Sales reps and commission

Credit each sale to a salesperson, work out what they earned, and pay them.

The one thing to understand first

Commission is earned when the invoice is PAID, not when it is raised.

A sale in March that the customer settles in June earns commission in June. That is deliberate — you never pay commission on money you haven't collected — but it means the commission figures will not match the sales reports for the same month. If someone asks why, this is why.

A half-paid invoice earns half the commission. An invoice that is never paid earns nothing.

Before you start

Create at least one commission plan with a rate.
Create your sales reps and put each on a plan.
To pay a rep through the system, link them to a vendor. Their commission then becomes a bill you settle in Pay Bills like any other.

Steps — setting up

Sales → Commission Plans → New plan. Give it a name and a default rate.
Add specific rates if some products pay differently. Rates apply most-specific-first: a rate on an item beats a rate on a category, which beats the plan default.
Sales → Sales Reps → New rep. Enter their name, pick their plan, and pick the vendor they should be paid as.
On each invoice, choose the Sales Rep who made the sale.

Steps — running commission

Go to Sales → Commission Run.
Pick the month. It opens on last month, which is usually what you want.
Check the preview. Each row shows what was collected, what the commission was calculated on, and the net after any clawback.
Expand a row to see lines that earned nothing, and why.
Tick the reps you want, or leave everything unticked to post them all.
Click Post. This raises one bill per rep.
Pay them in Purchases → Pay Bills, like any other bill.

Revenue or margin?

Your system is set to calculate commission on one of two things:

Revenue — the sale value. Simple, and everyone understands it.
Margin — sale value minus what the goods cost you. Stops reps discounting away your profit to win a sale.

A plan can override the company-wide setting, so you can put agents on margin and in-house staff on revenue.

Under Margin, lines with no stock cost earn nothing — services, delivery charges and fees. That's on purpose: they have no cost, so treating them as pure profit would pay commission at 100% margin.

Returns and clawback

If a customer returns goods, the commission on them is reversed automatically at the next run, in proportion to what came back. Return half, lose half.

The reversal is recorded as a separate negative line, never by editing the original — so the statement always shows both what was earned and what came back.

If a rep's clawback exceeds what they earned that month, the run will not post them. That negative carries into the next period.

Tips

A rep with no plan earns nothing. This is deliberate so commission is never paid by accident.
A rep with no vendor still shows their earnings, but can't be posted. Use this for staff paid through payroll.
The run tells you how much was collected on invoices with no rep — worth checking if it looks high, as it means sales aren't being credited.
Use each rep's Statement to answer "why is my commission low this month?" It lists every invoice behind the number.
Export the run to Excel before posting if you need a manager's sign-off.

Common problems

"Nothing earned in this period." → Either nothing was collected against that rep's invoices, or their invoices have no rep set. Check the unattributed figure at the top.
A big sale is missing. → The customer probably hasn't paid yet. Commission follows the money.
"No vendor is linked to this rep." → Add a vendor on the rep, or accept that they're paid outside the system.
Everything shows zero under Margin. → Your sales may not be posting stock costs — usually because invoices have no delivering department set. Switch to Revenue or fix the invoices.
"Already posted for this period." → That rep has been paid for that month. A period can only be posted once, so it can't double-pay.
The totals don't match my sales report. → Expected. Sales reports count sales made; commission counts money collected.