Pay guide

How to Check Your Grooming Paycheck for Mistakes

Payroll mistakes on commission are rarely dramatic. They are one missing groom, one card tip, one add-on left out. Here is how to catch them.

Commission pay has more moving parts than a flat wage, which means more places for a small error to slip in. Most are honest mistakes: a groom booked under the wrong name, a tip entered late, an add-on coded as retail. They are easy to fix when you catch them on the pay date and almost impossible to fix three months later.

Step by step

Match the revenue. Compare the commissionable revenue on your pay stub, or on the salon's commission report, with the total of your own logged grooms for the period.
Check the rate. Confirm the percentage applied is the one you agreed, including any tier you reached in this period.
Check the comparison. On hourly vs. commission pay, confirm you were paid the higher of the two, and that it was compared the way your agreement says, daily or for the whole period.
Check the hours. Hours on the stub should match the hours you worked, including time spent on redos or waiting for late pickups if your salon pays for it.
Check the tips. Card tips should appear in full. Cash tips you reported should show up as reported tips.
Check the deductions. Look for product or supply charges you did not expect, and make sure they match what you agreed to.

A worked two-week example

Say you groomed 42 dogs in a two-week period at a $65 average, for $2,730 of commissionable revenue. At 50 percent, commission is $1,365. You worked 80 hours at a $16 hourly rate, which is $1,280. On hourly vs. commission compared by period, you should be paid $1,365, plus your tips.

If the stub shows $1,332.50, the gap is $32.50, exactly half of one $65 groom. That is the kind of discrepancy to look for: an amount that matches one groom, one add-on or one tip.

The mistakes that show up most

A groom missing from the commission report, often one booked under another groomer or rescheduled.
An add-on recorded as a separate service that was not counted as commissionable.
Card tips from the last day of the period landing in the next period, or not at all.
The wrong tier applied after you crossed a threshold mid-period.
Hourly vs. commission compared the wrong way for your agreement.

Raising it

Bring the specific dates, dogs and amounts, not a general sense that the check feels low. "Groom on the 14th, the Shepherd at $65, is not on the report" gets fixed. "I think I did more than this" usually does not. Keep it routine and unemotional; most payroll errors are corrected without fuss once they are pointed to exactly.

Keep your own record

All of this depends on having your own log to check against. The calculators on this site keep a day-by-day record of grooms, prices, hours and tips. With Pro you can export every week to a spreadsheet and hand it over when something does not match.