How to audit a salon commission report before a pay run

Choose a report that can answer a row-level question

Export the report for the exact period you intend to review. Prefer itemised rows with a transaction or invoice reference, date, earning staff member, item type, signed sale amount, supplied tax and any reported commission. A total by staff is useful for a final cross-check, but it cannot explain one missing refund or wrongly attributed sale by itself.

Providers offer different views and commission engines. Timely’s guidance starts with sales and financial reports and identifies Invoice Detail as the itemised view; its transaction “processed by” field identifies the payment actor, not necessarily the person who earned a sale. Fresha separates row-level Commission Activity from Commission Summary, and supports fixed and tiered rules across several item types. Phorest and Vagaro also provide native commission or payroll reports. These existing capabilities are a reason to test whether you need an independent audit, not a reason to claim the booking system lacks commission features.

Write down the agreement before comparing numbers

A different result is not automatically an error. Record the supplied service and retail rates, whether the sale basis includes supplied tax, how discounts and refunds are treated, which date controls the period, and who earns each line. Confirm whether packages, memberships, gift cards, cancellation fees or special rates are part of the arrangement. If a term is unclear, leave the affected line unresolved rather than guessing from the export.

Trimsum currently calculates flat service and retail percentages. It does not reproduce fixed or tiered provider rules, manage payroll, decide legal entitlements or infer a commission agreement from an uploaded file. Keep a provider-calculated amount as source evidence when its rule cannot be reproduced by this edition.

Trace a sale, refund and retail line

This fictional example uses a 40% service rate, 10% retail rate and a supplied tax-exclusive basis. A service sale of $110.00 includes $10.00 supplied tax, so its $100.00 basis produces $40.00. A linked $22.00 refund includes $2.00 supplied tax, so the negative $20.00 basis produces −$8.00. A $55.00 retail sale includes $5.00 supplied tax, so its $50.00 basis produces $5.00.

Assume the source report shows $40.00 for the service, $0.00 for the refund and $5.00 for retail. Its reported total is $45.00; the separate calculation is $37.00. Source minus calculated equals +$8.00. That difference is a review question, not proof the source is wrong: the source may follow a different refund rule, timing or configuration.

Investigate the difference in a repeatable order

First establish that both totals cover the same transactions and period. Then compare source reference, earning staff, signed amount, category and tax basis. Check the documented rate and any source-system settings only after the underlying line matches. Finally inspect rounding and whether the report records a missing value, a real zero or a carried-forward adjustment.

Preserve the original file and reported commission. Record the candidate explanation, its evidence and the person who confirmed the decision. If the source and reviewed amounts use different valid rules, the review should show that distinction rather than silently overwrite either figure.

1. Match invoice or transaction references and the earning staff member.
2. Confirm the date rule and whether all three signed rows belong in this period.
3. Compare item type, tax, discount and refund treatment against the supplied agreement.
4. Recalculate with the confirmed rate and rounding convention.
5. Document the source value, reviewed value, difference, reason and approver.

Make the next pay period easier to review

For each close, retain the source export, date range, report name, field mapping, commission rules, exceptions and final reviewed summary. Give payroll the confirmed commission component and its receiving period, not an unexplained total or an instruction to deduct a refund. Keep the detailed calculation available to answer a later question without changing the closed record.

A monthly owner can check the same five signals each time: unassigned staff, refunds without a linked sale, duplicate references, unexplained source-versus-reviewed variances and lines outside the selected period. A bookkeeper handling several salons should also keep each client’s agreement and files separate. The repeated job is the commercial value hypothesis for a paid hosted edition; it has not been validated by customer retention or subscription revenue.

• Source file and report settings are identifiable.
• Every included line has a confirmed period, person, category and rule.
• Every difference has an explanation or remains explicitly unresolved.
• A final summary and row-level detail can be reproduced from the fixed close.

Decide whether you need a separate audit

Use your salon platform’s native report when it already shows the needed source lines, implements the confirmed arrangement and produces a clear handover. A separate audit can be useful when refunds, overlapping exports, manual rate exceptions or repeated questions make it difficult to explain the number from one report. Test one real period with permission before changing a working process.

The public Trimsum import-fit tool checks CSV structure in your browser; it cannot verify the agreement, recognise every provider rule or approve a pay run. The browser demo uses sample data. The account-backed app currently runs locally on the development Mac, while a hosted Studio subscription is still being prepared. Do not upload real customer data to a public preview expecting a hosted account.