How to calculate your team's commissions without a fight every pay period

Yesenia runs a nail salon in Nuevo Laredo with three manicurists, Jazmín, Fany, and Wendy, who earn 40% of what they work and get paid every two weeks. If you’ve ever had to calculate your team’s commissions, you already know the percentage is almost never the problem. The problem is payday.

That Saturday she sits down with the appointment notebook, the salon’s WhatsApp, and the calculator on her phone. Fany swears she did two sets of acrylics on Tuesday and the notebook only shows one. Wendy asks why her eleven o’clock client wasn’t counted, and Yesenia has to remember that client never showed up. Two hours later everyone gets paid, and nobody walks away convinced.

A commission is a multiplication. The hard part is agreeing on what gets multiplied. Here’s how to let the math come straight out of your calendar, and what to check before you pay.

What is a commission and how is it calculated?

A commission is the share of each service that goes to whoever performed it. It’s calculated in one of two ways: a percentage of the appointment’s price, or a flat amount for every appointment completed.

With Yesenia’s numbers: acrylic nails cost $380 and the manicurist takes home 40%, which is $152. A $220 gel polish leaves $88.

A flat amount works where a percentage ends up being almost nothing. Removing acrylics cost $100, and 40% was $40 for half an hour of filing. Nobody wanted to do it, so they kept passing it to each other. Yesenia switched it to a flat $60 per appointment, and since then nobody dumps it on anyone else.

Why do commissions turn into a fight every pay period?

Almost never over the percentage. The fight is over the list: which appointments actually happened, which didn’t, and what price each one was charged. If that list gets put together from memory on payday, everyone brings their own version.

In Yesenia’s salon, the arguments were always the same three:

1. The client who never showed up. She was in the notebook, nobody crossed her off, and everyone remembered it differently.
2. The price that changed. Gel polish went from $200 to $220 midway through the pay period, and nobody knew which price it was paid at.
3. The in-house discount. Fany’s cousin paid $300 for a $380 acrylic set. 40% of which number?

None of these is a math problem: all three come down to the list. The first one gets fixed when the list comes straight from the same calendar you used to see clients, and that includes the walk-in with no appointment: if you don’t book her with New appointment, she doesn’t exist for the report. That was Fany’s second acrylic set. The other two get checked in a column on the report, which I’ll get to below.

How does Proyecta calculate your team’s commissions?

If your site has a calendar and each member of your team has their own, Commissions shows up in your dashboard, inside Schedule, as soon as there are at least two active calendars. With just one, the section doesn’t appear. Only whoever manages the site can see it; your team can’t.

It has two views:

• Rules. For each person you set a General commission, which applies to every service they handle, and you override it on any service that carries a different rate. Each rule is either Percentage of the appointment or Fixed amount per appointment. Until you set one, all commissions show as $0.00.
• Report. You pick the period and see service sales, total commissions, and a table per person. View details shows you what each person earned per service.

The built-in periods are this week, this month, last month, and the last 90 days. For a pay period, use Custom: the 1st through the 15th, and the 16th through the last day of the month.

Download CSV gives you a file with every appointment in the period, one per row, with two columns at the end: Base, the amount the commission was calculated on, and Comisión (the file’s headers are in Spanish). That’s the paper trail you show anyone who asks.

Yesenia settled on this: 40% general for all three, and for acrylic removal, $60 per appointment. Proyecta does the math, and the money still comes out of her own till, same as always.

Which appointments count toward the commission?

Appointments marked Attended count, along with any that have already passed without anyone marking them. Cancelled appointments and ones marked No-show don’t count.

That “without anyone marking them” part is what you need to watch. The report assumes a past appointment actually happened, because almost nobody bothers to mark the ones that go fine. The eleven o’clock client who never showed up counts as attended until someone marks her No-show.

Yesenia’s rule: whoever had the appointment marks the no-show before heading home. That ended the first argument for good.

What price is the commission calculated on?

If the client paid on your site, the commission is calculated on what came in through there. If it wasn’t paid online, it’s calculated on the service’s price. And if you refunded an online payment, the refunded amount is subtracted.

Three cases are worth watching before you pay:

1. You raised a price mid-pay-period. The report uses whatever price the service has today. Appointments paid in cash before the change show up at the new price. If you’re going to raise a price, pull the report for the ending pay period first, then change it.
2. You gave a discount at the counter. The report has no way of knowing: it uses the service’s listed price. Fany’s cousin’s $300 shows up as $380. If you give discounts, write them down and adjust that commission by hand.
3. You only charged a deposit online. If the rest was paid in cash, the Base for that appointment is the deposit, not the full service price.

The first two never show up in any report, because they happened at your counter. Those get handled with habit. The third one does show up, as a Base smaller than the service’s price. At Yesenia’s salon that’s two or three per pay period, and they get checked in five minutes.

How do I get this running in my business?

Describe your business to Proyecta in your own words. Something like: “a site for my nail salon in Nuevo Laredo, with a calendar for three manicurists, Jazmín, Fany, and Wendy, each with her own schedule; services: acrylics $380, gel polish $220, spa pedicure $300, and acrylic removal $100; WhatsApp button.”

Once the calendars are already taking appointments, you set your rules in Commissions one time. On payday, you pick the pay period, review, and pay.

Before your next payday, write down in one line how you pay your team, with numbers: “40% on everything, except removal, which is a flat $60.” If you end up with three lines and a “well, except when…,” that’s your next fight waiting to happen. Whatever line you land on is what you’ll enter into Rules. Get started at proyecta.dev.