Sales commissions

CRM commissions turn signed business into a payroll bonus, with no spreadsheet and no re-entry. Each month, Illizeo calculates one statement per sales rep, detailed deal by deal, from their commission plan. The statement goes through approval, then to payroll as a bonus: no commission is paid without a person’s decision. This article explains how to set up plans, split a deal, read a statement and get it approved, and how sales targets feed into Performance. It is intended for sales managers, payroll managers, CRM administrators and sales reps who want to understand their statement.

Before you start #

• The CRM module must be enabled for your workspace and open to you (see Enabling and administering the CRM module).
• Permissions in the role matrix, CRM menu, Access level: “Commissions — View” opens CRM › Commissions and the statements within your scope; “Commissions — Edit” lets you calculate, recalculate and submit those statements, and change a deal’s split; “Commissions — Create” and “Commissions — Edit” together, with the All scope, let you manage plans; “Commissions — Delete”, with the All scope, lets you delete one. Sending a statement to payroll by hand requires “Commissions — Edit” with the All scope.
• Scopes are set per role in the CRM scopes card, Commissions domain (see CRM settings). A manager’s team is their direct reports, based on the supervision recorded on their contracts.
• Commissions permissions alone do not make a person a billed CRM user.

The permissions granted by default:

Role	Commissions permissions	Scope	What it gives
Sales representative	View	Mine	They read their own statements.
Sales manager	View, Edit	My team	They read, calculate and submit their team’s statements and their own.
Payroll Manager	View, Edit	All	They read every statement and plan, and send waiting statements to payroll.
Administrator	All four	All	They can do everything, plans included.

How a commission is calculated #

The calculation always follows the same path, deal by deal, in order of their close date:

• The month’s deals: opportunities won with a close date in the month, in the company’s time zone. A deal that an import brought in already won does not count; a deal imported while open, then won in Illizeo, does. Opportunities in a pipeline of the Follow-up kind never earn a commission.
• Each person’s share: with no split entered, the deal’s owner carries 100%; otherwise each person has their share (see below).
• The basis: the share of the amount won, converted into the company’s currency at the rate on the day of the calculation. With no exchange rate, the line is worth 0, shows “no conversion rate”, and the statement cannot go to approval.
• The scale: a flat rate applies to the whole basis. With tiers, the rate rises with the month’s running total, and each slice is paid at its own tier’s rate, not the whole total at the last rate. Below the first tier, the rate is 0: a plan can start paying only from a given amount.
• The accelerator: beyond a percentage of the month’s target, the commission on what exceeds it is multiplied. The target is the one in Settings › CRM › Sales targets: the month’s target, failing that the quarter’s divided by 3, failing that the year’s divided by 12. With no target, there is no accelerator.
• The monthly cap: it limits the statement’s total. The line that crosses it is cut, and the following lines are worth 0.

Each line is rounded to the cent, and the statement’s total is the sum of its lines. On a deal split at a flat rate, when everyone sharing it is on the same plan, the deal’s commission is rounded once, then shared out: split 60/40, its two lines add up exactly to the deal’s commission.

An example with tiers #

Take a tiered plan: 5% from 0, 7% from 20,000, 10% from 50,000. A sales rep wins a 15,000 deal, then a 10,000 deal in the same month. The first is worth 15,000 × 5% = 750. The second takes the running total from 15,000 to 25,000: 5,000 is paid at 5% (250) and 5,000 at 7% (350), which makes 600. The statement is worth 1,350.

Which plan applies #

A person has only one plan for a month: the one that is active and whose period covers the month. A plan aimed at one of their groups takes precedence over a company-wide plan; between two plans of the same rank, the more recent one wins. A person on no plan has no statement: their deals earn no commission.

