Most clinics raise prices too late and by too little. Not because they cannot see their costs, but because a price rise looks like a risk nobody knows how to quantify. Costs move anyway. In Poland, the statutory minimum wage rose to PLN 4,806 gross per month and PLN 31.40 per hour from January 2026 (Journal of Laws 2025 item 1242), and consumer inflation returned to 3.0 percent year on year in July 2026 (Trading Economics citing Statistics Poland, 2026). A price list untouched for two years is not stability. It is a quiet margin decline.
This article does not argue for a price rise. It shows how to calculate one: how many clients you can lose and still break even, which line items to move, and how to roll the change out so your front desk never has to justify it.
Costs are rising faster than your price list
Three lines in a clinic P&L rise regardless of what you do with prices: staff pay, the cost of injectables and single-use materials, and the cost of acquiring a client. The first is the best documented. The minimum wage went up by PLN 140 a month versus 2025, and the median gross wage in the economy was 7.3 percent higher in February 2026 than a year earlier (Statistics Poland, 2026).
Then there is the cumulative effect. Average annual consumer price growth for 2025 came in at 3.6 percent (Gofin citing Statistics Poland, 2026). If your price list has stood since early 2025, the real price of every treatment has already fallen by several percent before you calculate anything else.
Demand is not the constraint. A nationwide survey of 1,009 adults found that 12.9 percent of Poles had an aesthetic medicine treatment in the past five years, and another 19.9 percent had seriously considered one (SW Research for Kliniki.pl, 2025). The considering group is larger than the treated one.
How many clients you can lose and still break even
This is the only calculation you actually need before a price rise. You are not forecasting how many clients will leave. You are calculating how many can leave before profit drops below today.
The formula is short. If m is the treatment margin as a percentage of price (price minus variable costs: product, consumables, commission, and the practitioner time attached to that visit), and p is the size of the increase in percent, the break-even volume loss is:
break-even loss = p / (m + p)
An example. A treatment priced at PLN 800 with PLN 240 of variable cost has a 70 percent margin. Raise it 8 percent, to PLN 864. The break-even loss is 8 / 78, or 10.3 percent. Only when you lose more than one visit in ten on that line does profit start to fall.
| Treatment margin | +5% price | +8% price | +12% price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 40% | 11.1% | 16.7% | 23.1% |
| 55% | 8.3% | 12.7% | 17.9% |
| 70% | 6.7% | 10.3% | 14.6% |
| 85% | 5.6% | 8.6% | 12.4% |
The conclusion is counterintuitive: the higher the margin, the thinner the buffer. At an 85 percent margin, an 8 percent rise stops paying off after losing just 8.6 percent of visits. At 40 percent, the same move survives a 16.7 percent loss. Low-margin treatments absorb price rises better, even though they are usually the last ones anyone touches.
A second point: a freed slot is not a loss if you fill it with anything. The table above assumes the hour left by a departing client stands empty. Above 85 percent chair utilization, your real threshold is meaningfully higher.
Which line items to raise, and which to leave alone
A flat across-the-board rise is the simplest option and the worst one. It treats the treatment you have a waiting list for exactly like the one that has sat in the price list for three years without selling.
| Low margin | High margin | |
|---|---|---|
| High utilization (over 80%) | Raise hardest: 10 to 15 percent. The queue is evidence the price is too low. | Raise 6 to 10 percent. Watch the break-even threshold, the buffer is thin here. |
| Low utilization (under 50%) | Retire it or redesign the treatment. A price rise will not fix something nobody buys. | Leave the price alone. The problem is sales and visibility, not pricing. |
This matrix needs two numbers per treatment: utilization and margin. If your system does not hold them, start by pulling volume and revenue for the last 12 months. Calculate variable cost by hand once, for your ten most common line items. That is enough for a first decision.
Rolling it out in six steps
- Set an effective date. A specific day, ideally the first of a month, at least 30 days after you announce it.
