commisions

[Beth]

How do I track commisions and attach a commision percentage specific to my sales rep and or a product? Each rep may receive seperate commissions based on what they are selling and to whom.

[dringstrom]

Unfortunately, there is no commission calculation facility within Peachtree. You can track sales by rep, by you have to perform the calculations outside the program. The calculations can be automated through the use of PawCOM (www.multiwareinc.com) or Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE).

[Robert Walraven]

We might be interested in building an add-on to compute commisions, but I'd need to know exactly how it should work. What should the commisions be based on, what should be done with the information in Peachtree, and what should the user interface look like?

[dringstrom]

Robert,

Commission calculation is a frequent request of Peachtree users. A "starter" version of the add-on could just allow the user to assign a % to each sales rep. Commissions are generally paid when the invoice is paid, so the calculation would have to be a cash-basis report, even if the Peachtree company is accrual-based. Once this basic functionality is in place, in my experience it would then be easier to extend the calculations to give the option of assigning commission rates on a inventory item level, instead of just a customer level.

Hope this background helps!

David

[Robert Walraven]

It sounds like you are talking about three kinds of commissions:

1. A flat rate commission rate for each sales rep. The rate applies to all sales made by the person.

2. A customer specific commission rate. The rate applies to all sales made to the customer.

3. An item specific commission rate. All sales reps get the commission at the specified rate on any sales of the item.

Questions:

1. How should returns be dealt with? Does the sales person still get the commission or do they get a negative commission on a return?

2. Should customers be assigned to a specific sales rep or should any sales rep get a commission for the customer? What happens if the customer belongs to a specific rep but that person is sick and another rep handles the sale.

3. How should the commission be reported and paid? Is it adequate to generate a commission report so that the amount can be added to the sales rep's paycheck? What record keeping is required by governments?

As you can see, a lot of thought needs to go into the design of even a simple tool before it is built. Probably the best way to do this would be to develop a public functional specification for anyone who interested to comment on. If we had a really precise functional spec that described a product that people want then it would be a whole lot easier to build it.

[dringstrom]

In my experience, most of your questions can only be dealt with on a case by case basis, as each organization generally has different rules for these matters.

My initial vision was just to have a product that simply calculated commissions on a cash basis based on who the sales rep assigned to that transaction is. This "Phase I" version would only allow a single commission rate for each sales rep. Even this limited functionality would be a giant step forward for Peachtree users. By having something tangible to work with, the public comment period could be much more meaningful. Anyway, those are my thoughts...hope you find it helpful.