How to work out your clinic's margins and break-even point

Fresh Clinics' State of Medical Aesthetics Report 2025 found that 63% of clinic owners are not confident understanding their financial performance. If you trained clinically and picked up the business side as you went, below is a guide for where to start with understanding the numbers behind your business. Set aside twenty minutes and have last month's figures where you can see them:

Step 1. Start with last month

‍Write down everything the clinic spent last month, including rent, product, consumables, electricity bills, then write down what came in from patients. The gap between those two is your profit for the month, and that's a profit and loss statement. Megs Reid, our Head of Partnerships, describes P&Ls  a snapshot of how the business is performing.

Step 2. Pick one treatment, not your whole menu

Profit for the whole clinic tells you whether you made money for the month, but not which treatments were the most successful. Margin per treatment answers that, so choose a treatment you perform often and write down what a patient pays for it and what it costs you to deliver.

Step 3. Work out the margin

Subtract the cost from the price, divide what's left by the price, then multiply by 100. That's your gross margin on that treatment (Gross margin % = (Price − Cost) ÷ Price × 100). Then run it on a second treatment. Two treatments priced similarly can leave very different margins, so start with the one that fills your diary and the one you assume is most profitable.

Step 4. Check what you counted as cost

Most cost columns are missing something. Add freight, gloves and anything else consumed in the room. Device and peel treatments need one extra line, because they carry little product cost but a lot of chair time, so put a value on the time and add it in. Don't chase precision here, because within a couple of percent is close enough to make a decision.

Step 5. Work out what you need to bill each week

Add up your fixed costs for the year, meaning the commitments that don't move month to month, like rent, insurance, electricity and wages. Divide that annual figure by 52, and you have what the clinic costs every week before it earns anything. Now divide that weekly figure by your gross margin from step 3. The result is the revenue you need to bill each week to break even, so compare it against what you billed last week.

Step 6. If a margin looks lower than you expected

You have three levers before price, so look at what you're buying, who you're buying it from, and whether a larger order gets you a better rate. Weigh a bigger order against your cash flow before you place it, and check you can still cover rent and wages that month.

Step 7. Put it in the diary

Book an hour or two a month and block it at the start of the week, before the diary fills. Megs treats that time as working on the business rather than in it. Review your prices on a slower cycle, twice a year. Patients absorb small regular adjustments more easily than one large correction, so put the question in your calendar rather than waiting for a margin to slip.

What changes once you've done it a few times

On the first episode of Fresh Pod, Megs compares a set of business numbers to a blood test. You get the results, one is fine and another is low, and the low one tells you what to change. Listen to the full episode here.