Sales Commission Without a Commission Engine
There is no commission engine here, and pretending otherwise would waste your evaluation. What exists is enough to run a commission scheme accurately with about an hour a month of deliberate work — and one join nobody warns you about.
Sales commission is the feature most often assumed and least often specified. Buyers ask "does it do commissions?", hear yes, and discover eleven months later that their scheme pays on collected cash with a clawback on returns and a different rate above target — none of which the software had in mind. So the useful thing is to state the position first and then show what genuinely works, because a commission scheme run deliberately on plain records beats one run badly by a feature that almost fits.
The position, stated before anything else
What you can build on
- Every invoice records who created it, with a relation to that user — which is a workable attribution key when reps raise their own invoices.
- Invoices, payments and credit notes all dated and queryable, so gross sales, collected cash and returns are each obtainable per period.
- Ad-hoc taxable earnings queued into a payroll period, with taxable and pensionable flags — a proper payout vehicle that runs PAYE correctly rather than a cash envelope.
- Customer records with an owner concept you can maintain, for schemes that pay on account rather than on transaction.
- Report exports, so the calculation can be done once a month in a spreadsheet you control.
What does not exist
- No commission engine of any kind. No rates, no tiers, no thresholds, no accelerators, no splits, no clawbacks, nothing that computes a commission from a sale.
- No sales targets. Nowhere to record that a rep should sell KES 3m this quarter, and therefore no attainment figure and no progress anywhere.
- No commission statement. Nothing a rep can open to see what they have earned, which means the monthly "is this right?" conversation happens over your spreadsheet.
- No rep entity. A salesperson is a user who raised invoices and, separately, an employee who gets paid. Those are two records.
- No leaderboard, no per-rep dashboard, no gamification surface.
- No approval workflow for a commission run.
One clarification worth making, because searching the product will mislead you: there is a commission system in here, and it is not this one. It belongs to the partner and reseller programme — commissions on referred deals, payout requests, attribution — and it has nothing to do with paying your own salespeople. Do not evaluate it as though it does.
Attribution: two ways, and they behave differently
Attribute by who raised the invoice
- Uses the creator recorded on every invoice — no extra discipline, no extra field, already true of your historical data.
- Accurate exactly when reps raise their own invoices, and worthless the moment an administrator keys them centrally.
- The test: look at last month's invoices and count the distinct creators. If it is one person, this method is unavailable to you and no amount of process will fix it retroactively.
- Best for field sales and counter staff who invoice as they sell.
Attribute by customer ownership
- Each account belongs to a rep; every invoice to that account counts toward them regardless of who typed it.
- Survives central invoicing, holiday cover and order-takers, which is why most established schemes end up here.
- Needs maintenance — reassignments, splits on shared accounts, and a rule for genuinely new customers.
- The catch: it rewards account management rather than new business, so pair it with something else if you want hunting.
- Best for B2B trade with repeat accounts.
Pick one and write it down. Schemes that quietly use both — invoice creator when convenient, account owner when disputed — generate an argument every single month, and the argument is always won by whoever has the better spreadsheet rather than whoever sold more.
What to pay on, which is the decision that matters
Four commission bases against the records you have
| Basis | Obtainable | Effort | What it rewards |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gross invoiced sales | Yes | No | No |
| Invoiced less credit notes | Yes | No | No |
| Collected cash | Yes | No | No |
| Gross margin | No | No | No |
Built and maintained Configurable by you, not maintained by us Not built
Margin is marked partial for an honest reason: cost sits on the item as a weighted average that moves over time, so a margin figure computed a month later is not the margin at the moment of sale. It is close enough to steer behaviour and not exact enough to defend in a dispute with a rep — so if you pay on margin, say in the scheme document that the figure is taken from the report on a stated date and is final. Ambiguity here is what turns commission into a monthly negotiation.
For most Kenyan businesses selling on credit, collected cash is the right basis and the one worth the extra effort. It aligns the salesperson with the collections problem instead of leaving it to finance, and it removes the scenario that poisons commission schemes: a rep paid in March on an invoice written off in July. If that is too big a jump, invoiced-less-credit-notes is the honest floor — see receivables and collections for why the distinction matters more here than in most markets.
The monthly run, concretely
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Export the period on your chosen basis
Invoices with their creator, or invoices for accounts you own, for the month. Add credit notes for the same period and payments received if you are paying on cash. Three exports, ten minutes.
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Apply the scheme in one sheet, kept forever
One row per rep, columns for basis, rate, tier and adjustment. The sheet is the commission statement the software does not produce, so keep every month's copy — the archive is what settles disputes about what was agreed in April.
