Best Practice - Paying Commissions Ad-Hoc

Best Practice - Paying Commissions Ad-Hoc


There are 3 recommended ways to pay ad-hoc commissions.

Applicability 
The following assumptions apply:
  1. Estimated commissions are being calculated
  2. You want to manually release commission payouts

Option #1 - Add a Release Date To Your Data
Here are the steps:
  1. Add a custom date field called "Release Date" to your sales data
  2. When ready to release commissions, specify the "Release Date" date
  3. Add a rule to trigger payment of commissions in the specified period

Example:
  1. You are paying commissions on SFDC opportunities
  2. An SFDC opportunity has 3 estimated commissions to different payees, which have not yet been released
  3. When you set the "Release Date" on SFDC opportunities, commissions are automatically released using a commission rule


Note: a date field is preferable to a checkbox / boolean field, because it tells us in which period commissions should be released.

Option #2 - Review Liabilities & Pay Manually
Sales Cookie gives you the ability to systematically review liabilities and release commissions.  

Example:
  1. You have 5 deals with an estimated commissions, but no actual commission
  2. Go to Reports > Get Reports > Analyze Liabilities to find all deals with outstanding commissions
  3. Below, we're reviewing liabilities from the last 6 months

When you click on transaction links, transactions will be opened. The Commissions tab is pre-selected:



This tab lists all actual and estimated commissions. In the last section, liabilities are listed:


Then:
  1. Click on the link above
  2. Choose a plan / calculation period in which the payment should be made
    1. If you do not have a calculation for the payment period, just run one
  3. Note the following
    1. The payee is automatically defaulted
    2. The amount is automatically defaulted
    3. We recommend entering an explanation for tracking purposes
    4. If the calculation has already been released, you have the option to specify a custom release date. Otherwise, the release date will be the one chosen when you release the calculation later on.


Your change is tracked in the audit log, including your chosen explanation:



The release is also visible on payee dashboards:



Since the liability no longer exists, it is removed from the liability report and Commissions tab.

Option #3 - Start From Transactions
You are not obligated to start from the liability report.

If you know which deals were paid, you can:
  1. Go to Transactions > All Transactions
  2. Find the relevant transaction
  3. Open the transaction
  4. Click on the Commissions tab
  5. Follow the same steps as above
In this example, we are using advanced search to find transactions by opportunity name:

After clicking on the transaction, we can open the Commissions tab and pay the commission manually. Please refer to the previous paragraph for more details.

In Conclusion
There are 3 main ways you can manage ad-hoc release of estimated commissions:
  1. Add a release date to your data & configure commission release rules
  2. Use the liability report to review liabilities and pay them manually
  3. Find transactions, review review liabilities and pay them manually

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