Commission is the number most Kenyan salon disputes start with. Not because owners are unfair, but because the calculation happens in someone's head, on a receipt, or in a notebook that only one person can read. The fix is to agree the formula, write it down, and let the system do the arithmetic on every sale.
Start with the model. The two that work in salons are a percentage of the service price, and a flat salon-wide percentage. A percentage per service suits a menu with very different prices: a KES 400 beard trim and a KES 6,000 braiding session should not earn the same absolute amount, but they can earn a fair share of what the client paid. One salon-wide rate is easier to explain when your prices sit close together.
Here is a worked example in shillings. Suppose Amina's rate is 40 per cent on services and nothing on retail products. In October she performs three bookings at KES 2,500 each, one walk-in at KES 1,200, and sells a KES 900 bottle of oil. Her commission base is 2,500 + 2,500 + 2,500 + 1,200 = KES 8,700, and the product is excluded. At 40 per cent that is KES 3,480. Add a base salary of KES 12,000 and her gross for the month is KES 15,480.
Now the part that causes arguments: deductions and advances. If Amina took an approved advance of KES 2,000 on 15 October, the net payable is KES 13,480. Record that advance as an expense of type ADVANCE against her name on the day it is approved, not as a note in a book, and the same figure appears on both your expense report and her payslip.
Decide the rules for the awkward cases before they arrive. Do tips count? Do discounted services earn commission on the discounted price or the full price? Does a cancellation earn anything? Does a client who pays by M-Pesa tomorrow count in today's commission? Every one of these is a policy, and a policy written once saves a conversation every month.
Make the numbers visible to the person earning them. When a stylist can open their own desk and see each sale line, the commission stored against it, the payouts already made and the balance still owed, month-end becomes a signature instead of a negotiation. That visibility is also what protects you: if a query comes three months later, the record is still there.
In REMBO the maths happens at the till. Each sold line stores the rate that applied on that day and the amount earned, so changing a rate next month never rewrites a payslip that was already paid. Payroll then sums commission by staff member and month, alongside approved advances and payouts recorded against the same person.
Last, keep the payslip in three lines: base salary, commission, advances deducted, then net paid. A formula your team can recalculate on a phone calculator is a formula they will believe.