How do I track multiple stylists' earnings?
The tracking method depends on whether your stylists are W-2 employees or booth renters. Employees require payroll tracking with commissions and tips reported. Booth renters pay you rent and handle their own taxes, so you’re just tracking rental income received. Some salons have both, which means two separate tracking systems running in parallel.
For employee stylists, your point-of-sale system should capture every service and product sale by stylist. Most salon POS systems like Square, Vagaro, or Boulevard do this automatically. At the end of each day or pay period, you pull reports showing each stylist’s total sales, then calculate commissions based on whatever split you’ve agreed to. Tips need separate tracking because they’re reported on payroll differently than wages.
In QuickBooks, set up each stylist as a class or use the projects feature to track their earnings separately. When you run payroll, the commission and tip amounts flow through properly. This setup also lets you run reports by stylist to see who’s generating the most revenue and whether your commission structure makes sense financially.
For booth renters, tracking is simpler. Each stylist pays you a flat weekly or monthly rent. Record each rent payment in QuickBooks as rental income, and tag it to that stylist if you want individual tracking. You don’t need to track their client sales because that’s their business, not yours.
The mistake most salon owners make is tracking sales totals but not reconciling them to what stylists actually earned and what the salon kept. If your POS says a stylist did $4,000 in services but you can’t trace how much went to her commission, how much was tips, and how much the salon retained, your books aren’t telling you the full story.
Reconcile stylist earnings weekly or at each pay period. Match POS reports to QuickBooks entries. If you’re handling bookkeeping near Bentonville for a salon yourself, build this reconciliation into your routine. If numbers don’t match, you’ll catch errors while they’re still easy to fix rather than discovering problems months later when you’re trying to figure out why cash is off.
Northwest Arkansas's Dedicated Bookkeeping Partner
The Next Step:
A Quick Conversation
Tell us about your business and where you need help. We'll listen, ask a few questions, and give you a clear plan and honest price.
More Questions
What's the average profit margin for restaurants?
Most full-service restaurants operate on 3-6% profit margins. Quick service and fast casual concepts can hit 6-9%. These tight margins come from high food costs, labor expenses, and overhead that eat most of every dollar earned.
Read answerHow do I track maintenance costs for my fleet?
Track maintenance at the vehicle level using expense categories for different maintenance types and classes or projects in QuickBooks for each unit. Recording mileage at service time lets you calculate cost per mile and compare performance across your fleet.
Read answerHow do I track parts inventory for my auto shop?
Track parts by recording every purchase and every usage against specific jobs in your shop management or accounting software. Do physical counts monthly to catch discrepancies, and monitor your parts margin to make sure nothing is leaking.
Read answerAre there bookkeepers in Bentonville who work with contractors?
Yes. Several bookkeepers in the Bentonville and Northwest Arkansas area specialize in contractor accounting. The key is finding someone who understands job costing, subcontractor tracking, and construction cash flow.
Read answerWhat records do I need to keep for a trucking company audit?
Trucking companies face both financial and DOT audits, so you need to keep fuel receipts, IFTA documentation, mileage logs by state, maintenance records, driver files, and standard income and expense documentation. Most records should be retained for at least seven years.
Read answerHow do I track mileage in QuickBooks?
QuickBooks Online has a built-in mileage tracker in the mobile app that can log trips automatically or let you add them manually. You'll categorize each trip as business or personal, and the business miles feed directly into your expense records for tax time.
Read answer
