Grooming services & pricing by pet size
Price by size once, and the right price follows every pet automatically.
Grooming is priced by size, so Argus is built that way
A full groom on a Yorkie and a full groom on a Newfoundland share a name and nothing else. Argus starts from a list of size categories — Small, Medium, Large, Extra large, XX Large, Cat and Other out of the box — which you can rename, recolour and reorder to match how your salon really talks.
Each service belongs to one size and carries its own price and its own duration. So “Full groom” is a handful of services, and the two-hour, ninety-pound version can never be quietly booked into a forty-minute slot.
The size follows the pet, automatically
Here is the chain that makes the whole thing effortless: breed decides size, size decides which services appear. Choose the breed once when the pet is created and every screen afterwards — your appointment dialog, your customer's booking page — offers only the services priced for that dog.
It means a new receptionist cannot mis-price a groom on their first Saturday, and a customer self-booking at midnight cannot pick the small-dog rate for a giant breed.
Shampoos and extras that get paid for
Product is where grooming margin leaks. Create your consumables once — medicated shampoo, de-shedding treatment, cologne, a specialist conditioner — each with a price, then attach them to the services that use them.
- Quoted as part of the price your customer sees when booking
- Listed as their own lines on the receipt, so the sale is itemised
- Included in discounts and tax like anything else
- Optionally part of the commission base, if that is how you pay your team
Nobody has to remember to add them, which is precisely why they stop being forgotten.
A starter catalogue, so day one is not data entry
Setting up a price list from an empty screen is the reason salon software gets abandoned in week one. Argus ships a library you can import with one click: 7 size categories and 205 breeds, with 194 breed photos included.
Each breed arrives with a sensible grooming interval assigned by coat type rather than by size — six weeks for coats that keep growing like poodles, Maltese and doodles; eight for double and wire coats; twelve for short smooth coats; four for hairless cats. That single field is what later powers next-due dates and rebooking reminders.
The import is safe to run again later: it adds what is new and never overwrites the changes you have made.
Your price list in your customers' languages
Service, breed and size names can each be translated into every language your salon supports, and Argus ships with over two hundred translations already filled in for the starter catalogue. Your customer reads “Klein” or “პატარა”; your team keeps working in one language. Nobody maintains two price lists.
Control what is bookable, and what a groom may cost you
Two switches on a service quietly do a lot of work. The first is bookable online: leave it on for your bread-and-butter grooms, turn it off for anything you want to price by eye. The services you turn off are exactly the list your counter sees for walk-in sales, grouped by size so the right one is one tap away.
The second is a commission cap per service. On a low-margin or heavily discounted service you can cap the percentage paid out, however generous an individual groomer's rate is — and Argus shows the capped rate honestly in the earnings breakdown, so it never looks like a mistake.
- Decide per service what customers may book themselves
- Cap commission per service to protect thin margins
- Say which of your team is qualified for which service — it gates online availability
- Sorted by price so your headline services lead
- Export the full catalogue to Excel with base price, consumables and total
Assigning services to your team is not paperwork: it is what stops a customer booking a full groom with somebody who only does baths.
Questions about services & pricing
- How does pricing by size actually work?
- You create a service per size — "Full groom · Small", "Full groom · Large" — each with its own price and duration. Because every pet's size comes from its breed, Argus shows only the services that fit the pet in front of you. Nobody has to remember which tier a Bernese falls into.
- Can I charge for shampoo and other products used on a groom?
- Yes. Create consumables once with their prices and attach them to any service. They are quoted to the customer as part of the price, appear as their own lines on the receipt, and are included in discounts, tax and — if you choose — commission.
- Do I have to type in every breed myself?
- No. Argus ships a starter library of 7 size categories and 205 breeds with photos and sensible grooming intervals already set by coat type. Import it in one click, then adjust anything you disagree with. Re-running it later only adds what is new — it never overwrites your edits.
- Can I keep some services off my public booking page?
- Every service has an online-booking switch. Turn it off for the things that need your eye first — matted brush-outs, difficult-dog handling — and they stay available for walk-in sales at the counter while staying invisible to customers.
Works with
Try it on your own salon
Argus is free to start — no card required. Set up your salon and see this working with your own services and team.
Register your salon