The job sold on Tuesday. The commission should not wait for the spreadsheet.
Commissions · ledger
The commission spreadsheet is where trust goes to leak.
Payroll week, and someone is cross-referencing sold jobs against a spreadsheet that lives on one laptop. Was that job self-generated or company lead? Did the rep discount it, and does that change the rate? Did we already pay part of it? Every one of those questions is a chance to get a number wrong, and a wrong commission number is personal.
Reps feel it before you do. When a salesperson cannot see what they have earned, what has been paid, and what is still owed, they start keeping their own tally on their phone. Now there are two sets of books, and the conversation every payroll is not “here is your check,” it is “let me explain why this is right.” That is a tax on your best closers.
It is not that the math is hard. It is that it lives apart from the jobs. The sold job is in one system and the commission is in another, so a human has to carry the number across every single time. Put the commission on the job, and the reconciliation stops being a job at all.
The short version
One place that answers the only three questions that matter.
Running totals you can trust
The ledger tab shows every commission record with totals for earned, paid, and outstanding. No adding up rows by hand, no wondering whether the total on the spreadsheet is current. It is current because it is the source.
Filter to the answer
Filter by employee and pay status to answer a rep's question in seconds. What has J. Alvarez earned this period? What's outstanding across the team? The filter does the digging. Reps get the same view of their own numbers, no owner-level access needed.
Record payments in place
When you pay a commission, record the payment against that row. The outstanding total drops, the paid total rises, and the history stays on the record so nobody relitigates a check three months later.
Mark it sold, and the payout calculates itself.
This is the piece that ends the spreadsheet. Set up your commission rules once, and when a job’s disposition changes to sold, Oblyss calculates the commission automatically. Rules can be configured by job type, by rep, and by lead source, because a piering job, a waterproofing job, and a self-generated lead do not all pay the same, and they should not have to.
A rep who brings in their own work gets treated differently on purpose. Jobs carry a self-generated flag, so a lead the rep sourced can pay at a different rate than one the office handed them. The rule reads the flag and applies the right number without anyone remembering to. Fair is automatic instead of argued.
- Auto-calculates on sold, so the commission exists the moment the deal closes, not at payroll.
- Configurable by job type, rep, and lead source, so different work pays by the right rule.
- Self-generated lead handling through a flag on the job, so rep-sourced work pays its own rate.
- Tenure-based tiers, so a rep's rate can step up the longer they've been closing.
- Variable and flat-rate rules, so a payout can be a percentage or a fixed dollar amount, whichever fits the deal.
Rules for the usual. Manual for the exception.
Not every payout fits a rule, and you do not have to force it. Add a commission by hand, tied to the specific job it belongs to, as a flat dollar amount or a percentage of the job price. A spiff on a hard close, a split between two reps, a one-off arrangement you made to win a bid: enter it, attach it to the job, and it lands in the same ledger as everything the rules engine produced.
That is the point of one ledger. Whether a commission was calculated automatically or typed in for a special case, it shows up in the same earned, paid, and outstanding totals, and it is tied to a real job you can open. No side list of exceptions that payroll has to remember to check.
- Flat or percentage, entered as a dollar amount or a percent of the job price.
- Tied to a job, and its salesperson, so every commission points back to who sold it and what they sold.
- Works without any add-on, so a shop with no separate commission tool still runs its whole payout here.
- Recalculate on demand, so changing a rule updates every open job it affects, not just new ones.
- Delete a wrong or duplicate row, and the ledger total updates instantly.
From sold to paid, without a spreadsheet in the middle.
Job marked sold
A rep closes the deal and the job disposition flips to sold on the pipeline.
Rule fires
The engine reads job type, rep, lead source, and the self-generated flag, then calculates the commission.
Lands in the ledger
The commission posts as earned, adding to that rep's running total the moment it is created.
Paid and recorded
You record the payment against the row, outstanding drops to paid, and the history stays on file.
Whether or not you use a separate commission tool.
Owner numbers stay owner numbers
Commission and revenue figures sit behind the owner and manager roles. Under role-based access, your CSR and scheduler run their day without ever seeing what a rep earned.
Priced off the real margin
Because commissions read the job price, and the job price comes from your margin engine, the number a rep earns is tied to the profit you actually built into the sale.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a separate commission tool to use this?
No. The commission ledger works fully on its own. You can add commissions manually, let the rules engine calculate them, record payments, and track earned, paid, and outstanding totals without any add-on. If you happen to use Per4mance.io, you can sync with it, but it is optional.