Plans & incentives: pay plans, spiffs and starter templates
Every pay lever in one place. Build a pay plan from stacked components (1x MRR, % of margin, % of TCV, accelerators, and more) or start from a best-practice template, assign it per rep with a start date, and run spiffs and President's Club from the tabs beside it.
On this page · 5 sections
Everything that decides how your sellers get paid lives on one page: Sales › Commissions › Plans & incentives. Only sales leadership opens it. It has three tabs across the top, and each one shows a quick count so you can see what's running without opening it:
- Pay plans, how each rep gets paid. Build a plan once, assign it to reps, and their statements follow it. Most of this article is about this tab.
- Spiffs, short bonus pushes that sit on top of the plan: what qualifies, what it pays, and for how long. See "Run a spiff" below.
- President's Club, the yearly race to a qualification bar, ranked on each rep's annual goal. See "President's Club: the annual commission leaderboard".
A commission plan is a stack of components. Each component is one way an opportunity 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 opportunity. Press Create plan on the Pay plans tab to start one from scratch, or open a template.
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 revenue. 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 opportunity:
| Component | What it pays |
|---|---|
| 1x MRR | One month of the new recurring revenue, once, as a lump sum: the whole monthly amount on a new logo, the growth on an expansion, and the new recurring part of a project. On a renewal it pays only the growth, and only when the renewal is tied to the contract it renews (or the company's prior monthly amount is known) and the plan's renewal rate counts growth as net-new. |
| Net-new MRR slice | One month of just the added recurring revenue, the increase, not the whole bill. It never pays a renewal's renewed amount. |
| One-time % | A percent of the opportunity's one-time / project amount. |
| 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. An opportunity with no term set pays only its one-time portion, and the statement says the recurring part was skipped. |
| 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. When the prior amount is known it pays on what the customer kept; otherwise on the whole renewed amount. |
| Term rate | A multiple of one month of the new recurring revenue (the same amount 1x MRR pays on) that grows with the contract term, for schemes that reward longer commitments without going full TCV. An opportunity with no term set skips it. |
| Accelerator | A tiered multiplier that boosts the 1x MRR payout above a percentage of the quarterly goal. Only opportunities that count toward the goal's own number move the rep toward a tier and get accelerated, so a new-logo goal never speeds up an expansion. Banded per tier, and never retroactive. Needs a 1x MRR component in the same plan. |
| Goal bonus | A flat bonus once a quarterly sales goal reaches its target. It is not part of any one opportunity's payout: it lands once, on the statement for the month the goal is hit, or the quarter's last month. |
| One-time bonus | Not paid automatically. To pay a one-off bonus, add it as an adjustment on the rep's statement, with a note explaining it. Plans that already carry this component keep it, labeled. |
| Spiff | Not built into a plan. Spiffs run on their own from the Spiffs tab and pay every eligible rep, whatever plan they're on. See "Run a spiff" below. |
| Evergreen residual | Not paid automatically, and no longer offered for new plans. Plans that already carry it keep it, labeled; to pay a residual, add an adjustment on the statement. |
How accelerators actually work
An accelerator multiplies the 1x MRR payout 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 revenue inside that band gets the higher multiplier. Progress toward a tier counts only what each opportunity adds to the goal's own number (a new-logo goal counts new logos), and the accelerated slice is never larger than the opportunity's 1x MRR amount. Because the threshold is a percentage of the quarterly Sales Goal, raising the goal raises the bar automatically. Every tier must pay more than 1x, and each threshold must be higher than the one before.
Assign a plan to a rep
- 1Open Plans & incentives and pick the planThe Pay plans tab shows 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. Each opportunity is paid on the plan in force on the day it was won: opportunities won from the start date use the new plan, earlier ones keep the old plan, even on the same month's statement. So you can change someone's plan mid-year without rewriting history.
- 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".
Run a spiff
A spiff is a short bonus push for one thing you want sold right now, like a firewall promo or a new backup offering. It sits on top of everyone's plan and lands on each statement as its own labeled line, so a rep can see exactly what the spiff paid.
- 1Open the Spiffs tab and press New spiffRunning spiffs are listed first, past ones below. The Overview cockpit's Spiffs & bonuses tile has a Manage spiffs link that opens this tab too.
- 2Say what countsThe target is a word or phrase. A won opportunity counts when its name contains it, ignoring capitals, so a target of "firewall" matches "Acme firewall refresh". A spiff with no target pays nobody.
- 3Set what it pays and whenPick a flat amount or an amount per unit, the date window (an opportunity has to close inside it), and the payout cadence. A flat spiff pays each rep once for the whole spiff, even if you move its dates later.
- 4Choose who can earn itLeave it on everyone, or pick named reps. Reps who can earn it see it straight away on their My commission page, with what it pays and how many days are left. Once a flat spiff has paid a rep, it leaves their card, because it can't pay them twice. A per-unit spiff pays its amount for each qualifying opportunity won in the window.