The Commissions module lets you map your sales structure and flexibly define and settle sales commissions. The predefined commissions are credited to the representative entered in the sales order, or to the cashier logged in for sales made through a POS system. If you already have item-specific commission rules in place, you can also restore them via the master data import, as described in this article.
On the Representatives tab of the Commissions module, you first assign sales employees to sales managers to reflect the basic relationships within your sales structure. This also allows sales managers to receive commission shares for representatives within their area of responsibility. To do this, fill in the fields for the Representative and their respective Sales manager.
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If your company doesn’t have a sales hierarchy, this step isn’t necessary. In this case, continue with Determining the beneficiary.
If you want to adopt an existing link between sales managers and employees, you can conveniently import this link into Xentral using a CSV file instead of setting it up manually. To do this, click on the Import subtab on the Representatives tab. Then carry out the following settings for the import:
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Enter the value 2 in the CSV data from line field.
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Select the option ; (semicolon) as the CSV separator.
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Select the option UTF-8 in the Select charset field.
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Enter the fields 1:vertreter; 2:vertriebsleitung in the text field.
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For the variables vertreter and vertriebsleitung, you need the respective ID from Xentral.
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Select your CSV file by clicking on Select file.
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Click on Upload.
For Xentral to take an order into account in the commission system, you must select an address from the master data under Sales in the order details. Use the pencil icon next to the text field to do this.
Alternatively, you can assign a fixed or predefined sales employee to each address, who is then set as the default value for orders from that address.
You define commission rates on the Commissions tab of the Commissions module.
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Use Smart Search to open the Commissions module.
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Open the Commissions tab.
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Click on + New entry.
The Edit view opens.
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Carry out the settings as desired.
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You can specify an Item, a percentage in the Commission field (a simple number is sufficient), and the calculation basis in the Type field to define an item-specific commission rate. As desired, you can calculate commissions based on sales and purchase prices, unit revenue, or sales prices minus any discounts.
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In the Sales manager commission field, you can also enter a commission for the sales manager who was previously assigned to the corresponding representative. From then on, Xentral automatically applies the specified commission to every order that contains the selected item and a valid entry in the Sales field. With the appropriate setting, the sales manager also receives a separately defined commission. If you want to limit this mechanism to part of your staff, or use different commission rates for different employees, for example, also fill in the Representative field. This restricts the entire calculation to the specified employee only. You can also define a global commission that is applied to all items without commission-specific settings. Here too, you can use the Representative field to flexibly define which employees are taken into account. If you want the settlement to be independent of an item, leave the Item field empty and enter, for example, only a representative and a commission.
Note
If you set up the commission based on an item’s revenue or purchase price, Xentral uses the item’s lowest purchase price if the item has several purchase prices from different suppliers.
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Click on Save.
When you click on Create settlement on the Preview tab of the Commissions module, the Accounting > Commission > Settlements interface opens, offering numerous available settlement types.
On the home screen, Xentral displays the most important information about historical settlements, so you can read the sales and commission amounts directly. You can use the three download icons to the right of each settlement to download various documents in CSV format. The first table shows which salespeople generated sales and how much, as well as which commissions are attributable to both the sales management and the employees for the settled period. While the first table works with aggregated values, the second table shows you all sold items with additional information. The third table, in turn, contains summed values broken down by item category. Use the mini detail view to access further information on the individual line items of the selected settlement – from the invoice number and customer to item numbers and commissions. As usual, you can download this information as a CSV file by clicking on the download icon.
To be able to create a credit note for the sales employees for the created commission settlements afterward, you first need to specify a commission item on the Settings tab of the Commissions module, to which you can post the settlement. You can also define here whether the discount directly (absolutely) reduces the commission. For example, a representative entitled to 20% commission can grant a 5% discount on the order, which reduces the commission to 15%.
To do this, you can create a commission settlement item (or a similar designation) in the product master data, which you then use for all future settlements. We also recommend activating the Detailed breakdown in credit note option to make it easier to track the commissioned order items. If this option isn’t activated, Xentral posts all settlements to the commission settlement item. If you activate the Use invoice paid on setting option, Xentral only includes invoices in the commission settlement for which either a payment for the invoice amount has been received or the invoice has been manually set to paid.
In the next step, you can create a credit note for the selected commission settlement under Accounting > Commission > Settlements by clicking on the arrow icon.
The credit note is then located under Accounting > Credit note/Cancellation invoice on the In progress tab.
On the Preview tab, you can view a draft of the credit note.