A flat "$X per dog" price prices the breed, not the job. A 12-lb short-coat dog and a 90-lb doodle with a matted double coat are not the same amount of work, and neither is a routine bath-and-brush compared to one that needs a de-shedding treatment, a nail grind, and careful work through mats. Every one of those differences is billed time or billed materials, and it doesn't show up unless you put it in the quote.
Open the free pet grooming bid calculator
Size and coat. A giant, curly-coated dog can take close to twice the hands-on time of a small, short-coated one — bathing, drying, brushing out, and scissoring all scale with size and coat texture.
Matting. A few small mats add a little time. A coat matted to the skin adds a lot of time — and it is also a welfare and safety question a groomer or vet has to make, not just a pricing one. This tool prices the extra time; it never decides whether the groom should happen.
Add-ons. Nail trims, nail grinding, teeth brushing, ear cleaning, de-shedding, flea/tick treatment, and anal gland expression each have their own time and, for some, their own material cost. Priced separately, a customer only pays for what their pet actually needs.
The calculator does that arithmetic in your browser. It's not a promise of profit, an animal-health assessment, or a recommendation to accept a job — it's arithmetic on the numbers you enter, for you to check against your own rates and your own judgment about the animal in front of you.
A medium dog with a medium coat and no matting is about a 69-minute groom at the calculator's defaults. Add light matting (15 more minutes), a nail trim and ear cleaning (20 more minutes, $27 in add-on pricing), and the job grows past an hour before travel is even in the picture. A $75 quote that looked fine for a basic bath-and-brush can be thin once the real job — mats and add-ons included — is priced in full.
Start from size and coat, not a flat breed price: a small short-coat dog might be a 45-minute groom, while a giant doodle with a curly coat can take nearly twice as long before you even account for matting or add-ons. Multiply the base time by a loaded hourly rate, add any matting surcharge and add-on time and price, add supplies and overhead, and add travel if you groom on-site.
A few small mats add maybe 15 minutes; a coat matted to the skin can add an hour or more of careful, slow work, and it is also a welfare and safety question, not just a time question — matting that reaches the skin can hide sores or skin damage that changes whether the groom should happen at all. Price the extra time, and treat severe matting as a judgment call for you or a vet, not a box to check for a bigger invoice.
Yes. Each add-on has its own time and, often, its own material cost — a nail trim is a few minutes, a de-shedding treatment can add twenty minutes and its own shampoo cost. Bundling them into one flat groom price either overcharges the customer who wants a basic bath and cut or undercharges the one who wants everything.