Commission Rules

What are they and what are they for?

Each Commission Rule combines, all fields being optional, up to six criteria (Subsidiary, Business Line, Item, Sales Rep, Customer and Brand) with up to three numeric ranges (Margin, Payment Days and Sales Budget Accomplishment %) and assigns them a Commission %. This lets you go from very general rules — for example "every sales rep earns a 2% commission" — to very specific ones — for example "sales rep John earns a 5% commission on sales of brand X, with a margin above 30% and collected within the first 30 days" — without writing any code.

These rules feed the Sales Commission Reports (cash and credit, summarized or detailed, by invoice), which review every already-collected sale, look for the best-matching rule, and apply its percentage to calculate how much commission each sales rep earned in the queried period.

How the field combination works

Every field on a rule is optional, and a blank field is read as "no restriction" on that dimension:

• Leaving Sales Rep blank makes the rule apply to any sales rep; leaving Customer, Item, Business Line or Brand blank makes it apply to any value of that field.
• Margin From / Margin To: compare the sale's real gross margin (sale price minus cost, as a percentage). Leaving both at 0 means the rule doesn't filter by margin.
• Payment Days From / To: compare how many days passed between the invoice date and the date the customer paid it. Leaving both at 0 means the rule doesn't filter by collection time.
• Minimum % / Maximum % of Sales Budget Accomplishment: compare the percentage of the sales rep's sales budget already reached in the period. These only show up if your company has Sales Budget enabled.

The more fields you fill in, the more specific (and more "fine-tuned") the rule becomes. A good practice is to first create a general rule (everything blank, with your company's base commission) and then add more specific rules only for exceptions.

How to use it

1. Open the Commission Rules list and click New.
2. If your company has subsidiaries enabled, choose the Subsidiary the rule applies to, or leave it blank so it applies to all of them.
3. Select the criteria you want to narrow down: Business Line, Item, Sales Rep, Customer and, if your company uses Brands, Brand. Leave any you don't want to restrict blank.
4. If you want to make the commission conditional on the sale's margin, set Margin From and Margin To; if you want it conditional on how fast it's collected, set Payment Days From and Payment Days To.
5. If your company uses Sales Budget, you can also set a Minimum % and/or Maximum % of budget accomplishment so the rule only applies within that range.
6. Enter the Commission % this rule grants and, optionally, a note explaining its purpose.
7. Save. The rule is available immediately for the next commission calculations.
8. Use the See link on the list to review an existing rule, or Edit to change it.

Key fields

Validations when saving

• The selected Business Line, Item, Sales Rep, Customer, Brand and Subsidiary must exist and be active.
• Margin From and Margin To cannot be negative; if both are different from 0, To cannot be less than From.
• Payment Days From and Payment Days To cannot be negative; if both are different from 0, To cannot be less than From.
• Commission % is required and must be greater than 0.
• You cannot save two rules with the exact same combination of Sales Rep, Item, Business Line, Customer, Brand, Margin and Payment Days (within the same subsidiary); the system warns that the customer or the brand is already assigned to another rule with those same criteria.

Availability

• This feature requires the Enterprise "Incentives" module active on your company; if it isn't active, the screens show the "not available on this edition" message.
• Requires the "Configuration" permission of System Administration on your user group (with add, edit or delete level depending on the action you want to perform).
• The Subsidiary column and field only show up if your company has subsidiaries enabled.
• The Brand field only shows up if your company has the Brands catalog enabled (Inventory or eCommerce modules).
• The Minimum % and Maximum % of Sales Budget Accomplishment fields only show up if your company has Sales Budget enabled (Advanced Sales module or the corresponding feature).

Tips and common mistakes