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| QXchange is a flexible, easy to use, data integration software. |
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| Overview |
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Sales commission programs are possibly the most variable programs conducted by a firm. These programs tend to vary significantly from industry to industry, and many times within companies in an industry. Sales commission programs tend to be different by employees even within a single firm.
Because of the highly variable nature of commission calculations, solutions attempting to solve the problem have to be highly sophisticated. At the same time, they should not burden the user with additional complexity in their operations. One key area of complexity is allowing data interchange between the customer’s existing accounting systems and the commissions system. A commission system that can understand the structure of the accounting system data and seamlessly bring in the appropriate data necessary for calculating commissions can be a huge benefit in reducing the inherent complexity in that process.
QCommission is a powerful, flexible sales commission software tool. It calculates sales people’s compensation accurately, quickly and professionally. QCommission is integrated with QuickBooksTM but can also be operated stand- alone. QCommission is designed to support US Editions of QuickBooks 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 (Pro, Premier and Accountant Editions), QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 4.0, 5.0, 6.0 & 7.0, 8.0, Canadian and UK Editions.
QuickBooks is the most popular accounting software used by small and mid-sized businesses in the world today. There are more than 3 million QuickBooks customers. QuickBooks is available in many countries and configured for many industries. |
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| Technology |
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Intuit supplies the QuickBooks SDK (Software Development Kit) to allow third party products to work with QuickBooks. The SDK makes sure that the integration works well with the various versions and models of QuickBooks. The SDK also ensures that the third party product is properly authenticated prior to getting access to the QuickBooks data. QCommission has partnered with Intuit to use the SDK to access QuickBooks data. All access to QuickBooks data is through the SDK.
CellarStone provides QXchange, a sophisticated integration tool to map QuickBooks data to QCommission.
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| Importing Data |
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Invoices
Commissions are primarily calculated on Revenue. Revenues are mostly based on invoices entered into the accounting system. This is the primary data that is imported into QCommission. The various attributes of invoices can be used in the calculation of commissions. In many situations, sales reps are directly associated with invoices. This can be used in properly crediting the invoice to the sales rep prior to calculating commissions. Other data attributes useful in commission calculations include Quantity, Amount, Customer, Product, etc. |
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A key requirement is the ability to only import transactions for the particular commission period that is being currently processed. The QCommission system automatically understands the date range being processed and only brings in the transactions necessary for proper calculations.
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Invoices normally go through two states: Invoiced and Paid. Some customers pay commissions on invoiced and some when invoices are paid. Some pay on both events. QCommission can understand the status of the invoices and bring in only the invoices of the right status to process. If invoices change status in QuickBooks later, it can update the status in QCommission and properly calculate and pay the right commission.
Other Transactional Data
Other transactional data that can be imported include Sales Orders, Purchase Orders, Estimates and Payments. QCommission can import these transactions and use them in calculations as well.
Master Data
In addition to transactional data, QCommission can import master data from QuickBooks such as Customer, Customer Job, Item, Vendor, etc. The data imported can include the hierarchy structure. This becomes very useful in calculating commissions based on these various criteria.
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Exporting Data
Payroll
Sales reps are normally people on the payroll of the company. Many companies use the payroll functionality available within QuickBooks to issue the paychecks. In addition to base pay, sales commission payments will need to be processed and provided as paychecks to the employees. QCommission can update the payroll information for a specific employee. Sales commission payout information can then be processed as part of the paycheck.
Accounts Payable
Many times commissions are paid to workers that are not employees of the company. In these cases, commissions are paid out normally as accounts payable checks. QCommission has the ability to take the commission payout information and directly update the bills to be paid within QuickBooks.
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Complex Commissions
There are many special commission needs that QCommission has to handle in importing/exporting data through QuickBooks SDK. Here are some of the requirements being handled:
Non-commissionable transactions
QuickBooks stores all the financial data for the company including all the revenue. But not all revenue is eligible for commissions. Only the relevant transactions should be used in commission calculations.
Incidental transactions such as “Shipping Charges” are typically not eligible for commissions. While importing data from QuickBooks, transactions with these item codes can be excluded from being imported.
