Services Industry Sales Commission
Overview
Sales Commission can be a flashpoint in disputes between service firms and their sales agents. Litigation related to these disputes can result in monetary losses and in some cases the distraction of the lawsuit can drive firms to collapse.
QCommission enables you to quickly calculate commission, draw and bonuses, verify results and distribute this information to your sales people, sales managers and external agents. Present the commission information in such a way that your sales people clearly understand what they are being paid and why they are being paid at a very detailed level. Excel and manual calculations can introduce a lot of errors into your calculations and cause your sales people to lose trust in you. QCommission can help avoid that by calculating all commissions systematically and reliably.
The Service industry is mainly involved in providing services to the population and other industries. This is primarily a services business, serving small to large businesses. These includes insurance banking and finance, transportation, communications, retailing, wholesaling etc.
Features
- Pay any type of employee.
- Pay sales people as well as managers.
- Pay external agents.
- Pay incentive at a transaction level.
- Pay incentives after grouping transactions for a period.
- Pay commission by product.
- Pay commission by customer.
- Pay commission by type of sales.
- Pay commission on Events like Invoiced vs Paid transactions.
- Pay commission by Payee Job Category.
- Split credits across multiple individuals.
Case Studies
We are now able to utilize a much more robust commission plan and have easy access to comprehensive and concise reports through the intuitive web interface.
Customer Profile
Clarendon Hills Cemetery, which is under the Troost Cemeteries Group, is a family-owned business which has been in operation since 1925. The property is covered with pleasant paths, quiet natural surroundings, and peaceful places for remembrance and reflection.
Clarendon Hills Cemetery pays a remarkable tribute to service people and fallen soldiers, and is known for its annual Memorial Day Services.
The Challenge
Clarendon Hills Cemetery had recently rolled out a new sales commission plan. The new sales compensation plan included a lot of exceptions that occur during different periods. It could've been a great sales compensation plan, but tracking the exceptions eventually proved to be difficult and required tedious work involving manual entries. This process alone took more than 2 hours to complete for a single period, and was sadly highly prone to errors.
They also realized down the road that there was no way to track the sales goal which resulted in often missed charge backs.
The Solution
Troost Cemeteries looked for various options that could integrate with QuickBooks Enterprise. After searching online, they found QCommission appeared to have the functionalities that they needed and at the price level that makes sense.
After a needs analysis and a demo, the Troost Cemeteries team has decided that QCommission was the perfect fit for their needs. The have been a satisfied QCommission customer since then.
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“We have been very happy with the implementation, service and support from QCommission. We are now able to utilize a much more robust commission plan and have easy access to comprehensive and concise reports through the intuitive web interface. Prabhu and Yuvaraj are professional and responsive, and have been a pleasure to work with every step of the way.”
QCommission Helps PBS Global Inc. Solve Sales Commission Problems
PBS Global Inc. is a leading business sale intermediary based in South Eastern USA. Located in Melbourne, Florida, PBS has seen stunning growth in the last few years.
Brian Renneisen, CFO of PBS Global, had been looking for a long time to get a good solution to calculate his sales commissions. Brian had to pay commissions for about 40 people on a weekly basis. Commission plans differed between various sales people. In addition, he had to pay overrides to his sales managers. Trying to do this using Excel and paper was just a very difficult task.
He had been looking for an automated solution for his problem for quite a while and had found no viable software product. When he found out that CellarStone had released QCommission, a flexible software for calculating and paying commissions for companies his size, he was intrigued. He jumped at the chance to be an early adopter of the product.
Almost two years later, Brian has this to say about QCommission:
"It has decreased the time it takes me to compute payroll for all my employees. It creates a simple to use "emailable" report that I can send to them directly to tell them what they are getting paid for. There have been bugs like any new software, but overall, it has helped me tremendously in the time taken to compute what to pay for my reps.
On-going support has been excellent. The staff is always willing to help overcome a problem that you encounter or entertain ideas to make their software better for future versions. They have been available for discussions at all times.
They even follow up frequently to check how I am doing and whether they can help. They have provided upgrades to the software and helped me through any difficulties I have run into.