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Handle the joins by hand, and know which ones they are
A rep is a user on the invoice and an employee on the payroll, and nothing connects those two records. Keep a small mapping of user to employee; it takes five minutes to write and prevents the annual incident where somebody is paid on a namesake's numbers.
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Queue the payout as an ad-hoc earning on the period
One entry per rep against the payroll period, marked taxable — which it is. This is the part that is properly built: the payout runs through PAYE and the statutory deductions with everything else rather than becoming an untaxed cash payment, which is the arrangement that eventually costs far more than the commission did.
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Send each rep their line before the payroll closes
A three-line message beats a query after payday. Reps who can predict their commission trust the scheme; reps who are surprised by it assume they are being short-changed, and they are right often enough for the assumption to stick.
One rep, one month, paid on collected cash
Notice the gap between invoiced and collected — KES 2.41m written, KES 1.78m in. On a gross-sales scheme this rep is paid on the larger figure and has no reason to care about the smaller one. That gap is the entire argument for paying on cash, and it is also the number that tells you whether your credit limits are doing their job.
Write these five things down before the first run
- The attribution rule — invoice creator or account owner, one of them, named.
- The basis — gross, net of credits, collected, or margin, with the date the figure is taken and a statement that it is final.
- The treatment of returns and write-offs — clawback or not. Deciding this after a large return has happened is how schemes end in resentment.
- Who calculates and who checks. The person who runs the sheet should not be the only person who has ever seen it.
- That the payout is taxable and goes through payroll. Say it out loud at the start; it is the expectation that causes the most friction if discovered later.
Why we would not rush to build this
Commission schemes are close to unique per business — rates, tiers, splits on shared accounts, clawback windows, treatment of part-payments, house accounts. A generic engine tends to be simultaneously too rigid for the scheme you actually run and complicated enough that nobody trusts its output. A monthly spreadsheet that a human owns is unglamorous, auditable, and changes in five minutes when the scheme changes in January. If we build this, it will be after enough customers describe the same shape — not before.
Our take
There is no commission engine and no targets, so do not shortlist on that basis. What works is deliberate: pick one attribution rule, pay on collected cash if you sell on credit, run one export and one sheet a month, and queue the payout as a taxable ad-hoc earning so it goes through PAYE properly instead of becoming a cash payment. Keep a user-to-employee mapping, because those are two separate records and nothing joins them. That is roughly an hour a month and it is more accurate than most commission modules, because the scheme in the sheet is the scheme you actually agreed.
Pay commission accurately, through payroll
Invoice-level attribution, collected-cash reporting and taxable ad-hoc earnings that run through PAYE with the rest of the [payslip](/glossary/payslip) — with no pretence that a commission engine or target tracking exists.
See plans & pricingFrequently asked questions
Does the system calculate sales commission?
No. There are no rates, tiers, thresholds, accelerators, splits or clawbacks, and nothing computes a commission from a sale. There is a commission system in the product, but it belongs to the partner and reseller programme and has nothing to do with paying your own salespeople — do not evaluate it as though it does.
Can we set and track sales targets?
No. There is nowhere to record that a rep should sell a given amount this quarter, so there is no attainment percentage and no progress display anywhere. Targets live in whatever sheet you already use; what the system supplies is the actual figure to compare them against.
How do we attribute a sale to a salesperson?
Two workable ways. Every invoice records who created it, which is accurate when reps raise their own invoices and worthless when an administrator keys them centrally — count the distinct creators on last month's invoices to find out which case you are in. The alternative is customer ownership, where every invoice to an account counts toward its rep; that survives central invoicing but needs maintaining and rewards account management over new business. Pick one and write it down.
What should we pay commission on?
Collected cash, for most businesses selling on credit. It aligns the salesperson with collections rather than leaving that to finance, and it avoids paying in March on an invoice written off in July. Invoiced-less-credit-notes is the honest floor. Margin is obtainable but only approximately, because item cost is a weighted average that moves — good enough to steer behaviour, not exact enough to win an argument.
How does the commission actually get paid?
As an ad-hoc taxable earning queued against the payroll period, one entry per rep. This part is properly built, and it matters: the payout runs through PAYE and the statutory deductions with the rest of the payslip instead of becoming an untaxed cash payment, which is an arrangement that eventually costs far more than the commission it saved.
What is the join people get caught by?
A salesperson is a user on the invoice and an employee on the payroll, and nothing connects those two records. Keep a small user-to-employee mapping alongside your commission sheet. It takes five minutes to write and prevents the annual incident where somebody is paid against a namesake's figures.
