How Can I Show Withheld Commissions To My Reps?
This article applies if you declare potential commissions early (ex: as deals close), but only want to pay commissions when you get paid (ex: as invoices get paid). For more general considerations about this setup, please read our blog article.
This article explains how your reps can view deals they earned a commission for, but are still awaiting payment. Such deals are withheld commissions because some amount of commission is subject to you receiving payment from you customers.
Configuration Overview
To calculate commissions, but pay them only when you get paid, we need to calculate:
- Estimated commissions - based on when deals were closed
- For example, you may establish an estimated commission amount (or commission rate) based on bookings tracked within your CRM system. You may have accelerators depending on attainment which impact commission rates.
- Actual commissions - based on when you receive payment
- For example, you may want to release actual commission when payments are received within your billing system. Payment of actual commissions may be in full, or partial (if you receive payments incrementally).
We highly recommend reaching out to the Sales Cookie technical team so we can configure this for you the best possible way. For example, we may setup 2 plans - one calculating estimated commission, and one calculating actual commissions based on payment triggers.
Viewing Withheld Commissions
To enable your reps to view withheld commissions:
- Login to your workspace
- On the left pane, click on "Plans > All Plans"
- Edit your plan (the one releasing actual commissions)
- Click on the "Calculations" tab
- Select this option
Withheld Commission Balance
As shown above, you have the option to display a balance. Each rep's balance is the difference between all estimated commission amounts and all paid commission amounts.
Often, old deals will never receive payments, so rep balances will grow without bound. To handle this scenario, Sales Cookie lets you specify a period after which withheld commissions will no longer be shown. To do this, select an expiration (in days) as shown above. Another way to handle this scenario is to manually set the estimated commission amount to zero on deals you know will never be paid.
Incentive Dashboards
Your reps will now see a section listing all withheld commissions on their incentive dashboard. This section shows, for all deals whose commission has not been paid in full, the actual paid commission vs. the original estimated commission, as well as the balance.
You can of course rename terms using dashboard customizations. For example, you could rename "Est. Commission" to "Earned Commission". Or you could rename "Withheld Commissions" to "Deals Awaiting Payment".
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