I would recommend QCommission to any firm that has to track multiple levels of commissions for managers and employees."
QCommission Helps the Lake Doctors, Inc. Treat Sales Commission Headaches!
The Lake Doctors, Inc. is a 35-year-old full service aquatic management firm devoted to providing a variety of services for lakes, ponds, and other bodies of water. Their services include weed and algae control, fountaints, aeration systems, fish stocking, mosquito control, water testing, beneficial aquatic plants, mitigation services, and water clarification. With its nine (9) locations, Lake Doctors has developed into one of the largest water management companies in the USA.
The Lake Doctors was looking for an automated sales commission software that would integrate with Quickbooks to pay commission on fully paid invoices. Sales commission rates were based on different customer parameters. In addition, there is a provision for managers to receive an override commission based on the sales of their associates.
Cheryl Brooks, A/R Administrator of The Lake Doctors, researched the market for a suitable software and decided to go with QCommission. The QCommission implementation team started the implementation process by conducting an in-depth discovery meeting. The team then configured necessary sales compensation plans to automate all aspects of the commission process. QCommission was set up to integrate with QuickBooks to bring fully paid invoices, customers, and any associated custom fields into the sales compensation plan. The team configured plans and validated the output for a pay period to ensure that QCommission was calculating commissions accurately. The team then trained Cheryl on how to effectively use the software to ensure a quick ROI.
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This is what Cheryl had to say: "The QCommission team did an excellent job at handling our needs for a new sales commission program. They took the time to review our initial needs for the program and then worked with us until we resolved all the "if this, then that" issues we were working with. The program uploads to Quickbooks and automatically does the calculations. You are then able to do adjustments, if necessary, and export very professional reports and e-mail them. We are extremely pleased with the QCommission team and highly recommend them."
Dutch Cheese Makers Selects QCommission for their Sales Commission
For centuries cheese makers of the Netherlands have been recognized for their commitment to quality, purity, texture and taste. At Dutch Cheese Makers, Corp., every cheese offered is a direct result of this enduring commitment. However, being true to the past does not preclude them from forward-thinking, modern means, and addressing the fact that today’s consumers expect more. Their state-of-the-art production facilities are designed to not only meet today’s cheese lovers’ expectations, but to exceed them in every possible way. In quality, taste and experience.
At Dutch Cheese Makers, Corp., they’ve taken the wisdom of over 20 generations, the fine art of crafting masterful variations in flavor and texture, and the efficiencies of modern day manufacturing to bring Dutch cheese making to a whole new level. And beyond.
Prior to QCommission Dutch Cheese Makers was calculating commissions in Excel, however, it was time consuming and not very accurate. Their compensation plan includes variable rates based on payments received. They pay a percentage on weight sold on certain items and a percentage on dollars for other items. Some promotional pricing and returns/credits needed to be considered in the commission calculation too. The credits needed to be deducted at the time of issue, but did not pay on sales until the payments were received. Dutch Cheese Makers also needed a detail commission statement to provide to their payees to view each transaction they were paid on for the month.
QCommission implementation team started the project by doing a discovery meeting with the Dutch Cheese Makers Controller and configured all the necessary sales compensation plans into QCommission to fully automate the commission process. Because Dutch Cheese Makers uses QuickBooks for invoicing, integrating the data was quick and easy. The project completed within the estimated budget cost, with accurate calculations and reporting.
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“The people that I have dealt with were extremely responsive and very tuned in to my needs and worked in a clear and concise way to teach me (very easy by the way). It is very clear that QCommission values me as a client and is interested in making my experience as pain free as possible. Ultimately there was nothing that I asked them for that they couldn't do and happily. Stephanie was a delight to work with.”
AES Corporation - wireless mesh communications systems
AES Corporation is a multi-division company which provides wireless mesh communications systems and security systems and services. Located in Peabody, MA outside of Boston, it has been around since 1974 and has been growing rapidly over the last 10 years in particular.
Mark Brandstein is the Chief Operating Officer of the company with responsibilities for the overall operations of the company including sales/marketing, manufacturing, administration and product development/support.
