Pay guide
How Grooming Commission Actually Works
What counts as commissionable revenue, why rates are tiered, and how the three common structures differ.
Commission sounds simple (a percentage of what you bring in), but the details of how "what you bring in" gets calculated, and how the percentage itself is set, vary more than most groomers realize. Here are the mechanics behind it.
What counts as revenue
Commission is almost always calculated on the service price of each groom you personally perform, not on add-ons sold by someone else, not on retail products, and not on tips (tips are separate and go to you directly in most structures). If you groom six dogs in a day at an average of $65 per groom, your commission-eligible revenue for that day is $390, regardless of how long each groom actually took.
Worked example
6 dogs at a $65 average price gives $390 in commission-eligible revenue. At a 50% commission rate, that is $195 in commission pay for the day, before tips.
Why commission rates are tiered
Many salons use tiered commission structures instead of a single flat rate. A newer or less-certified groomer might start at one percentage, with a higher tier available once they hit a certification milestone, a speed benchmark, or a tenure threshold. This gives groomers a visible path to a better rate rather than a rate that is fixed indefinitely.
Commission vs. hourly, side by side
Under a pure commission structure, you are paid only the percentage, with no floor, so a slow week means genuinely lower pay. Under a hybrid "hourly vs. commission, whichever is higher" structure, the commission number only replaces your hourly pay when it is actually higher, meaning a slow week still guarantees your hourly rate. Under a blended base-plus-bonus structure, you always get your full hourly base, and commission only applies as a bonus on revenue above what your hours alone would have earned. These are meaningfully different outcomes for the exact same week of work.
Why the distinction matters for you
Knowing which structure your salon actually uses changes how you should think about a slow day. Under hourly vs. commission, a slow day is protected by your hourly floor. Under blended, it is protected even more directly since your base is guaranteed regardless. Under pure commission, a slow day is a slow paycheck, full stop, which is worth knowing before you agree to a pay structure, not after your first slow month.
The deductions that come out before your percentage does
The part of commission that surprises people is not the percentage. It is everything that happens to the service price before the percentage is applied, because a 50 percent rate on a reduced base is not a 50 percent rate.
Ask specifically about each of these, because they vary salon to salon and none of them are unusual enough to be a red flag on their own.
Product or supply deductions. Some salons subtract a per-groom product charge, or a flat weekly supply fee, before calculating commission. Others absorb it entirely. On a $65 groom, a $3 product deduction at 50 percent commission costs you $1.50 per dog, which is roughly $9 on a six-dog day and around $450 over a year of full-time work.
Card processing fees. A minority of salons pass a percentage of card fees through to commissionable revenue. This is worth asking about directly because it is invisible on a pay stub, showing up only as a slightly lower revenue figure than the prices you charged.
Discounts and comps. If a manager discounts a groom, whose revenue drops? If the discount comes off the commissionable base, you paid for a decision you did not make. Some salons hold the groomer harmless on management discounts and only reduce the base for discounts the groomer offers.
Redos. A groom that comes back for a fix is usually unpaid time. Whether the original commission is clawed back is a separate question, and the answer should be no in most fair structures.
Add-ons: the part of the base most people never check
Add-on services are where two salons with identical commission rates produce very different paychecks, and it is worth mapping yours precisely.
Nail trims, ear cleaning, teeth brushing, de-shedding treatments, medicated baths, flea treatments, and anal gland expression are all commonly offered, and each one is treated one of three ways: fully commissionable at your normal rate, commissionable at a different rate, or not commissionable at all.
The pattern that costs the most is when add-ons you personally perform are excluded from the base but still count toward the salon's revenue targets. You are doing the work, generating the revenue, and being paid nothing extra for it.
Retail is the reasonable exception. Shampoo, brushes, and take-home products sold at the counter are usually not commissionable for the groomer, and that is a normal arrangement rather than a bad one. Some salons pay a small separate retail commission, which is worth knowing about because it is often unadvertised.
Speed, price, and which one you actually control
Under commission, your pay is the product of two things: how many grooms you complete and what each one is priced at. Groomers overwhelmingly try to improve the first one, and the second is frequently the larger lever.
Consider a full day either way. Adding a seventh dog to a six-dog day at a $65 average raises commissionable revenue from $390 to $455, which is $32.50 more at a 50 percent rate. Keeping six dogs but raising the average price from $65 to $76, through breed-appropriate pricing or add-ons you already perform, produces the same $455 with no extra dog and no extra hour.
One of those requires you to work faster on an already full day. The other requires a pricing conversation. Which is available depends on your salon, but the arithmetic is worth having in front of you before you conclude that the only way up is more dogs.
This is also why the difference between a 45 and a 50 percent rate matters more than it sounds. On $2,000 of weekly commissionable revenue, five percentage points is $100 a week, or roughly $5,000 across a year. That is usually a larger number than any realistic gain from working faster.
Get the structure in writing before you accept it
Almost every serious commission dispute comes down to two people remembering a verbal agreement differently, and the groomer is the one without records.
What to have written down: the percentage and any tiers, with the specific milestone that triggers each tier. Exactly which revenue is commissionable, including each add-on by name. Every deduction taken before the calculation. Whether tips are separate, which they almost always are. The pay period and the date you are paid. And whether the structure is pure commission, hourly versus commission, or base plus bonus, since those three produce very different outcomes for the same week.
Then track your own numbers weekly. Not because you expect a problem, but because a disagreement six months from now is settled by whoever has the dates, the dog counts, and the prices. "I think I did about eight a day" is not a case. A logged week is.
Run your own numbers
See how your own numbers play out under each structure with the calculators on this site: commission only, hourly vs. commission and hourly only. Enter the same real week in two of them and compare the totals. To find the point where commission starts paying more than your hourly rate, see the break-even guide.