Summary
Salons roster to the booking sheet, and the booking sheet is not a roster. It says when clients are coming; it says nothing about who opens, who cleans down, who takes the walk-in at 5.50pm, or what happens to the stylist whose 2pm cancels.
Run the business off the booking sheet alone and three things go wrong reliably: staff work unrecorded time at either end of the day, commission arrangements drift below award minimums, and training happens on unpaid evenings. All three are ordinary practice in the industry, and all three are underpayments.
Commission does not displace the award
The most important thing in this article. Many salons pay a base plus commission on services and retail, and some try to pay commission only. Under the Hair and Beauty Industry Award 2010:
An award-covered employee must receive at least the award minimum for every hour worked, including all applicable penalties, regardless of what they earned in commission.
Commission sits on top of that floor. It can exceed it — often it does — but it cannot substitute for it. A commission-only arrangement for an award-covered employee is not lawful, and a base-plus-commission arrangement is only compliant if you actually check, pay period by pay period, that the total meets the award entitlement for the hours worked.
That check requires knowing the hours, including the weekend and late-night hours that attract penalties. Which is precisely what a booking sheet does not tell you. The quiet week is where this bites: a stylist whose bookings were thin has low commission and the same hours, and it is that week where the shortfall appears.
Unpaid training nights
The industry runs on continuing education — colour technique, new product ranges, brand sessions, model nights — and it very commonly happens on a Monday evening, unpaid.
The test is not whether it is educational. It is whether the employee is required to attend. If attendance is expected, directed, or a practical condition of the role, it is work: paid at the applicable rate, with penalties if it falls in a penalty period, and counting toward overtime.
Genuinely optional training that an employee chooses to attend for their own development is different. But "optional" has to be real — if not attending has consequences for rostering or advancement, it is not optional.
Open, close and the client who runs over
The booking sheet says the first client is at 9am. Somebody unlocked at 8.40, turned on the towel warmer, set up stations and checked stock. The last colour is booked at 4.30 and finishes at 6.15. Then there is cleaning down, sweeping, laundry and cashing up.
Recording actual clock-in and clock-out times rather than first and last appointment resolves this, and it resolves it in both directions — it also tells you which stylists are consistently running over, which is a booking-length problem worth fixing.
Late-night and weekend penalties
Salons trade the hours clients are free: Thursday late night, Saturday, and increasingly Sunday. The award carries penalty rates for these, and they are the majority of the wage bill in many salons rather than an occasional loading.
Two points. Penalties attach to hours actually worked, so a Saturday that runs 45 minutes past close attracts the Saturday penalty on those 45 minutes. And junior rates step with age, which means a birthday is a payroll event — a junior who turns 19 and stays on the 18-year-old rate is underpaid from their birthday.
Apprentices
Hairdressing runs on apprentices, and apprentice arrangements carry their own requirements: wage rates that step by year and by competency progression, obligations around training time, and in some jurisdictions specific record-keeping for the training contract.
Two things to diarise. Progression dates, because an apprentice who has progressed is entitled to the higher rate from that date rather than from when payroll noticed. And training time, where time spent at a registered training organisation during ordinary working hours is generally paid.
Worth knowing: hairdressing is covered by the portable long service leave scheme in the ACT. If you operate there, check your registration — see our long service leave guide.
Cancellations and the quiet afternoon
A client cancels and a stylist has a two-hour hole. What the salon may not do is send them home unpaid and call it a shorter shift. If they were rostered and are ready and available to work, they are generally entitled to be paid for the rostered hours — and any minimum engagement applies regardless.
Sending staff home early when it is quiet feels like sensible cost control, and it is one of the more common informal practices in the sector. Check the award before adopting it as policy, because the alternative to paying for the quiet hour is usually a claim for it later.
A short checklist
- Record actual start and finish times, not first and last appointment.
- Reconcile commission against award minimums every pay period, including penalties.
- Pay for required training, at the applicable rate for when it occurs.
- Diarise junior rate birthdays and apprentice progression dates.
- Check the award before sending staff home early on a quiet day.
- Confirm penalties are applied to actual hours, including overruns.
- If you operate in the ACT, check portable long service leave registration.
Where the system helps
The reconciliation that makes commission lawful — total pay against award entitlement for hours actually worked — is impossible without an hours record. NestedClock records actual clock and break times per person per location, so the hours side of that comparison is a fact rather than an inference from the booking sheet, and late finishes appear as worked time rather than disappearing after the last client.
Where to check the detail
The Hair and Beauty Industry Award 2010 is on the Fair Work Commission website — read the current version, as rates and penalty provisions are varied annually. Apprenticeship arrangements are administered by your state or territory training authority.
This article is general information, not legal advice.