How to work out your team's commissions without fighting a spreadsheet

Paying a commission is easy. Working it out correctly, month after month, without anyone on the team doubting the figure, is something else. In most salons and clinics, on the last day of the month someone sits down with the schedule, the till and a spreadsheet, and spends an afternoon producing numbers that then have to be defended.

It does not have to be like that. A commission is a simple sum; what complicates it is not having to hand the data that feeds it.

The models that work

There are many formulas, but in an appointment-based business almost all of them are one of these four:

1. A percentage of services. The most common: each person earns a percentage of what their services bring in.
2. A different percentage for products. Selling a shampoo is not the same effort as doing a colour, and many businesses reward it separately to encourage sales at the counter.
3. Tiered. The percentage rises past a monthly figure. It motivates, but it requires everyone to see their figure during the month, not only at the end.
4. Base plus commission. A base salary with the commission on top, which is what you see most in clinics.

Whichever you choose, the golden rule is the same: the formula has to be explainable in one sentence. If someone needs it explained to understand their commission, they will distrust the figure even when it is right.

The data you really need

To pay a commission without arguments you need four things, and one of them is almost always missing:

• Who did each service. Not who had the appointment in the schedule, but who did it. In a colour with two people, or when someone covers for a colleague, it is not the same thing.
• Who sold each product. If it is charged at the counter without noting who recommended it, that commission is lost or shared out by guesswork.
• What was collected, not what was booked. An appointment that did not happen, or that was refunded, should not earn commission. Paying on the schedule instead of the till is the quickest way to overpay.
• The hours. For base plus commission, or simply to understand each person's productivity, you need to know how many hours they worked.

If these four facts are recorded at the moment of payment, the month's sum is just that: a sum. If they are rebuilt at the end of the month, it is an investigation.

Closing the month without arguments

Three habits that save almost every conflict:

• Let each person see their detail. Not just the final figure: every service, every product, with its client, its day and its ticket. A figure with its detail behind it does not get argued.
• Let refunds subtract. If a client comes back and the service is refunded, that line counts as a negative for whoever did it.
• Keep tips separate. They belong to whoever receives them and should not be mixed into the commission base.

How ClaudIA does it

In ClaudIA, each line of the ticket records who did it, chosen at payment, line by line: the service, the product the client took home and the prepaid package. Each person on the team has their commission percentage, and in Reports you see what each one did and sold in whatever period you choose, with their commission, their tickets, their clients and their hours each day.

Open a day and every line appears with its client, its time and its ticket. With the till, the sum is on what was collected, without tips and with refunds as negatives; without the till, on appointments already completed. And the detail downloads for Excel — for the whole team or one person, by week, by month or between dates — with hours in appointments and, if staff clock in, the hours clocked.

At the start of each month, the previous month's report also lands in the owner's inbox on its own, just when pay and commissions are settled.

The till is explained in detail at soyclaudia.app/en/funciones. And if you want to go a step further with your business numbers, here are the numbers to check every week in your salon and how to organise your team's shifts.