People & Payroll
How to add your providers and staff — including pay rates, commission structures, and hours — so Nabu can calculate accurate labor costs.
Why providers need to be in Nabu
Every service your clinic performs is delivered by a provider. To calculate the true cost of a service, Nabu needs to know:
- How much does the provider get paid?
- Do they have predictable base pay, variable pay, or both?
- How many productive/bookable hours are confirmed?
- Do they earn commission, flat per-service pay, or per-unit injectable pay?
Without this information, Nabu can't calculate labor cost — which is usually the single largest component of service cost.
Who to add here
Add everyone whose labor cost you want to track. This typically includes:
- Licensed providers (estheticians, nurses, injectors, laser techs) — these are the people who perform services and generate revenue
- Non-clinical staff (front desk, admin, office manager) — their cost goes into overhead, not directly into service cost
Important: For sales records to link to the right provider, each provider needs an email address in Nabu. This email is what Nabu uses to match imported sales data to a provider. Make sure the email you enter here matches what you use in your booking software or CSV imports.
The fields explained
Basic information
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Name | First and last name |
| Email (required) | Work email address. This is used to match sales records to this provider. |
| Phone (optional) | Work phone number |
| Role / Title | Their job title (e.g., "Licensed Esthetician", "RN Injector", "Front Desk") |
| Service Provider | Check this box if this person performs revenue-generating services. Uncheck for admin-only staff. |
| Active | Check if currently working. Uncheck if they've left or gone on leave. |
Compensation
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Pay Type | Unknown / Needs review, Hourly, Salary, Commission only, Flat per service, Per-unit injectable, or No base pay / Excluded. Use Unknown when an import/source record does not provide enough compensation detail yet. |
| Hourly Rate | If hourly: their hourly wage in dollars (e.g., $35) |
| Annual Salary / Monthly Salary | If salary: their salary value. Nabu stores the monthly equivalent for calculations. |
| Service Commission % | If they earn commission on services, enter the percentage (0–100). Leave 0 if they don't. |
| Retail Commission % | If they earn commission on retail/product sales, enter the percentage. |
| Flat Service Rate | If flat per service: the dollar amount paid for each completed service. |
| Injectable Unit Rate | If per-unit injectable: the dollar amount paid per unit or syringe. |
| Include in Payroll | Turn off for roster-only people or people paid outside payroll. |
| Compensation Notes | Add context for unknown, excluded, or non-standard compensation. |
| Monthly Benefits | Any benefits costs paid by the employer — health insurance, dental, etc. — per month. |
Nabu separates estimated monthly base payroll from variable provider pay:
- Base payroll includes salary and hourly base pay when productive hours are confirmed, plus payroll load and monthly benefits.
- Variable pay includes commission-only, service or retail commission, flat per-service pay, and per-unit injectable pay. These rules need service volume, sales history, or unit counts before Nabu can estimate actual monthly payout.
- If an hourly person is missing productive hours, Nabu marks the payroll estimate as partial instead of treating that person as truly $0.
Hours
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Hours worked per week | Total hours scheduled per week, including non-service time (admin, charting, etc.) |
| Productive / bookable hours per week | Hours actually available for client appointments. This should be ≤ hours worked. |
What's the difference between hours worked and productive hours? If a provider works 40 hours per week but spends 8 hours per week on admin, charting, meetings, and cleaning rooms, they only have 32 productive (bookable) hours. The 32-hour figure is what Nabu uses to calculate service capacity and overhead allocation.
Payroll load (taxes and burden)
Nabu automatically estimates payroll taxes and burden — the employer-side costs of having an employee, such as Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment taxes. In the US, this is typically 12–20% on top of base pay.
You don't need to calculate this yourself. Nabu applies a default estimate. If you know your exact payroll load percentage (your accountant or payroll provider can tell you), you can override it in the form.
Solo plan: your provider profile
If you're on the Solo Founder plan, Nabu automatically created a provider profile for you when you completed onboarding. It used your signup name and email.
Check that this profile is accurate by going to Setup → People & Payroll. You should see your name there. Make sure:
- The email address matches what you use in your booking software
- The pay rate reflects what you actually want to track as your labor cost
- The hours reflect your typical schedule
You can edit this profile by clicking on your name.
On the Solo plan, you cannot add additional providers — only one provider per location is supported. If your business grows and you hire team members, you'll need to upgrade your plan.
CSV import
If you have multiple providers, importing from a spreadsheet is faster than entering them one by one. Download the People & Payroll template from the Setup page, fill it in, and upload it.
The template columns are:
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
first_name / last_name | Person name |
email | Work email for matching sales/provider records |
phone | Work phone |
role_title | Job title |
is_provider | yes if this person performs revenue-generating services |
is_active | yes for current team members, no for inactive/former people |
employment_type | employee, contractor, owner, or other. Use role/title for positions like Provider, Injector, Admin, or Manager. |
include_in_payroll | yes if Nabu should include this person in payroll calculations |
base_pay_type | "Unknown", "Hourly", "Salary", "Commission Only", "Flat Per Service", "Per Unit Injectable", or "No Base Pay" |
hourly_rate | Hourly wage (leave blank for salary) |
monthly_salary | Monthly salary (leave blank for hourly) |
service_commission_pct | Service commission as a decimal (e.g., 0.10 = 10%) |
retail_commission_pct | Retail commission as a decimal |
flat_service_rate | Dollar amount paid per completed service |
injectable_unit_rate | Dollar amount paid per injectable unit or syringe |
payroll_load_pct | Employer payroll burden percentage |
monthly_benefits | Monthly benefits cost in dollars |
hours_worked_per_week | Total hours per week |
productive_hours_per_week | Bookable hours per week |
source_employee_id | Optional source-system employee ID, such as Zenoti employee ID |
compensation_notes | Notes for unknown, excluded, or unusual compensation |
How provider data affects your reports
Once providers are set up:
- Nabu calculates labor cost per service from the provider's pay model: hourly/salary base labor, commission, flat per-service pay, or per-unit injectable pay when unit counts are available
- Provider profitability reports show revenue, cost, contribution, and profit per provider
- Sales records that include a provider email automatically link to the right provider
- Overhead per provider is calculated based on their productive hours relative to the whole team