Spreadsheets Giving You a Headache? Try Sales Commission Automation

How has your year been so far? For seventeen-year-old John Dumoulin of Northern Virginia, U.S, things couldn’t get any better. Having emerged the winner of World Excel Spreadsheet Competition, he now becomes the international champion in a category that hasn’t been won by an American in 16 years! Besides, this win gained him $10,000 in prize yet he enjoyed an all expense paid trip to Anaheim, California, during the world excel competition.

Sounds awesome, doesn’t it?

But things aren’t always merry when it comes to using spreadsheets for managing sales commission. Whereas John Dumoulin had spent most of his time practicing with excel while monitoring results for Los Angeles Dodgers, his beloved baseball team, many workers at the office only use spreadsheets occasionally, probably, when doing budgets, inventory and such. You wouldn’t be surprised to find sales operations staff and finance teams who aren’t proficient in spreadsheets.

What happens if such staff must calculate sales commissions manually?

The process becomes cumbersome and prone to many errors. It’s also important to note that the error probability of a spreadsheet increases by 2% as the sheet is passed from one party to another. So, if your sales reps have to view the spreadsheet before passing it to the team leader and then the financial officers, the errors could be magnanimous.

The good news is that your business can avoid errors and cumbersome calculations by automating commissions using software like QCommission or Easy-Commission. With such a system, your main work will revolve around keying in data, such as the kind and value of sale that a sales rep makes, and the system will calculate the incentives for you.

Let’s see how automation can help improve efficiency in the management of your sales compensation plan.

Benefits of Automating Sales Commission

• Boost Accuracy in Commission Calculation

By eliminating the manual process of calculating commission, you improve the level of accuracy. This means that you’ll have fewer complaints or allegations from different parties involved. Furthermore, if commissions are calculated accurately, this can increase your salespeople’s trust and satisfaction.

• Fast-track Commission Calculation and Payment

Don’t subject your sales team to a situation where commission payments are done thirty days later because the managers couldn’t come up with the correct calculations in good time. Spreadsheets can be tedious and erroneous especially when you have 100s of salespeople or different formulas of calculating commissions to apply.

On the other hand, automation software such as QCommission and Easy-Commission are programmed to factor different formulas or different types of sales made within your business. With such a system, what took weeks to complete may only need a day or two.

• Communicate Commissions Accurately and With Ease

Automatic sales commission systems have built-in features of corroboration that enable you to share the information with relevant parties with ease. For instance, QCommission and Easy-Commission enable salespeople to view their commission status. Sharing the information with the accounting department for payment processing is also seamless.

• Cut Down Administrative Costs and Time Wastage

An automatic system will be the workhorse of your sales compensation plan. Your staff can use the extra time to concentrate on other tasks. Besides, when the work is done in good time, the business may not have to pay overtime and related expenses. Also, accurate reporting of commission payables means not many salespeople are complaining about their payments. In this case, they are busy in the fields sourcing for customers and closing more deals.

• Track Sales, Commissions, and Bonuses

With these systems, you no longer have to rely on a single person when it comes to the knowledge of sales commission. For every sales activity keyed in, the system updates with results of commissions payable and bonuses, and all concerned parties can take note of the status from their portal. If you are the manager, sales person or accountant, it’s actually possible to predict the budget for payments in advance, or the expected salary, using this data.

• Data Analysis and Reporting

Every business wants to determine whether their sales department is bringing in revenue or not and at what rate. These systems don’t just tell you how much payment each salesperson gets, but you can also generate accurate and comprehensive reports that show the overall performance of a sales department anytime of the year.

Conclusion

The benefits of commission automation can go on and on. This also depends on the software you use.  But, one outstanding factor here is that spreadsheets are no longer efficient tools for calculating sales commissions especially for non-experts in data processing with spreadsheets. So, get rid of the head ache related to commission management and start using sales commission software like QCommission or Easy-Commission.