendar and the client list; a manager who takes over the same tablet a minute later also sees reports and settings. You no longer choose between giving everyone the owner's access and making the owner the only one who can use the desk.
What it changes for receipts and the till
Because the person at the tablet is a real staff account, a receipt issued there carries that person as the operator. Whatever country your salon is in, the record then says who actually took the payment.
The same holds for everything around the receipt:
- Each sale is recorded with the person who rang it up.
- The cash report at closing can break the day down per person, if you turn that on.
- The audit log names the person behind a change, not the account the tablet happened to be logged in as.
If your salon is in Croatia, this is also a legal matter. The operator's OIB travels with each fiscal receipt to the Tax Administration, and the fiscal rules expect the operator on a receipt to be the person who issued it. Our introduction to Croatian fiscalisation covers the rest of what a receipt has to carry.
What it changes for client data
A salon's client list holds names and phone numbers, and often notes on allergies and treatments. GDPR asks every business in the EU to give access to personal data only to the people who need it for their work, and to be able to show how that data is protected. One login shared by the whole team does neither: everyone can see everything, and nothing shows who changed what.
With a PIN, each staff member works under their own account with their own role, and their changes are recorded under their name. That does not make a salon compliant on its own. Personal accounts and limited access are, however, among the first things anyone checking your data protection will ask about. Our practical GDPR guide covers what else the regulation asks of you.
Is a four-digit PIN safe enough?
On its own, on the open internet, no. That is not how it is used here.
A PIN works only on a tablet your manager confirmed. Someone who learns a colleague's PIN cannot use it from home, from a phone, or from any device the salon has not set up. Away from the salon's device, the only way in is the full email and password.
Guessing is cut off quickly. Five wrong tries lock that person's PIN, for a minute the first time and for longer each time after. If wrong PINs are typed for several different people within a few minutes, which is what trying everyone's birthday looks like, the tablet is logged out altogether and a manager has to set it up again.
PINs are not stored in readable form. F9 keeps a one-way hash of each PIN, so nobody can look one up: not the owner, not a manager, not us.
A lost tablet is one click. In the list of devices the manager presses Revoke, and the tablet is logged out at once, along with anyone working on it. A tablet nobody has used for thirty days stops being trusted on its own; one in daily use never needs setting up again.
Every attempt is logged. Successful and failed PIN entries, lockouts, and devices being added or revoked are all written to the audit log.
What a PIN does not do
A PIN is a short secret typed in a public place. It keeps honest colleagues' work apart and makes it awkward to act as somebody else. It will not stop a person who watches a colleague type and then uses that PIN while they are on a break. Two habits cover most of that risk: nobody shares a PIN, and everyone presses Lock when they walk away. The automatic lock is there for the times someone forgets.
It also does not replace the password. Owners and staff who work from their own laptop or phone keep logging in with email and password exactly as before. The PIN exists for the one device that many hands share.
Getting started
- In Settings → Devices, add the tablet and type the setup code into it.
- Confirm the tablet in the list of devices.
- Ask each staff member to log in once with their own password and choose a PIN.
- Agree on one rule: press Lock when you leave the desk.
From the next morning, the tablet asks who is at the till, and every booking and every receipt carries the right name. The team and shifts page shows where this sits beside roles, shifts and time off, and Trust & security covers how F9 protects the data behind it.