Salon Appointments and Stylist Commission Without Nested IF Formulas

The formula every salon sheet has

Open almost any salon's commission spreadsheet and you'll find a line like this in column D, copied down a few hundred rows:

=IF(B2="Master",C2*20%,IF(B2="Senior",C2*15%,C2*10%))

It works until it doesn't. Someone adds a fourth level and forgets to update half the rows. Someone sorts only column B, and every stylist's pay shifts by one line. Worst of all, when you raise prices, the price list changes, every old row recalculates, and last month's commission no longer matches what you actually paid.

The problem isn't Excel skill. A sheet mixes the rule (how commission works), the facts (who did which service, at what price) and the result (what each stylist earned) in the same cells. Ambisius keeps them apart.

Excel vs Ambisius, job by job

Try it here. Pick a stylist level and a service, then raise prices by 10%. The new appointment follows the new price; the earlier one keeps its Snapshot.

Set it up in five steps

1. Add your services and stylists. Services hold each treatment with its price and a Duration. Stylists hold each person with a Level (a Single Select: Junior, Senior, Master).
2. Take bookings as appointments. Tap + Add Data on Appointments, pick the customer and the stylist, set the Date Time, and add a Line Item for each service. A Rollup adds up the services into the appointment's total, so a haircut plus colour is one appointment with one total.
3. Write the commission rule in plain words. Add a Formula on Appointments: "If the stylist's level is Master, 20% of the total. If Senior, 15%. Otherwise 10%." The stylist's level comes in with a Lookup, so you never type it twice. Set it to Snapshot, so the value is calculated when the appointment is created and then stays fixed.
4. Save the views your team uses every day. "Today's appointments" filters Date Time to Today and sorts by time. Pin it to the workspace's Dashboards page so it opens in one tap at the front desk.
5. See what each stylist earned. A Rollup on Stylists adds up the commission from their appointments, and a bar chart of commission by stylist shows the month at a glance. Charts follow their view's filter, so a view filtered to This month gives you this month's pay.

Why Snapshot matters for pay

In most tools, linked values are always live: change a price and every past record follows. That's what you want for stock, and exactly what you don't want for pay. A Snapshot is calculated once, when the appointment is created, then frozen. Your price list can change every month and your payroll history still adds up.

The same idea works for discounts, a customer's tier at the time of the visit, or a product's price on the day it was sold.

Stylists on their phones

Stylists and front-desk staff join as Members, with no seat cost. On the phone they see today's appointments as cards and add bookings through a form with a date and time picker and a customer picker. An Admin can make a short booking form with Customer and Stylist required and hidden fields out of the way. Changes sync live, so a booking added at the desk shows up on the stylist's phone straight away.

Questions people ask

Start from the Salon Appointment template: appointments, customers, stylists and services, already linked, with a place for your own commission rule.