iBeauty case study | Daniel Zaharia

iBeauty started as an app for one person. My wife Alexandra is a lash extensions artist, and I built the first version for her, to make the money side of her work clearer and calmer so her attention could stay on her clients.

The problem

A one-person beauty business has an ordinary back office: busy days, one client after another, products to restock, rent, payments that come back every month, and money to put aside for taxes. Most of it happens in the few minutes between clients.

The tools built for it were either generic budgeting apps, which don’t know what a service or a client is, or accounting software, which asks you to become a bookkeeper first. She needed something in between: a place to put the day down quickly, and a clear answer when she looked back at the month.

The first version

The first iBeauty shipped in June 2025 as a native SwiftUI iPhone app. It tracked income, expenses and savings, and within weeks it learned to show when each recurring payment was next due and to send a reminder before it landed.

It was small, and it was hers. An app that has to be good enough for one real person, every day, can’t hide behind features it doesn’t need.

first release in June, for one lash artist: 2025
releases since then: 10
platforms on one account: 3

Rebuilt for everyone

The more I built, the clearer it became that this wasn’t one lash artist’s problem. Nail techs, makeup artists, brow artists and studio owners had the same questions and the same few minutes to answer them.

In April 2026 I rebuilt iBeauty from the ground up with React Native, Expo and Supabase, so it could reach beauty professionals on both the App Store and Google Play. Version 2.0 brought faster income logging, one-off costs kept apart from recurring bills, wallets for money set aside, and a summary of the month.

iBeauty iPhone screen 1 of 9 — Home, a new income, the client book, a client's private photos, the catalogue, costs, wallets and reports.

iBeauty iPhone screen 2 of 9 — Home, a new income, the client book, a client's private photos, the catalogue, costs, wallets and reports.

From a ledger to a business tool

Version 3.0, in August 2026, changed the core model: income became one entry per client, linked to the services and products she actually sold. Every client got a history with visits, total spend and average visit, and the app now notices when a regular stops coming. Tips and payments split across cash, card and transfer, and home became a dashboard of today, the month’s profit, and what needs attention.

Version 3.1 put the work beside the money, with a private photo gallery on every client for lash maps, nail art and before-and-after shots. It also simplified pricing to one subscription with everything included and the first month free.

On the web

Version 3.2 brought iBeauty to the computer. The web app uses the same account and the same subscription, with the month, clients, catalogue, costs and reports on one screen, and tables you can sort, search and export. Version 3.3 followed in October 2026 with shortcuts that save steps every day, on the phone and the web at once.

The iBeauty web app home: the month's net result, income and costs, today's entries, a twelve-month trend and the items that need attention — The web app home. It follows the site's light or dark theme.

What it is, and what it isn’t

iBeauty is the money side of a beauty business, and only that. It deliberately does not do bookings, a calendar or invoicing. It organises what you earned and what you spent, so the conversation with your accountant is a short one.

I design, build, ship and support it end to end: the iPhone and Android apps, the web app, the website, the store listings and the subscription. It is still built the way it started, around how the work actually goes.

Salon finance for beauty professionals, on the web, iPhone and Android