PetGroomBossPro Blog — Billing, Tips & Payments

Splitting Grooming Tips Between Groomer and Bather: An Office Practice, Not a Software Setting

A lot of busy grooming vans run with two people: a groomer who does the cut and styling, and a bather who handles the bath, dry and brush-out. The customer usually only sees the groomer, but both of them did the work. When a tip comes in, the question is whose it is.

Be Clear About What the Software Does

The tips report, covered in The Grooming Tips Report: Every App Tip in One Place, shows every tip customers leave in the customer app.

It is worth saying plainly: PetGroomBossPro reports tips. It does not split them between people. There is no setting that sends a share of each tip to the bather. Splitting tips is something the owner decides as a business practice and then carries out, usually when paying out tips with payroll, using the report as the record.

That is actually a good thing. Tip-sharing is a decision about your team and your pay, and it is better made by you than by a default in a piece of software.

Two People, One Van

In PetGroomBossPro, employees have their own PINs and are assigned to vans, and a groomer and a bather can share a van. Each signs in to the groomer app with the company login and their personal PIN, and the time clock records each person's hours.

That gives you what you need to decide on a split: who was on which van, on which days, and for how long. The tips report gives you what came in. Put those together and you can apply whatever policy you choose.

Common Ways Owners Share Tips

There is no one right answer, and this is not legal or payroll advice. A few approaches owners use:

• Keep it with the groomer. The groomer receives the tips and chooses whether to share with the bather.
• A fixed share. The bather gets an agreed share of tips from the days they worked the van.
• Even split. Tips from a shared van are divided evenly between the two people on it that day.
• By hours. Tips are shared in proportion to time clocked on that van.

Whatever you pick, check with your accountant or payroll provider on how tips need to be handled where you work. Rules vary by place.

Whatever you pick, think about how it feels to the person with the smaller share. A bather who works hard all day and never sees a tip may not stay long. A policy that recognizes both people on the van, even modestly, tends to be easier to live with than one that leaves someone out.

Write It Down and Tell the Team

The worst tip policy is one nobody is sure about. If the groomer thinks tips are theirs and the bather thinks they are shared, the first big tip becomes an argument.

Write the policy down. Explain it when you hire. Say how cash tips at the door fit in, since those never reach the tips report. Then apply it the same way every pay period. A clear, boring rule keeps a two-person van working well together.

Using the Tips Report Each Pay Period

Once you have a policy, the routine is simple. At the end of each pay period:

• Open the tips report for the period.
• Match each tip to the visit it came from.
• Check who worked that visit using your schedule and the time clock.
• Apply your split and pay it out.

Because the report holds every app tip, nobody is relying on memory, and either person can see the same numbers if they ask.

Keep the payout records with your payroll records. If anyone ever asks how a tip was shared, you can show the report, the schedule and the rule you applied.

When the Owner Is One of the Two

In plenty of small grooming businesses, the owner grooms and hires a bather to help. The same idea applies. Decide up front how tips are handled, tell your bather, and use the tips report to follow it. Owners who share tips with a bather often find it helps them keep good help, but the choice is yours.

If you are not sure where to start, a simple, generous policy you can explain in one sentence is usually better than a complicated one. For ideas on bringing more tips in to begin with, read More Grooming Tips Without Asking at the Door.

The software keeps the record; you set the rule. To see the tips report alongside invoices, card on file and the customer app, visit the pet grooming invoicing software page.