How much to charge for a dog groom

Someone rings while you've got a wet spaniel on the table and asks what a groom costs. You've never seen the dog, you can barely hear them over the dryer, and you give a number anyway, because the alternative is losing the call.

That number decides what the next two hours of your working life are worth, and you settled it in about four seconds. It's worth deciding properly once, on a day when nobody's on the phone.

The list price is a bet on time

A groom price looks like a price for a service. What it actually buys is a block of your day: the bath, the dryer, the table, the crate while she dries off, and the ten minutes at the counter explaining why the ears came off shorter than last time. Two dogs booked as the same service can sit forty minutes apart, and only one of those forty minutes ever gets paid for. So "how much do I charge" is sitting on top of two questions you haven't answered yet: what an hour on your table has to bring in, and what the number moves with.

What an hour on your table has to earn

Start with what the shop has to pay in a year whether a dog turns up or not. Rent, insurance, power, water, shampoo, blades and the sharpening, the phone, the software, the van if you're mobile, and what you need to take home to live on. That's the year.

Then divide it by the hours you can honestly be on a dog, and that's where this usually goes wrong. A 38-hour week isn't 38 groomable hours. Take out the phone calls, the quotes, the meet-and-greets, the clean-down between dogs, the Tuesday a no-show ate, the driving if you're mobile. Divide by the honest figure instead of the flattering one and the rate you need lands higher than the one you had in your head. That's the point of doing it.

A price under that floor isn't a cheap price. It's you paying for the privilege of being busy, one dog at a time. And if you're registered for GST, part of what's on your board was never yours: one dollar in every eleven of a GST-inclusive price belongs to the ATO. Registration becomes compulsory once your GST turnover reaches $75,000, so crossing that line without touching your prices is a pay cut you handed yourself.

What the number moves with

Breed is the usual key, and it's the first one to break. "Poodle" covers a dog you carry in one arm and a dog that fills the tub. "Doodle" isn't a breed at all, and it tells you nothing useful about what's under the collar. The same dog is a different job in March and in August. Breed is good context and a poor price lever. Three things actually move the clock:

• Size. The one thing an owner can give you accurately over the phone, and it sets the floor on bath, dry and table time. Ask for a weight if you can, because "medium" means whatever they'd like it to mean.
• Coat type. Smooth, wire, double, curly. It's the difference between a dryer running ten minutes and a dryer running an hour, and owners can usually answer it if you ask in plain words instead of by breed group.
• Condition on the day. Matting, how long since the last groom, whether the brushing they promised actually happened. It costs the most time, and it's the only one you can't confirm until the dog's in front of you.

The dog that's worse than the form said

A flat price per size band is quick to quote and easy for an owner to compare, and it holds up right until the matted double coat booked in as a tidy-up. Swallow that once and you've done a two-hour job for a one-hour price. Swallow it every time and you've become the cheapest place in town to bring a neglected dog, which isn't the client list anyone sets out to build.

The other side deserves its strongest case too. A condition charge you have to raise at the counter, with the owner standing there and the dog already wet, is a conversation nobody enjoys. A surcharge you keep flinching out of charging is just a discount with extra admin.

What makes it survivable is saying it while they're booking. Name the range and what moves it up front, and if the dog turns up worse than described, ring from the table before you start rather than producing a bigger number at pickup. Same money, completely different conversation.

Saying a number to someone you haven't met

Back to that phone call. A firm price wins it and loses on the dogs that run long. A "from" price is honest about the variation and converts worse, because the owner hears the low number, remembers the low number, and feels ambushed at pickup. No number at all until drop-off is the most accurate of the three and the worst possible place to negotiate: wet dog, waiting owner, and you holding a comb. The workable middle is a firm price for a dog you've groomed before and a range for one you haven't, which is the same line you probably already draw for deposits and for who gets to book online.

Whichever you land on, write down what the price is keyed to. A price you can explain in one sentence is a price you can raise later. One you arrived at by feel is one you'll end up discounting.

Keep reading

• Factor-based pricing — setting a price that moves with size, coat or condition.
• How long a groom actually takes — the other half of the bet.
• What to ask on a booking form — the answers a price has to key off.
• Seglo for pet grooming.