Holds and Releases

In many instances, commissions are not paid to reps until certain milestones are met or cash is collected from the sale. In SimplyComp, this payment timing is called Hold and Releases. When applying a Hold Structure to a payment, ALL commissions generated by that payment rule are held in a Release Report until a Release is input. Releases can be done either by stipulating a percentage to release in a given period or that percentage can be derived by inputting a partial amount of the total deal amount and then a resulting percentage for release can be calculated (an example here would be cash collected on the original deal).

SimplyComp uses secondary Lookup Tables and formulas to achieve the structure, which will be explained below. Please read the ENTIRE article before proceeding with making changes.

Step 1. Payment Rule Settings, establish Release Report

When assigning Payment Rules to a mapping, H/R is initiated by setting the payment timing to “Holds” and assigning (or creating) a Release Report.

When calculations are run, all commissions associated with this particular payment will be held in the assigned Release Report(s). Release Reports will populate into the Release Report subtab within the Data tab after they are created. This table will hold ALL held payments. The information needed to release these payments will be derived from lookup tables. Bring in columns from Lookup Tables and then configure the “Release” column of the Release report to tell SimplyComp how you would like your payments to be released.

Step 2. Create Lookup Table of Release Data

Follow the steps to create a Lookup Table (see related Lookup Table article). This Lookup Table will need to contain at minimum:

1. Unique ID - this is the often the deal ID and is how the Lookup Table will reference the deal data to initiate the release via Lookup Column
2. Release Date - this is the date you want this specific lookup to release. The specified amount/percent will be released in date’s this pay period. If releases are needed in different periods, add additional line items with additional dates
3. Release Percent or Cash Collected (common option) - this will operate the release and provide how much of the commission will be released.
4. Any other relevant data for audit purposes

Step 3.  Design Release Report

Release based on percent:

“I release 50% on the booking date and the second 50% when the invoice is received.”

This option allows you to outline the percent of the earned commission to be released at a certain milestone event. Your lookup table (outlined in Step 2) should contain, at minimum, the Unique ID, a percent column, and a date column that will contain the booking date and invoice date. Click into the Release Report you created in Step 1.  Select the Release column and then choose Column Type of Lookup (picture below). Fill out the required fields to bring in the release percent column from your Lookup Table using the Unique ID and the release date as well. 

Release Based on Cash Collected:

“We release held commissions based on the amount of cash collected. If the booking amount is $10,000, and the first cash collection is $5000, we want to release 50% of the earned commission at the time of that cash collection.”

Here, the amount of commission released is based on the calculation date and the percentage paid of the deal. Refer to step 2 and create the Holds and Releases Lookup Table, including a “Cash Collected” column instead of a “Percent Release” column. A Release Date is still required.

On the Release Report, add a new Lookup Column that brings in the Cash Collected column from Step 2.  Make sure to add a Date parameter as the Release Date column.

Edit the Release column on the Release Report to create a formula and then build the formula that will produce the correct percent to release a portion of the Payment (earned commission).

Good to Note: 

Once a Release Report is built to release on a direct lookup, it cannot be changed to a formula release and vice versa. You will need to create a new Release Report if you run into this error. 

You can over release a held payment if it has not been completely released yet. For example, if you tell the system to release 50% of a held payment and then tell it to release 60% at a following date, the system will pay out 110% of that held commission in total. 

Release reports cannot be renamed.