Creating a commission plan #

1. Open CRM › Commissions, Commission plans tab. The tab only exists if your scope on commissions is All.
2. Click New plan.
3. Enter the Name and, if needed, a Description.
4. Under Scale, choose Flat rate and enter the Rate (%), or Tiers: for each tier, a From amount and a Rate (%); Add a tier adds one.
5. If needed, tick Accelerator beyond the target, then enter Beyond (% of the target) and the Multiplier.
6. If needed, enter the Monthly cap (company currency).
7. Under Population, choose groups in Add a group…. With no group, the plan applies to the Whole company.
8. Enter the Start and, if needed, the End. Leave Active plan ticked.
9. Click Save.

• A rate ranges from 0 to 100%. A plan has 20 tiers at most, each with its own starting amount.
• The accelerator threshold ranges from 1 to 1,000% of the target; the multiplier is greater than 1, and 10 at most.
• Tier and cap amounts are in the company’s currency.
• Groups are those in Settings › Manage Employees › Groups: their named members and the holders of the roles added to them.
• Edit changes future calculations; a statement awaiting approval, approved or sent no longer moves. Deleting a plan does not affect statements already calculated, which keep its name.

Splitting a deal between sales reps #

When several sales reps close a deal together, the opportunity’s record has a Deal split block, visible with “Commissions — View”. With no split entered, it reads “No split entered: the owner carries the whole deal.”.

1. Click Edit the split.
2. Choose a person and their share as a percentage; Add a person adds a row.
3. Check the Total: it must be 100%, to the hundredth.
4. Click Save the split.

• Changing the split requires “Commissions — Edit”, with a scope that reaches the deal’s owner. The people offered are those who can own opportunities.
• A won deal’s split can no longer change: reopen the deal first. Nor can the split of a deal already on a statement awaiting approval, approved or sent.
• An opportunity in a pipeline of the Follow-up kind cannot be split.

Monthly statements #

On the 1st of each month, early in the morning, Illizeo calculates the statements for the past month and submits each one to its approval circuit. A statement that cannot go, for example because a deal has no exchange rate, stays as a draft: it waits for someone to act, and nothing is approved automatically.

Open CRM › Commissions. The Statements tab lists the statements within your scope, with the Person, the Month, the Plan, the number of Deals, the Total and the Status. Filter by Month and by Status.

Status	What it means
Draft	Calculated, not yet submitted. It can be recalculated.
Awaiting approval	In the approval circuit. It can no longer be recalculated.
Approved	A person has approved it. It goes to payroll.
Declined	A person has declined it, with a reason. It can be recalculated and becomes a draft again.
Sent to payroll	The bonus has been created on payroll.

With “Commissions — Edit”, the Calculate button, followed by the month, calculates the statements for the filtered month, or for the past month if no month is chosen, for the people within your scope. A message sums it up: statements calculated, statements already awaiting approval or approved, people without a plan.

A statement’s record #

Click a person’s name to open their statement. The header gives the status, the plan and the calculation date. The table details each deal: Deal, Account, Won on, Amount (in the original currency, then in the company’s), Share, Basis, Rate and Commission. On a tiered plan, the Rate column shows “Tiers” when the deal spans several of them; the slices appear on hover. The word “accelerated” flags the accelerator. The bottom of the table gives the basis, the Total and, if it applied, “Plan cap applied to the total.”.

The record’s buttons, depending on the status and your permissions:

• Recalculate the month, on a draft or a declined statement: recalculates every statement for that month within your scope, not just this one. A statement left with no line disappears.
• Submit for approval, on a draft whose month is over. It is greyed out while a deal has no exchange rate: add the rate, then recalculate.
• Send to payroll, on an approved statement that could not go on its own (see below).

The approval circuit #

Click Submit for approval, then confirm. The statement goes into the CRM-category circuit that carries the “Commission statement to validate” trigger. Illizeo provides the “Commission statement: validation” workflow, inactive, in Settings › Manage Employees › Workflows: the sales rep’s manager approves or declines. As long as no workflow is active, the sales rep’s line manager decides, or failing that an administrator (see Creating and editing a workflow).