Some product and service lines may also need to be excluded from commission calculations. For example, sample items being provided as part of sales may not be commissionable. These can be excluded during imports. Commission calculations can also be set to only calculate for certain item groups, even if all data are imported.
Some customer sales may not be considered for commissions. These may be in-house accounts, for example. Commission plans can be set to calculate commissions for only specific customers and customer groups. |
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Commission Splits
In many commission calculations, a sale has to be credited to more than one rep. It is normally split between two reps, but could go up to 6-way or higher splits. This could be because two sales reps work in a particular territory or if an item is sold in one territory and shipped to a different territory. In the staffing industry a recruiter and an account executive ordinarily share the revenue from a placement. In addition, the splits could be equal or unequal such as 60/40.
QuickBooks provides the ability to specify only a single rep per invoice. This tends to be a significant limitation for calculations.
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With QCommission you can specify any number of splits. The splits can also have an associated split percentage to handle unequal splits. Split percentages can add up to more than 100% if necessary. Splits can be associated by invoice or invoice lines. Splits can also apply to transactions other than invoices such as expenses. Splits can be associated with customers, products or policies and be used against all associated transactions.
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Gross Profit based Commissions
Many companies calculate commissions based on gross profit rather than revenue. If products and services are bought and resold, this type of commission makes a lot of sense. Gross profit commission provides more control over the deal size, where sales people are allowed to discount the sale price.
To calculate commissions on gross profit, the cost needs to be known in addition to the revenue. There are numerous ways of specifying a cost for a sale:
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Cost can be a fixed average number. For example, consulting companies may decide on an average hourly cost for all their consultants being in different places.
- Cost can be a specific number per product or service. Manufacturing firms may calculate a specific cost per product and assign it to the product, since it may be difficult to know the exact cost of manufacturing.
- Cost can be an average cost from purchasing. As products are acquired for resale, the incoming cost may vary. An average cost can be used for calculation of gross profits.
- Cost can be a specific cost from purchasing. Resellers many times acquire products for a specific sale, in which case the exact cost is known from the purchase order or from bills paid.
- Cost can be cumulative for a project or job. In many cases, cost is really a cost of the whole project rather than for a single invoice or line.
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QuickBooks does not provide a good method of determining detailed profitability. The Job Profitability report is overly broad and includes items that for a commission purpose should not be treated as costs. Profitability is also not determinable by a sales rep in QuickBooks. In QuickBooks, there is no inherent connection between an invoice (revenue) and cost (purchase order or bill) other than through a customer job, and that is too broad.
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QCommission can overcome the limitations of QuickBooks and calculate commissions based on gross profit. QCommission has sophisticated importing and calculation logic necessary to calculate gross profit.
- A specific invoice can be set up to connect to one or more purchase orders, so a good match can be easily found.
- When matching an invoice and a purchase order, a line level match can be made using item code and quantity.
- Invoice can be matched to purchase orders or bills using customer or customer job.
- Revenue and costs can be cumulated for a customer job across multiple periods and gross profit calculated continuously.
- Cost can be used directly from the item record, or after other methods of finding cost have been exhausted.
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With the sophisticated ability to calculate gross profit, QCommission can handle almost any kind of gross profit based commissions.
Discount based Commissions
Companies allow their sales people to discount prices on occasion. To make sure that there is not excessive discounting and margins are maintained, they may use the commission plan. Based on how much the product is discounted from the list price, the commission rate may be reduced. This can be done as discount tiers: 0% to 10% discount, 11% to 20% discount, etc.
To calculate discounts we need to get Product list price, price on the invoice and unit cost from QuickBooks. Then the discount rate has to be calculated and compared to the various tiers to determine commission rates. QCommission can handle these types of calculations.
Conclusion
QCommission does a tremendous job understanding the intricacies of the QuickBooks data structure as well as the complications inherent in the commission process. With this ability, it integrates the two systems in such a manner that the complexity to the customer is reduced to a minimal level.
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| (QuickBooks™ is a copyright/trademark of Intuit, Inc.) |
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