Stop Managing Your Grooming Team on Sticky Notes and Group Texts
You opened a grooming salon because you're great with dogs — not because you dreamed of juggling schedules, chasing down time-off requests, and calculating commissions by hand at midnight. When your team grows past two groomers, keeping track of who's working when, who can do what, and who's owed what becomes a second full-time job.
The Bigger Your Team Gets, the Harder It Gets
You know the drill. Tuesday morning, your phone buzzes: "Hey, can I take Thursday off?" You check the paper schedule taped to the wall. Thursday's already tight. You start texting other groomers to see who can cover. Two hours later you've got a maybe, a "let me check," and a read receipt with no reply.
Meanwhile, your newest receptionist accidentally rescheduled a standing poodle appointment because nobody told her only managers should touch Mrs. Patterson's bookings. Your senior groomer is frustrated because she helped finish three of another groomer's dogs last week and there's no way to track that split work. And at the end of the pay period, you're hunched over a calculator trying to figure out who earned what — commission on this dog, hourly for that shift, plus tips, minus the advance you gave on Wednesday.
It's not just complicated. It's unsustainable.
BarkBook Gives You Real Team Management — Built for How Salons Actually Work
BarkBook handles four distinct roles — Manager, Groomer, Receptionist, and Assistant — because your front desk person and your bather need access to very different things. Instead of an all-or-nothing approach, you get 19 granular permissions covering appointments, clients, payments, reports, services, compensation, and more. Each role comes with sensible defaults (your groomers get 7 permissions, receptionists get 9, assistants get 4, managers get all 19), and you can customize any individual employee's access on top of that. Changes take effect instantly. No more worrying about who can see what.
Schedules That Actually Handle Real Life
Set each employee's weekly schedule individually, then layer on overrides for date ranges when things change — summer hours, holiday weeks, training days. When someone requests time off, BarkBook detects every appointment that conflicts and walks you through a guided absence workflow: here are the affected appointments, here are the groomers available to cover each one, and for each booking you can reassign it, move it to the waitlist, or cancel it — with optional client notifications sent automatically. No more sticky-note juggling.
See Your Coverage at a Glance
The coverage calendar shows you staffing levels by day, week, or month, with a heatmap view that highlights exactly where your gaps are. Filter by role to see how many groomers you have versus how many receptionists. You'll spot that understaffed Friday afternoon before it becomes a crisis, not after.
Track Hours Without the Headaches
Your team clocks in and out right from the BarkBook dashboard. If someone forgets to clock out, the system catches it. Managers can create, edit, or delete time entries when corrections are needed. You decide whether time tracking is enabled, disabled, or required — it's your shop, your rules.
Commission, Hourly, Hybrid — Whatever Your Pay Structure Looks Like
Set up compensation profiles for commission-based groomers, hourly staff, or hybrid arrangements. BarkBook supports two hybrid models: base pay plus full commission, or base pay plus commission above a threshold. Create named commission tiers and set service-specific rate overrides so your senior groomer earns a different percentage on hand-stripping than on a standard bath. Effective dating means you keep a complete history of every pay change.
Finally — A Real Answer for Split Work
When two groomers share an appointment, BarkBook tracks the secondary groomer with either a flat-fee or percentage split. Earnings for both groomers calculate automatically at checkout and recalculate if anything changes after. Built-in safeguards make sure splits never exceed the gross — no more mental math, no more arguments.
Every Groomer Can Check Their Own Earnings
Your team doesn't need to ask you what they made this week. The self-service earnings view shows each groomer their current period summary, recent earnings broken down by appointment, and their last six pay periods. Fewer questions for you. More transparency for them.
What This Means for Your Salon
Salon owners who used to spend hours on scheduling and payroll math now have a system that resolves priorities automatically (time off trumps overrides, overrides trump regular schedules), catches conflicts before they become problems, and calculates every dollar so you don't have to. Your team gets the transparency they've been asking for. You get your evenings back.
When an employee leaves, their record is soft-deleted — deactivated, not erased — so your historical data stays intact. If they come back six months later (it happens), you reactivate them and pick up where you left off.
Start Your 14-Day Free Trial
You didn't get into grooming to become an HR department. Let BarkBook handle the team management so you can get back to the dogs. No credit card required.