Station rent math: the books of renting a chair
A station renter is a business with one non-negotiable expense: the chair costs its weekly rate whether you tattoo or not. Everything else about the books follows from taking that seriously — because rent doesn't wait to be logged, it accrues, and an artist who tracks only what they've paid has no idea whether they're square.
Accrued versus paid — the only honest rent question
Weeks since the rental started × the weekly rate = what the station has cost. Payments logged against it = what you've covered. The difference is the answer to "am I behind on the chair?" — zero means square, positive means the shop is owed and gets settled first. It's the same self-accruing logic a storage facility uses on units, pointed at your own rent — no invoice from the shop required, no month-end surprise possible. Percentage-split shop instead of flat rent? Same book: log the shop's cut as rent rows and set the weekly rate to zero.
Price the hour, not the piece
The rate card earns its keep with one computed column: (price − supplies) ÷ the station time it takes. Needles, ink, barrier film, aftercare — the supplies are per-piece and knowable; the hours are what you actually sell. Read against a target you choose, the card surfaces the truth every artist half-knows: the $850 full day is fine, and the humble $80 paid touch-up at 45 minutes is a $96 hour — under a $100 target, quietly the worst-paying work on the card. The reprice conversation writes itself when the at-target price is computed beside it.
| Service | Price | Minutes | Earns / hr |
|---|---|---|---|
| Script / lettering | $160 | 75 | $120 |
| Custom — full day | $850 | 420 | $114 |
| Touch-up — paid | $80 | 45 | $96 — reprice? |
The station engine, the honest rate card, and the take-home truth
Tattoo Artist Business & Shop-Rent Books runs this live: weekly rent accruing from your start date and netting against payments, a rate card computing earns-per-hour after supplies with under-target reds, a ten-second appointment log with tips, and money-out by category. Excel & Google Sheets, pure formulas.
Independent means the books are yours too
Renting a station makes you an independent business in every way that matters — the shop agreement, the state license, the bloodborne-pathogen cert, and the taxes are all yours. This note is the record-keeping piece only: not tax, legal, or health-and-safety advice. The books just make sure the artist doing everything else right also knows, to the week, where the chair stands.