PetGroomBossPro Blog — Pet Grooming Software

Reports in Pet Grooming Software: Seeing the Work, the Money and the Tips

Most mobile groomers can tell you how a day felt. Fewer can tell you, without digging, how much came in last month, how much is still owed, or what the tips added up to. Reports answer those questions from the work you are already recording, without a spreadsheet at the end of the month.

Clean Data In, Useful Reports Out

Reports are only as good as what goes into them. Once your clients are in, whether by hand or with the method in CSV Import: Bringing Your Client List Into Pet Grooming Software, and your visits are running through the system, the reports start to fill themselves.

Built From What You Already Do

In PetGroomBossPro, there is no separate data entry for reports. Every time a groomer taps Complete, the job is recorded with its services and add-ons, and the invoice is created with its line items and sales tax. Every payment, whether a card on file charge or an online payment from the customer app, is recorded against an invoice. Every tip on a paid invoice is recorded too. The reports read from all of that.

The Work

The first question is usually: what did we actually do? Reports let you look back at completed work over a period of time. For a solo groomer, that is a quick check on how busy the month was. For a multi-van company, it helps you see how the work is spread across vans.

Because every visit is tied to a client, an address and a van, you can look at the work in the way that answers your question, rather than counting appointments in a calendar.

The Money

The second question is: what came in, and what is still owed? Invoices and payments show what was billed and what was paid. Past-due invoices are easy to spot, and past-due follow-up helps you collect them. For monthly accounts like senior living communities and doggy daycares, the monthly statement keeps each account's billing in one place.

Because add-ons are their own line items on every invoice, extras like teeth brushing or de-shedding never disappear into a single total, which helps when you are deciding what to promote on your booking page.

The Tips

Tips have their own tips report, separate from the price of the services. That makes it easy to see what came in as tips over a period, and to work out how you share them with your groomers and bathers. How tipping works is covered in Tips in Pet Grooming Software: Letting Customers Tip the Groomer on a Paid Invoice.

Clients

Your client list is a report in itself. Tags and custom fields let you group clients the way you think about them: by area, by account type, by how they found you. Combined with the Recurring Clients list, which shows every client on a repeat series and their slot, you can see who your regulars are and who has dropped off.

Using Reports Without Getting Lost

Reports are most useful when you check a few things on a regular rhythm rather than everything once in a while. A simple routine for a mobile groomer might be:

• Weekly: look at past-due invoices and follow up on anything still open.
• Monthly: look at work done, money in and tips, and send monthly account statements.
• Every few months: look at your client list and repeat series to see who has stopped booking.

That is enough to keep a clear picture of the business without turning the owner into a bookkeeper.

Who Sees the Reports

Not everyone on the team needs to see the money. Office users can be given roles, so each person in the office works with what their job needs and the owner keeps full access. Roles are covered in the next guide.

Good Records Make Good Reports

A report can only count what was recorded. If groomers tap Complete at the end of each visit, add-ons are ticked on the job, and invoices go out from the software rather than from a notebook, the reports will match what really happened. If some work still happens off the books, the numbers will look smaller than the business really is. The habit of running every visit through the groomer app is what makes the reports worth reading.

Decisions, Not Just Numbers

The point of reports is not the numbers; it is the decisions they help you make. Whether it is time for a second van. Whether your add-on prices are right. Which accounts are slow to pay. Reports built from the work you already do make those decisions easier. For every guide in this series, go back to the pet grooming software page.