The company had been using a manual method to calculating commissions for its 13 commissioned salespeople and sales agents and it was taking many days every month to calculate and present this information. An attempt was made to develop a simple spreadsheet to do these calculations and reporting. However, what started off simple became very complicated since the reporting of these commissions to the salespeople became more complex than what even a sophisticated spreadsheet could handle. At that point, AES turned to outside vendors for consideration.
AES identified and evaluated a half dozen potential software packages and vendors for this. One by one they were evaluated and eliminated because they either could not support the commission structures we had, were too expensive for a company of our size, were not able to produce reports that were necessary for us, or was provided by what seemed like a one-man organization which didn't give us confidence for long term support
Mark Brandstein is the Chief Operating Officer of the company with responsibilities for the overall operations of the company including sales/marketing, manufacturing, administration and product development/support.
The company had been using a manual method to calculating commissions for its 13 commissioned salespeople and sales agents and it was taking many days every month to calculate and present this information. An attempt was made to develop a simple spreadsheet to do these calculations and reporting. However, what started off simple became very complicated since the reporting of these commissions to the salespeople became more complex than what even a sophisticated spreadsheet could handle. At that point, AES turned to outside vendors for consideration.
AES identified and evaluated a half dozen potential software packages and vendors for this. One by one they were evaluated and eliminated because they either could not support the commission structures we had, were too expensive for a company of our size, were not able to produce reports that were necessary for us, or was provided by what seemed like a one-man organization which didn't give us confidence for long term support
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Mark Brandstein says,
“QCommission ultimately rose to the top for a number of reasons. They provided us with a no-charge demo version, which allowed us the ability to see what the product could do. It was able to support the commission structure and reporting needs that we had. They were willing to adapt their product to our needs at a reasonable cost and their product was reasonably priced for an organization of our size. As importantly, despite their distance from us, they were extremely responsive and supportive to our needs, which gave us the confidence that they would not leave us hanging if we got into trouble. And we did get ourselves in trouble sometimes, but they patiently worked us through the troubles to our complete satisfaction.
They were always very responsive to our needs, during the sales process, the implementation process and the post cutover process. We worked through emails and phone calls, as the situation dictated and depending on what was most efficient. We never felt abandoned nor taken advantage of. They represent all the best of what should come from a software company's support organization.
Currently, we are actively using their product and it adapts well to more salespeople and different commission structures. The benefits we derived are clear. Instead of spending many days per month on commission tracking and reporting, we spend just a few hours a month on this. Sales commissions and reports are delivered accurately and on time. We recently upgraded to a new Accounting and MRP system, which was a very painful process, particularly due to the poor implementation and support of the vendor. While this new system had a commission system, we chose not to use it because with all the other worries of running the day-to-day business, we were comfortable with not having to worry about the administration of commissions and the troubles that could occur when commissions are wrong or delayed. I wouldn't hesitate at all in recommending QCommission to others.”
American Information Tech. Corp - IT Consulting Company
American Information Technology Corporation is an IT consulting company with 100+ employees. We have seven members of our sales & recruiting team that draw monthly commissions on their placements.
My name is Heather Hamann, role is Administration Manager. We pay a sales commission and a recruiting commission out on each placement that is made.
Our main problem was accuracy. Calculating the sales and recruiting commissions on 100 placements each month on an Excel spreadsheet provided too much opportunity for error. We needed something that would tally and track the commissions month after month to cut down on time and provide accurate progress reports at the drop of a hat.
The implementation and maintenance staff at QCommissions have been a huge help. It took a while for us to implement the product b/c we work with the online version of QuickBooks and special steps had to be added so that we could utilize QCommissions. Pam was excellent and extremely patient with me month after month while I was adjusting to using the product..for the first few months I contacted her every time I did commissions and had her run through the process with me to make sure I was doing it correctly. She was always pleasant and returned my calls promptly to accommodate my payroll deadlines.
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We have been using QCommissions since the beginning of this year and I am very comfortable with the process. The program has definitely taken away the headache of doing commissions. My boss and our team can be 100% confident that they are getting paid their correct commissions each month.
We would recommend QCommissions to any company that needs to organize their commission process.
