Commission plans and starter templates
A commission plan is a stack of components. Each component is one way a deal earns money, and a plan can carry as many as your comp scheme needs — pay a month of new recurring revenue, plus a slice of the margin, plus an accelerator once the rep passes their goal, all on the same deal. Only sales leadership creates or edits plans. This is on the Plans & Templates page.
Start from a template
Every workspace is seeded with three best-practice templates so you're not staring at a blank page. Copy one, keep what fits, change the rest:
| Template | What it rewards |
|---|---|
| MRR-First Standard (recommended) | Pays a month of new recurring revenue up front, plus a slice of one-time project dollars. The simplest scheme to explain and the one most MSPs should start with. |
| TCV 5% — Multi-year | Rewards term length: 5% of total contract value (monthly times term months, plus one-time). Use it where multi-year commitments matter. |
| Margin Guard 10% | Pays on gross margin, not top-line — 10% of quote sell price minus quote cost — so reps are rewarded for protecting your margin, not just closing volume. |
If your workspace predates the module, or someone deleted the seeds, there's an "Add starter plans" action that re-seeds them; it never overwrites a plan you've already built.
The building blocks
These are the components you stack into a plan. Mix them freely — the amounts add up on each deal:
| Component | What it pays |
|---|---|
| 1x MRR | One month of the new monthly recurring revenue, once, as a lump sum. The classic new-logo payout. |
| Net-new MRR slice | On an expansion, one month of just the added recurring revenue — the increase, not the whole bill. |
| One-time % | A percent of the deal's one-time / project dollars. |
| Margin % | A percent of the gross margin — quote sell price minus quote cost. Needs a linked quote so the module can read the sell and cost figures. |
| TCV % | A percent of total contract value — monthly times the term length, plus any one-time. Term-aware: 1, 2, or 3 years, month-to-month, or a custom number of months. |
| Renewal rate | A fraction of a month of the renewed recurring revenue — half a month by default — so renewals still pay, just less than net-new. |
| Term rate | A multiple of one month of MRR that grows with the contract term, for schemes that reward longer commitments without going full TCV. |
| Accelerator | A tiered multiplier that boosts the payout on new recurring revenue booked above a percentage of the quarterly goal. Banded per tier, and never retroactive. |
| Goal bonus | A flat bonus once a sales goal reaches its target for the period. |
| One-time bonus | A flat bonus a leader adds by hand, with a note explaining it. |
| Spiff | A short-run contest payout on deals whose name matches the spiff, inside a date window — per unit or a flat amount. |
| Evergreen residual | A recurring residual paid every month the customer stays. Available, but not recommended for most plans — it's deliberately left out of the starter templates. |
How accelerators actually work
An accelerator multiplies the payout on new recurring revenue once a rep passes a share of their quarterly goal — but only on the portion above the threshold, and only at the tier that portion falls into. Revenue already booked at the base rate stays at the base rate; the accelerator is never retroactive. Each tier is a band: cross into a higher band and only the dollars inside that band get the higher multiplier. Because the threshold is a percentage of the quarterly Sales Goal, raising the goal raises the bar automatically.
Assign a plan to a rep
- 1Open Plans & Templates and pick the planYou'll see every plan in the workspace, best-practice templates first. Open the one you want to hand out.
- 2Assign it to a rep with a start dateAssignments are effective-dated — the plan applies to deals from that date forward, so you can change someone's plan mid-year without rewriting history. Past statements keep the plan that was in force when they were built.
- 3Set the earn trigger for the planThe trigger decides when a line becomes Earned: on quote-won, on kickoff or a post-sale ticket (the default), or on invoice. Most MSPs leave it on kickoff so a rep is credited once the work actually starts, not the moment a quote is signed. See "How commission gets recognized: the earning ladder".