Table of Contents
Purpose
The Sales Commission report is used by Office Administrators and shared with Sales Representatives to track job completion rate. Additionally, this report assists with effectively cutting payout checks to Sales Representatives and helps simplify existing reporting practices.
Office Managers, Operations Managers, Branch Administrators, Sales Managers, General Managers or even CEOs benefit from this report to accurately track commission data for their companies.
The key to success that relates to the Sales Commission report is to unite the goals of your Sales Representatives with the goals of the company as well as encourage an environment where your sales team takes ownership of each sale.
Using the Sales Commission Report
Sales Managers benefit from creating Sales Commission reports to track Sales teams they are responsible for and to help track overall company performance.
Additional reports could also be created to track individual Sales Representatives and their commission data.
The Sales Commission report is located in the Reports module under Standard Reports ▶️Accounting ▶️Sales Commission.
Key Fields to Add to Your Commission Report
Depending on the dates you review and cut commission checks, you would want to include a date range in your filter fields for this report. This assists you to review only the jobs that have been completed to effectively pay out your Sales Representatives.
It’s recommended to add an unpaid amount filter based on your company commission requirements as well; consider if you want to view jobs based on if the job invoices have to be fully paid or partially paid to qualify it for the commission check to be cut.
If you have a minimum gross margin requirement that needs to be met before issuing checks, you are able to add a gross margin filter with a custom value to view only the jobs that have met this criteria.
💡Have a Gross Margin shelf: Make sure the jobs that are being sold are profitable before cutting commission checks to your Sales Representatives.
Like many report types in Aspire, you can filter and customize data as needed on the Commission Report; below are some recommended filters to add to this report.
Date paid (filter type could be last month or last quarter)
Unpaid Amount equals 0
Gross Margin Greater Than (add value)
Advanced Search Formula built to track dollars inside this report, which will be discussed in the next section. (Skip to creating Adv. Search Formulas here!)
Apply the filters and Save As for future use, sharing, or Metric creation.
Creating Advanced Search Formulas to View Dollar Amounts
You can create an Advanced Search Formula to view dollar amounts on the Sales Commission report.
📌Note: You can create different Advanced Search Formulas based on if your company cuts checks after revenue is invoiced, or based on percentages custom to your Sales Representatives. After the formula is built, then you can add it to your filters on the report to better track commission for your jobs.
The following example for an Advanced Search Formula is based on jobs that have Invoiced Amounts multiplied by .05. This is the commission rate we want to display on our report; we will cut checks to our Sales Representatives for 5% of the Invoiced Amounts of their jobs sold.
Under Settings, click on Application.
Then, select Advanced Search Formulas.
Click New to create a new Advanced Search Formula.
Under Search List, select Sales Commission.
This tells Aspire to show the formula you are creating in the correct module Search List.
Name your Formula; for this example the title of the example is Commission on Est. $ (5%).
Because this filter needs to display a dollar amount, the Display Format should be configured as Currency, with 2 Decimals.
The Formula selected would be Estimated Dollars, as we are paying the commission in this example at 5% of the estimated dollar amount of the job.
After adding your formula, multiply by your commission percentage to finish creating your formula.
In this example, each time this Advanced Search Formula is used, it will be calculated for Estimated Dollars multiplied by .05 (5%).
After the settings have been made, save the Advanced Search Formula.
You can then add this Advanced Search Formula as a filter to your Sales Commission report.
📑To learn more about Advanced Search Formulas, please read Creating a Custom Field for your Lists with Advanced Search Formulas, here.
Advanced Search Formula for Invoiced Amounts
If you create commission checks based on invoiced amounts, here is what your formula might look like:
The power of Advanced Search Formulas is great! They give you detailed support when using the Commission Report to effectively review commission related data.
Important Things to Know About the Sales Commission Report
🧠 As you use the Sales Commission report to cut checks to your team, here are some things to keep in mind.
If you have a different commission rate for the Divisions in your company, it’s recommended to create multiple reports with different Advanced Search Formulas.
This makes sure that the dollar amount displayed corresponds to the correct percentage for your commission payouts.
Credit memos have the potential to affect payouts to Sales Representatives!
Consider this when reviewing data on the Sales Commission report.
Typically, commissions are paid out in full after the job is completed, but sometimes a portion could be paid up front to Sales teams. Aspire’s customized filters will assist you use this report effectively based on your company rules regarding commission checks.
Whenever this report is generated to pay out commissions, make sure that the month’s transactions are done (meaning that the month has passed and no more costs are being applied that would affect this report).
Don’t pay on the first of the month as costs might still be added. You can backdate, if necessary.
Export a copy of this report to have a hard copy on file that cannot be manipulated. This helps to remind you what has already been paid out and can be stored for your records.
Creating Sales Commission Metrics
After you have added your report filters as needed and created a saved list for your Sales Commission report, you can create a Metric to track commissions from your home screen.
This allows you a quick view to tracking data across your Aspire account for a specific time frame.
📑For more detailed information on creating Metrics, please watch the video in the article Metrics- Navigating, Editing and Creating, here.
Keeping A/R in Mind
Managing a company will always be business first, but consider how to foster an environment of growth and care throughout your team. This can be achieved not only with implemented daily workflows but also with the software you use!
With this report, the goal is that your sales team can be incentivized to obtain collections faster and become mindful of A/R, which provides another level of support and accountability in the divisions of your company.