Custom commission tracking software

Why commission spreadsheets break

Most commission plans start in a spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet works until the plan gets interesting. Add a tier, a split between two reps, a clawback when a customer cancels, a different rate for renewals, and a manager override, and suddenly one person spends days each month on commissions and reps keep their own shadow spreadsheets to check the math. Disputes follow, and trust in the numbers drops.

Commission tracking software fixes this by calculating the plan the same way every time, from the same source data, and showing everyone how each number was reached.

There is also a motivation cost to getting it wrong. Reps who cannot see what they have earned until weeks after a period closes lose the connection between a deal and the reward, which is the whole point of a commission plan. Showing earnings as deals close, with a clear view of the next tier, tends to matter as much as the accuracy of the math.

What commission tracking software needs to do

• Import deals, invoices or payments from your CRM, billing system or accounting tool.
• Apply plan rules: flat and tiered rates, accelerators, quotas, splits, overrides, bonuses and spiffs.
• Handle timing: pay on booking, on invoice or on cash received, with holds and clawbacks for cancellations or refunds.
• Give each rep a personal statement showing every deal, the rate applied and the result.
• Let reps raise a dispute on a specific line, with a record of how it was resolved.
• Approval by sales leadership and finance before a period closes.
• Export to payroll and keep a history of every plan version and payout.

Off-the-shelf commission tools vs custom

Dedicated products such as CaptivateIQ, Xactly and QuotaPath are built for this and handle common plan designs well. Many CRMs also have basic commission features. If your plan is reasonably standard and your deal data is clean in a mainstream CRM, start there.

Custom commission tracking is a better fit when:

• Your plan has rules those tools cannot express without workarounds, such as margin-based rates, product-specific splits or territory rules.
• The data that drives commission lives in an industry system or your own software rather than a mainstream CRM.
• Commissions are paid to people outside your payroll, such as agents, brokers, referral partners or independent contractors, who need a portal.
• You want commission figures inside the CRM or app your team already uses, not in a separate product.

What we build

• A calculation engine that encodes your plan, with versioning so last year’s plan still calculates last year’s deals correctly.
• Connections to your CRM, billing, accounting or industry system for deal and payment data.
• Rep dashboards with earnings to date, pipeline projections and progress to quota and the next tier.
• A partner or agent portal for people paid commission outside your company.
• Approval and close workflows for each period, with locked statements once paid.
• Payroll exports or integrations, and reports on commission cost by team, product and period.

How a commission project works

1. Write the plan downWe turn your comp plan, and every exception people remember, into written rules you sign off on.
2. Map the dataWe find where each input lives, from deal values to payment dates, and how to pull it reliably.
3. Design statements and dashboardsReps and managers click through their views before any code is written.
4. Recalculate past periodsWe run several past months through the new engine and reconcile any difference with your old numbers.
5. Go live and maintainYou close the next period in the new system, and we update rules as your plans change each year.

Who uses custom commission tracking

Insurance agencies with producer splits and renewal commissions, mortgage brokers paying loan officers, staffing agencies paying recruiters on placements and margins, and businesses with outside sales or referral partners all tend to outgrow both spreadsheets and generic tools. The common thread is a plan that encodes real business decisions and has to be calculated exactly.