- Tell your existing base early, not at the till. A short message: new prices from this date, current prices honoured for appointments booked before it. That is the only promotion you need.
- Honour packages already paid for. Prepaid treatments run at the old price until the package is used up. That costs less than one post in a local Facebook group.
- Update every surface at once. Website price list, booking system, Google Business Profile, the printout at reception, ad copy. A mismatch between them is the single most common cause of a scene at checkout.
- Give the front desk one sentence, not a script. For example: "Our new price list applies from 1 March, we emailed everyone about it. Appointments booked earlier keep the old price." Do not explain your costs. That is an invitation to negotiate.
- Name one person who owns exceptions. Someone must be allowed to waive the new price and record why. Without that, everyone does it, and a month later the new price list does not exist.
Discounting is the most expensive way to defend a price
The reflex after a price rise is always the same: a discount code for the unhappy. It solves one week and damages a year.
Discounts attract clients who choose on price, and those clients do not stay. Roughly 46 percent of medical spa and aesthetic clinic customers say they would switch providers for a cheaper offer (McKinsey, 2024). At the same time, 59 percent of loyal customers buy from brands that make them feel valued (Mailchimp, cited in Modern Aesthetics, 2025).
Relationship-based loyalty programmes, as opposed to coupon-based ones, generate 12 to 18 percent more revenue from members than from non-members (Modern Aesthetics, 2025). Instead of a post-increase discount, give something that does not cut the price: priority on appointment slots, a longer follow-up consultation, a reminder at the right moment for a repeat treatment.
What to measure for 90 days
A price rise without measurement is guesswork. Three numbers, week by week, per treatment:
- Volume against the same period last year. This is your actual decline, and you compare it against the break-even threshold.
- Average visit value. It should rise by less than the size of the increase. If it rose by exactly the increase, nobody left and you probably raised too little.
- Share of exceptions. More than 10 percent of visits at the old price means the increase exists only on paper.
Decide on a correction after 90 days, not after two weeks. The first reactions come from the most price-sensitive part of your base and always look worse than the final result.
FAQ
How much should I raise prices if they have not moved in two years?
Add up inflation across that period and layer on the real increase in your labour costs. For a price list set in early 2025, the starting point is around 5 to 8 percent. Above 15 percent in one move, split it into two steps six months apart.
Do I have to notify clients in advance?
There is no legal obligation for one-off booked services, but it is the cheapest way to avoid conflict at checkout. Thirty days of notice plus honouring old prices for already booked appointments is a standard clients accept without argument.
What about packages and memberships?
Run already-paid treatments at the old price until the package is exhausted. Sell new packages at the new price from the effective date. Do not reprice retroactively, the reputational cost outweighs the difference.
How do I calculate treatment margin without detailed cost records?
Take the price, subtract the cost of product and single-use materials, and subtract the hourly rate of the person performing the treatment multiplied by the real appointment length. Leave out rent and marketing. Those are fixed and do not change with one visit fewer.
Will a price rise scare off new clients from ads?
It affects acquisition cost less than expected, because a treatment decision is rarely made on price alone. What is worth checking after a month is whether the share of enquiries converting to bookings has moved. If it dropped sharply, the problem is usually how the new price is communicated, not how high it is.
Pricing is an operational decision, not a marketing one. It takes two numbers per treatment, one date, and consistency at the front desk. Everything else is rollout detail. In Palyri, utilization and revenue per treatment sit in one place, so the break-even threshold and the decision matrix can be filled with system data instead of estimates from memory.
Sources
Want to implement this in your clinic?
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Book demo via WhatsAppPaulina Zielińska
Konsultant w branży beauty
Ponad 4 lata doświadczenia w branży beauty: najpierw od środka jako manager kliniki, teraz jako niezależny konsultant. Wdrożyła systemy automatyzacji sprzedaży i CRM w kilkudziesięciu klinikach estetycznych w Polsce.