Real-Time Sales Commission Statements

Here are 3 good reasons to replace old-fashioned commission spreadsheets by real-time sales commission dashboards:

• Manually generating & distributing spreadsheets is time-consuming
• Most spreadsheets are static and don’t provide real-time visibility to reps
• Individual spreadsheets don’t help managers understand team performance

Your reps close more deals every day, so why should they only receive 1 commission statement every month? And why should they have to search their mailbox to find their current and past commission statements? What if they are on the go?

Your reps should be able to login and access all real-time commission statements any time, from any device – commission software can help you with this. But what makes online statements so much better than static spreadsheets? Here are some requirements you may have thought about for your commission dashboards:

• Reps can review deals and easily verify payouts
• Reps can visualize how their commission is trending
• Reps can access current and past statements
• Reps can have real-time access to their commissions
• Reps can access their commissions from any device
• Reps can accept terms and conditions
• Reps can submit disputes / enquiries
• Managers can understand how their team is doing
• Managers can assess commission effectiveness
• Managers can motivate their reps

Can sales commission software like Sales Cookie really meet all these requirements? Let’s take a look and find out!

Reps can review deals and easily verify payouts

Reps should be able to effortlessly review all their deals. They should be able to sort, export, and search deals they were credited with. If there is a per-deal commission amount, it should be clearly stated. Sales Cookie’s commission dashboards are designed to help your reps review their commissions. Administrators can choose the list of fields visible to reps on their commission statements.

Reps can visualize their commissions many ways. For example, they can group deals by customer:

Or they can group deals by product and choose a different visualization:

In fact, they can group deals by any field in your data! They can also visualize deals over time:

In some cases, you may want to show an actual vs. estimated commission for each deal like this. For example, deals which haven’t been paid may show an estimated, but no earned commission.

Reps can visualize how their commission is trending

Your reps want to know how their commissions are trending. They also want to understand how each commission component contributes to their total payout. Here is how Sales Cookie does it:

Details for each commission component & period are only 1 click away:

Reps can access both current and past statements

One key advantage of online commission statements (vs. static spreadsheets) is that reps can easily access both current and past statements. Selecting a different period just takes one click:

For each selected period, reps can view:

• How much time is left
• Their sales target
• Their attainment level
• Their estimated or final payout

For example, if there is some time left before a commission period closes (or payouts haven’t been finalized), rep will see something like this:

All statements include a clear breakdown of commissions to help reps understand their payout:

Reps can have real-time access to their commissions

For reps to have real-time access to their commissions, you must first automate your commission process. Once it has been automated, re-calculation only takes a few clicks (vs. the hours manually generating spreadsheets normally takes).

For even more automation, simply enable daily re-calculation. Calculations now re-run daily, and rep online statements are automatically re-generated. Online statements show each rep’s latest deals and estimated commission. You can even have new calculations start automatically when a new period starts.

Now, your calculations are on auto-pilot. Your reps commission statements are updated daily without any manual intervention. Your reps can track their progress each time they close a deal. Daily updates also help eliminate the typical “mad scramble” associated with all reps receiving their commission statement at the end of the month. Daily updates reduce the risk of bad surprises for your reps and for you.

Reps can access their commissions from any device

Traditional commission spreadsheets (or PDFs) can be slow to load and render poorly on mobile devices. If statements aren’t available online, locating them using a mobile device may also prove difficult. Using a solution such as Sales Cookie, commission statements are always available online and “responsive”. They adapt to your mobile device’s dimensions (without having to install yet another mobile app):

Here is another mobile vs. desktop comparison:

Reps can accept terms and conditions

To legally protect your incentive program, you must define terms and conditions and enroll payees. Sales Cookie makes it easy to automate the enrollment process:

Creating terms and conditions is very easy as well. We even provide sample content to make it easy to assemble a commission agreement:

That’s it – your reps can now enroll directly from their commission dashboard:

Reviewing and accepting terms and conditions is effortless. Sales Cookie can even gather and record e-signatures from your reps:

Reps can submit disputes / enquiries

Even if your commissions are very transparent, your reps will inevitably have questions. The typical salesops admin is bombarded with commission-related emails & voicemails. Sales Cookie makes it easy for reps to submit enquiries directly from their commission dashboards. This allows you to centralize all commission-related requests.

Reps can track whether submitted issues are still active or have been resolved. They will be automatically notified when an issue is submitted or resolved. Sales Cookie even helps admins locate offending deals / transactions to facilitate resolution.

Managers can understand how their team is doing

Unless you generate more (consolidated) spreadsheets for them, managers must open individual spreadsheets to understand how everybody on their team is doing. Using Sales Cookie, commission dashboards include a manager view like this:

The manager dashboard empowers sales leaders to search for, export, and analyze commissions. For example, they can group commissions by team:

Or leverage many other views – such as this one with attainment percentages and trending information:

Managers can assess commission effectiveness

Using Sales Cookie, you can create surveys using different formats:

Survey questions appear directly on rep online statements:

Here is the same survey question, using a different format:

Now, your managers can determine whether commissions are working as expected:

Managers can motivate their reps

Using Sales Cookie, managers can add announcements directly on rep dashboards, and even award badges:

In addition, attainment visuals like this one help encourage your reps to reach for the next level:

In Conclusion

Old-fashioned commission spreadsheets are unwieldy, static, and lack many important features. Sales Cookie’s incentive dashboards can provide your reps and managers with real-time visibility on commissions. Visit us online to learn more!