Recipe - How To Setup A Monthly Plan With YTD Attainment
Advanced Setup
This is an advanced setup because there are two different ways you can setup plans with YTD attainment but frequent payouts (ex: monthly).
This article applies if you want to setup a plan whose attainment is YTD, but pays commissions monthly (or bi-weekly, quarterly, etc.). We'll assume that you want to pay commissions monthly. However, the setup is identical for other periods (ex: bi-weekly, quarterly, etc.).
Becoming Familiar With General Plan Setup
We first recommend first reading this article to become familiar with fundamental mechanisms of plan configuration.
Choosing An Approach
There are two primary ways you can measure attainment YTD, yet pay commissions more frequently (ex: monthly, bi-weekly, quarterly):
- Approach 1 - with deductions
- Approach 2 - without deductions
Approach 1 - With Deductions
We will always calculate from January 1. Sales Cookie will evaluate all transactions YTD, determine attainment for each target, and calculate the total commission due - YTD to each payee. However, Sales Cookie will automatically deduct what has already been paid in previous months.
Let's say you already calculated commissions for January 1 to January 31 and released rewards. You now want to calculate February commissions. We will scan transactions from January 1 to February 29, determine YTD attainment, and calculate the total commission due YTD to each payee from January 1 to February 29. And then, we will deduct what was already paid in January (so that you don't double-pay commissions over January transactions).
Approach 2 - Without Deductions
We will always calculate from January 1. Sales Cookie will evaluate all transactions YTD, and determine attainment for each target. However, we will only issue commissions for transactions within the current calculation period.
Let's say you already calculated commissions for January 1 to January 31 and released rewards. You now want to calculate February commissions. We will scan transactions from January 1 to February 29, and determine YTD attainment. However, our per-transaction reward formulas will only process February transactions to issue commissions. No deductions are required.
Choosing The Best Approach
One downside of the "with deduction" approach is that your reps will see deductions on their commission statements, which they could find confusing. On the other hand, the "with deduction" approach is easier to setup.
Also, with the deduction approach, we are constantly re-evaluating commissions earned by each rep on each transaction YTD. This can be beneficial if your commission structure changes mid-year, and you DO want changes to be retroactive. However, it can be a downside if your commission structure changes mid-year, and you do NOT want changes to be retroactive.
Without deductions
- Use this if showing deductions to your payees if acceptable
- Use this if some of your rewards are NOT per-transaction (ex: cash reward)
- Use this if you expect mid-year changes to your plan, which should be retroactive
With deductions
- Use this if you do NOT want to show deductions to your payees
- Do not use if some of your rewards are NOT per-transaction (ex: cash reward)
- Use this if you expect mid-year changes to your plan, which should NOT be retroactive
=============== With Deductions Plan Setup ===============
Start with the guidelines in this article. Sales Cookie will automatically deduct payouts from earlier (overlapping) calculations which have been fully released. Just make sure to run all your calculation from year start.
You should see deductions automatically added to your calculations. Here, our February calculation ran from Jan 1 to Feb 29. Therefore, it "overlaps" with the January fully released calculation from Jan 1 to Jan 31, which triggered a deduction.
Opening the February calculation, we can see there was a deduction worth $1,000. Daniel's total YTD payout is $2,000 (from January 1 to February 29), but $1,000 was already paid for January 1 to January 31. Hence the deduction.
The payee's dashboard will also reflect deductions:
Plan Period
You should create your plan as a monthly plan (not annual or one-off). This way, when you run monthly calculations, the end date will be populated correctly. All you have to do is change the start date to be January 1. Sales Cookie will automatically find overlapping released calculations and add deductions.
An Important Improvement
You should use an advanced option to avoid having to manually override the start date to January 1 each time you run a monthly calculation.
- Edit your commission plan
- Go to the Calculations tab
- In advanced options, add this
With this in place, you no longer need to manually override the start date to be January 1 each time you run a calculation! Sales Cookie understands we need to scan transactions from January 1 and apply deductions.
This will also eliminate warnings about overlapping calculations:
Duplicate Payment Warnings
You might notice warnings like this:
Sales Cookie is trying to warn you whenever we detect potential double-payments (i.e. paying a commission twice or more, to the same payee, over the same transaction).
Using the "with deductions" approach, all YTD transactions are being re-processed with each monthly calculation. Deductions is what protects you from double-payment. Those alerts therefore a false positive.
You can disable double-payment alerts by:
- Going to Settings > Advanced
- Checking this option
=============== Without Deductions Plan Setup ===============
Plan Period
You should create your plan as a monthly plan (not annual or one-off). We will use an advanced option to ensure the start date is always January 1.
YTD Advanced Option
- Edit your commission plan
- Go to the Calculations tab
- In advanced options, add this
With this in place, when running a calculation for February 1 to February 29, Sales Cookie understands we need to scan transactions from January 1 to February 29. No deductions will be applied for previous YTD calculations.
Selecting In-Period Transactions
With our configuration above, we will always scan transactions YTD. No deductions will be applied for previous YTD calculations. Therefore, when calculating per-transaction rewards, we should only process transactions within the current period.
Here is what your per-transaction formula could look like. If the transaction's date is NOT within our calculation start / end date (ex: February 1 to February 29), exit with a commission value of zero. Otherwise return 1,000 per transaction.
Sales Cookie offers a convenient equivalent shortcut. This is the exact same thing as the above.
Cash Rewards
As mentioned previously, if you have cash rewards at certain attainment levels, the "without deduction" approach is NOT suitable. Use the "with deduction" approach instead.
=============== Configuring Quotas For YTD Plans ===============
If you used custom variables to specify quotas, the calculation's end date determines which value is effective. When running a calculation for say February 1 to February 29, Sales Cookie will replace @@Quota by the value effective for February 29 since this is the end date.
If you've entered one quota value for the entire year, you don't need to do anything special and can use @@Quota. Each monthly calculation will compare YTD attainment to this single "yearly" quota value.
If you've specified monthly quota values, and your specified amounts are cumulative, you don't need to do anything special either and can also use @@Quota. Each monthly calculation will compare YTD attainment to your cumulative value for the month.
However, if you've specified monthly quota values, and your specified amounts are NOT YTD-cumulative, you do need to take some precaution. In this case, you'd probably like Sales Cookie to sum monthly quota values for you.
You may want to specify either:
- !!Quota which will sum monthly amounts YTD
- !+Quota which will sum monthly amounts for the entire year
For example, consider this example:
- January Quota = $8333
- February Quota = $8333
- March Quota = $8333
- Etc.
If your quota is set to !!Quota and calculate for February, the attainment goal will be $8333 x 2 (year-to-date). If your quota is set to !+Quota and calculate for February, the attainment goal will be $8333 x 12 (entire year value). Think carefully which one you want to use, and when payouts should be triggered.
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