How commission
actually gets calculated
Plan structures, worked arithmetic, and the parts that break in practice. Written for the person who has to run the numbers, not for the person buying software.
Commission structures
The eight shapes a commission plan comes in, and what each one does to behaviour.
There are only about eight commission structures in common use. Everything else is a combination of them, or one of them with a condition bolted on.
Plan templates
Six plans written out in full, with the arithmetic showing.
A commission plan is a contract that has to survive contact with a bad quarter, a disputed deal and a departing rep. The parts people leave out are always the same four: when the commission is considered earned, when it is paid, what reverses it, and what happens if someone leaves before payment.
Rates by industry
What reps are actually paid, by sector, and why the spread is so wide.
The question people ask is what commission rate is normal for my industry. It is the wrong question, and answering it directly does more harm than good.
How to calculate commission
From flat rate to tiered accelerators, worked one line at a time.
Anyone can multiply a sale by a rate. The reason commission disputes are so common is that the multiplication is the last step, and every step before it involves a decision somebody made without writing it down.
ISO and agent residuals
Buy-rate spreads, portfolio splits, and why residuals break most tools.
Most commission guides assume a deal closes, a rep gets paid, and everyone moves on. Residual compensation breaks that assumption on day one.
Loan officer commissions
Basis points at funding, split three ways, clawed back on early payoff.
Lending is one of the few industries where the compensation rules are partly written by regulators instead of entirely by the company. That makes the plans less varied than in software sales and considerably more consequential to get wrong.
Insurance agency commissions
First-year versus renewal, carrier overrides, chargebacks on lapse.
Agency compensation is long-tailed in a way that almost no other industry matches. A producer who leaves today has policies that will pay the agency for another eight years, and a producer who joins today will wait two years before their book carries them.
Clawbacks
How to take money back without losing the rep, and what the law allows.
Every business that pays commission before revenue is certain needs a way to reverse it. The mechanism is simple and the human consequences are not, because a clawback lands on a person and never on a spreadsheet cell.
Reading about it is
slower than seeing it
Bring your comp plan and a month of deals. We will run them through Commish and show you every payment traced to the rule behind it.