1. The person who must decide receives the notice “CRM: a commission statement to validate”, in the bell and by email.
2. They decide in Workflows, Approvals tab. On the statement’s record, the Decide in Approvals link takes you there. The record itself has neither an Approve nor a Decline button.
3. Approved: the sales rep receives “CRM: commission statement validated”, and the statement goes to payroll straight away.
4. Declined: the sales rep receives “CRM: commission statement declined”, with the reason, which the record also shows. Fix the cause and click Recalculate the month: the statement becomes a draft again, to be submitted once more.

• Only a human decision approves a statement. A workflow that approves itself, or that has no approval step, does not count: the statement goes back to draft. A sales rep never approves their own statement.
• No button and no API call approves a statement: only a decision in Approvals does.

Sending to payroll #

An approved statement becomes an exceptional bonus for the amount of its total, in the company’s currency. It falls on the first month whose payroll for that person is not yet approved, starting from the month it is sent. It appears in the person’s bonuses with the CRM commission label and, for those who can read commissions, the View the statement link. It cannot be edited or deleted there. The statement’s record shows the date it was sent and the payroll concerned.

• If the payroll workflow “Bonus creation / modification” is active, the bonus goes through it, like any bonus. If it is declined there, the statement goes back to Approved, to be sent again.
• If several of the person’s contracts are running, Illizeo does not choose: the statement stays approved, marked “Not yet sent to payroll”. Payroll clicks Send to payroll, chooses the contract in Choose the contract, then clicks Send on this contract.
• A statement whose total is 0 is sent without creating a bonus.

Adjustments #

A deal already paid may be reopened, lost, deleted or won again on a different date. Its commission then comes back as a negative amount, on an Adjustment line of the next month’s statement to be calculated, even if the person has changed plan or no longer has one. An adjustment counts towards neither the basis nor the cap, and only applies once. A deal won again earns a commission again, in the month of its new close. A negative statement gives a negative bonus.

Who sees what #

• The sales rep sees their statements and all their lines, deal and account names included, even for a deal whose record they cannot open. They do not see other people’s statements.
• The sales manager sees their own statements and their team’s. A deal they cannot read appears as “Record not visible”, but its amounts, share, rate and commission remain: that is what they approve.
• Payroll sees every statement, and the plans in read-only mode.
• A statement outside your scope is shown as if it did not exist: “This statement does not exist, or it is outside your scope.”

Sales targets and Performance #

The targets entered in Settings › CRM › Sales targets serve three purposes: the dashboard comparison (see The dashboard and sales targets), the commission plans’ accelerator, and the Performance objectives linked to the CRM.

In a Performance objective, a key result of the Quantitative type can take the CRM as its Source of the result (see Setting and tracking objectives (OKRs)):

• CRM: amount won: the person’s share of each deal won over the objective’s period, in the company’s currency. With no Expected target entered, Illizeo uses the CRM sales targets that fall within that period.
• CRM: deals won: the number of won deals in which the person has a share.
• CRM: new accounts: the accounts created over the period that they own.

The result updates itself, each time a deal is won, lost or reopened, and every night; it is no longer entered by hand. Achievement is capped at 100%. An objective whose period is closed, or that is frozen for payroll, no longer moves. The choice is only offered if the CRM is open to you.

Good to know #

• Commission notices lead to the statement and never give an amount. The “to validate” notice is only sent by the CRM if the person deciding has the CRM and can read that statement; otherwise, the usual approvals notice tells them. The emails are set in Settings › Manage Illizeo › Email (templates “CRM — commission statement…”), and everyone can turn these notices off in Personal Settings › Notifications, row “CRM — commissions: statements to approve, approved or declined”.
• A statement is submitted once its month is over.
• The CRM log keeps the creation, change and deletion of a plan, a deal’s split, and the submission, approval, decline and sending of a statement, never with an amount.
• The export of an employee’s data includes their commission statements, line by line, and their shares in deals.

FAQ #

A sales rep has no statement this month. #

Check that they won a deal whose close date falls in the month, and that an active plan covers them: the Calculate message counts people without a plan. A deal brought in already won by an import, or in a Follow-up pipeline, earns nothing.

The Submit for approval button is greyed out. #

A deal on the statement has no exchange rate to the company’s currency. Add the rate, then click Recalculate the month.