Are Manual Adjustments Always Preserved On Re-Calculation?
When Are Adjustments Preserved?
When you perform a quick re-run from Calculations > All Calculations, we always assume that you want to preserve manual adjustments. However, when you open a calculation and re-run it, we ask you if you would like to preserve your manual adjustments.
In this article, we assume you want to preserve manual adjustments.
How Does Re-Calculation Impact Adjustments?
When you re-calculate, you are essentially asking us to re-evaluate what commissions should be.
You are re-calculating because:
- Your sales data has changed
- User quotas or rates have changed
- Commission rules have changed
- <something changed>
If your manual adjustments are NOT transaction-specific, they will always be preserved. However, the picture is more complex for per-transaction adjustments. We try hard to preserve per-transaction adjustments upon re-calculation. However, in some cases it's not clear whether we should re-calculate commissions vs. preserve your adjustments. For this reason, we recommend making all per-transaction adjustments after running your final calculation.
When Are Per-Transaction Adjustments Preserved?
We will preserve your per-transaction adjustment on re-calculation if:
- The transaction remained credited to the same user
- The transaction was paid by the same tier / reward
- The label (explanation) was the same
Consider this scenario:
- Your plan has 2 cumulative tiers
- Tier #1 pays 10% per-transaction for revenue from 0 to $10,000
- Tier #2 pays 20% per-transaction for revenue from $10,000 to $20,000
- A transaction is worth $100
- This transaction was credited to "John Doe"
- This transaction fell within Tier #1
- Therefore, we paid 10% * $100 = $10 to "John Doe"
- You adjust the commission amount to $15
- You re-calculate
- The transaction is still credited to "John Doe"
- The transaction still falls within Tier #1
- Your adjusted amount of $15 is preserved
The adjustment is preserved even if the transaction amount changed (ex: from $100 to $1000) or the reward was modified (ex: Tier #1 now pays 50% instead of 10%). In rare cases, we will create an automatic adjustment (discussed below) to ensure amounts balance out.
What Is An Automatic Adjustment?
In some rare cases, we add automatic adjustments so amounts balance out. This happens if the commission amount on an adjusted transaction changed after re-calculation.
Consider this scenario:
- A transaction is worth $100
- We paid a 10% commission = $10 to "John Doe"
- You adjust the commission down to $1
- This is a reduction of -$9
- We add a manual reward worth -$9 tracking your applied "delta"
- The rate is changed from 10% to 55% commission
- You re-calculate
- We now pay a 55% commission = $55 to "John Doe"
- We still adjust the commission down to $1 to preserve your adjustment
- We now have a much higher reduction down from $55 to $1 = -$54 (instead of -$9)
- We only have our -$9 manual reward tracking our original reduction
- It would be misleading to show you that you only reduced the commission by -$9
- We need to add a -$45 automatic adjustment to represent the full reduction
- This also ensures amounts balance out to a total of $1
- $55 in per-transaction payouts (unadjusted)
- -$9 in original adjustment
- -$45 in automatic adjustment
- Total is $1 as per your adjustment
Automatic adjustments are rare. They happens if, after re-calculation, re-calculated commission amounts change, and your initial applied "delta" needs to be adjusted to reflect the re-calculated amount.
Root causes include:
- Changing your commission structure
- See example above where the commission percentage was changed from 10% to 55% before re-calculation.
- Adjusting credits when adjusting commissions
- When you adjust commissions, you also adjust credits. When re-calculating, adjusted credits become the new basis for commissions. Adjusting the credited amount may yield a different commission, requiring a new "delta" to be applied.
- Failure to preserve your adjustment
- For example, if a transaction was deleted, we cannot preserve your adjustment. The automatic adjustment reverses your applied adjustment as it no longer makes sense.
When Are Adjusted Amounts NOT Preserved?
We will NOT preserve your per-transaction adjustment on re-calculation if:
- The transaction was deleted
- The transaction is no longer credited to the same user
- The transaction was paid by a different tier / reward
- The transaction was split differently between cumulative tiers
Consider this scenario:
- Your plan has 2 cumulative tiers
- Tier #1 pays 10% per-transaction for revenue from 0 to $10,000
- Tier #2 pays 20% per-transaction for revenue from $10,000 to $20,000
- A transaction is worth $100
- This transaction was credited to "John Doe"
- This transaction fell within Tier #1
- Therefore, we paid 10% * $100 = $10 to "John Doe"
- You adjust the commission amount to $15
- You re-calculate
- The transaction is still credited to "John Doe"
- However, the transaction now falls within Tier #2 because there additional sales were tracked
- Your adjusted amount of $15 is NOT preserved
In this case, we cannot preserve your adjustment. When you re-calculate, you also ask us to re-evaluate commissions. In this case, we feel it's appropriate to issue a new commission amount (which you can adjust again) because a new tier applies. In other words, circumstances have changed enough that preserving your adjustment seems wrong.
In some cases, you will get an automatic adjustment to reverse your applied "delta".
In Conclusion
Adjustments which are NOT transaction-specific are always preserved. Adjustments which are per-transactions cannot always be preserved. There are many different complex scenarios to consider. We recommend making all per-transaction adjustments after running your final calculation.
We try really hard to preserve your per-transaction adjustments. However, when you re-calculate, you also ask us to re-evaluate. If for example a transaction is deleted or assigned to another person, then it makes sense to drop your adjustments as they are likely meaningless. Sales Cookie tries to be as transparent as possible and adds automatic adjustments when an adjustment cannot be preserved.
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