CONTENTS
Commission as a percentage of sales
Setting which commission bands apply to which products
Setting which users earn commission
Changing the commission rate for specific users
Processing sales of commissionable items at the till
Reporting on commission earned
Setting a commission percentage on individual items without using bands
Reporting consequences of setting commission values instead of bands
‘Commission band by value’ approach
Creating Commission by Value Bands
Setting ‘eligible’ and ‘qualifier’ categories
Processing ‘commission band by value’ transactions through the till
Reporting on ‘by value’ commission earned
Reassigning ‘by value’ commission to a different user
Welcome
Some retailers reward their sales staff for good performance by paying them commission – i.e. salary bonuses for carrying out sales. In this manual we’ll look at what facilities Cybertill has for recording what commission your staff have earned.
Types of commission available
Your system can be configured so that:
- Commission is only earned by specific members of staff.
- Commission is only earned for sales of specified products.
- The rate of commission can be different for different products (i.e. some products earn you more commission than others).
- Some members of staff earn commission at different rates (higher or lower) than their colleagues.
- If your commission-earning sales staff are not the actual till operators, then the till operator can choose which member of staff each sale’s commission is assigned to.
- Commission is only earned on products of type A, and only when they are purchased along with at least one product of type B
Commission as a percentage of sales
The most common approach retailers take is to give commission as a percentage of the value of the items sold. Let’s cover what’s required in getting such a scheme working in Cybertill…
Commission Bands
We’ll need to start by creating at least one ‘commission band’ on the system. Example: If some items will earn their salesperson 1% commission, and some will earn them 2% commission, you’ll need to create a band for each of those two different rates.
- Click into the Admin menu.
Within the Products and Categories section,
- look for an option called Commission Bands, and select it.
You should then see an Add A Commission Band option at the bottom:
- Click this option.
You will be prompted to fill in a short form:
- Enter a Name for your first commission band into the Name field.
Example: ‘One percent’ or ‘Standard commission’.
In the Percentage box,
- enter the percentage of this band without the % symbol.
Example: enter just ‘1’ instead of ‘1%’.
The Active and Order boxes are relatively trivial, and can be ignored for now.
Note: If you ever wanted to disable a commission band, you could untick the Active box here to do it. The Order box is for setting the order your commission bands appear on screen – e.g. it will show the band with an Order value of 1 first, followed by the number 2 band, then 3 etc.
If you only wish to create one commission band,
- click Save at the bottom of the page.
If you want to create more,
- click Save and add instead.
That will save the band, then clear the form so you can quickly create another.
After you’ve saved as many bands as you think you’ll need,
- click Back to list at the bottom left.
You should see all your bands in a table:
That step is now complete.
Setting which commission bands apply to which products
By default, none of your products will be commissionable. You’ll need to edit the ones which should be commissionable to set which commission band they belong to.
There are two ways to do this:
Editing individual items
Make your way into the Edit Product Option screen for one of the items in question – i.e. the screen from which you can edit an item’s prices.
Usually the quickest way to do this is by using the SEARCH bar at the top right.
Once on this screen, a short way down from the top, you will see a box marked Commission Band:
▪ Select the band you want to set this item against ▪ Then click Save at the bottom.
This would of course take a long time to do for every single item on your system. So, most retailers will likely prefer another approach:
Using Data Import Manager
Data Import Manager is a tool which lets you make changes to your product data by putting your desired changes into a spreadsheet, then importing that spreadsheet into the system. If you have purchased this feature, you can use it to add new products, or update details of your existing products, such as their price, their description, or – helpfully - their commission band.
You’d need to create a spreadsheet with two columns - one containing the Item References of the items you want to alter, and one containing the names of the commission bands you want to assign them to:
Those columns would need to be mapped to Data Import Manager’s Item Reference (Unique Key) and Commission Band ID fields:
Data Import Manager is quite a sophisticated tool, so we won’t go into how to use it here. For more detail, please see the separate ‘Data Import Manager’ manual.
If you have purchased Data Import Manager, you’ll likely find the option near the bottom of your Admin menu, just beneath the Locations section:
If you don’t see it, either
- your superiors haven’t given you access to it, or
-
you haven’t purchased it – in which case, contact your Cybertill account manager to discuss pricing.
Setting which users earn commission
Next, you’ll need to decide which of your staff are eligible to earn commission.
- Go back to Admin.
- Scroll down to the Users section (usually about three quarters of the way down), ▪ Click into User Management.
- scroll down to the bottom
You’ll find a field marked Commission Rates:
- Click in there
You should then see a list of all the rates you created previously:
- Tick the commission bands (and by extension specify the products) which you want this user to earn commission on
- Click the Save button at the bottom.
- Click Back to list at the bottom left, and repeat the process for every other member of staff who is eligible for commission.
Changing the commission rate for specific users
There might be cases where you want some salespeople to earn a different rate of commission than their peers for selling the same products.
To do this,
- go back to Admin.
- Scroll down to the Users section.
You’ll see a table with all the users for your currently-selected branch listed down the left, looking something like this:
There will be columns for each of the different commission bands you’ve created running along the top. For all the users you have ‘turned on’ commission for, you’ll see a value of ‘0.0000’ in the appropriate % mod column.
That % mod phrase is short for “percentage modifier”.
Note how in the above example, user “Matthew Bouch” has a modifier of:
‘-0.5000’ set in the One Percent column. This means that although he earns commission for selling ‘One Percent’ products, he actually earns half a percent less commission than the base rate. (So, if the base rate is 1%, and he has a modifier of -
0.5%, then he actually earns just 0.5% commission on those items.)
Also, note user ‘Si’ has a modifier of ‘0.2500’ in the same column – meaning he earns slightly more commission than the base rate (to be precise, 1.25%).
You can set whatever modifiers you wish for each member of staff here in the same vein. (Don’t forget to click Save at the bottom afterwards.)
You can only see the users for one branch at a time here. So, if you can’t find a particular person in the list, try changing the branch you’re currently focused on by clicking into the LOCATION option at the top of the screen and selecting somewhere else.
Also, be aware that if the % mod field is blank for a particular user (i.e. it contains absolutely nothing, not even a number zero), it means they don’t currently earn commission on that band. So, in our example here:
…users Matthew Bouch and Peter will earn commission when selling ‘One percent’ products, but not on ‘Two percent’ or ‘Five percent’ products. User Si, on the other hand, will.
Processing sales of commissionable items at the till
Your tills will prompt the till operator to type their PIN at the start of every new transaction. So – assuming the till operator is the salesperson, the tills will be smart enough to know whether the salesperson is entitled to earn commission, and if so, on what items and on what rates, automatically. Your salesperson doesn’t have to do anything special; just sign in with their PIN at the start, and put the sale through like normal.
Note: the till won’t confirm the commission; there won’t be any pop-ups saying ‘you just earned £2.50’ or words to that effect. It will track it, though, albeit quietly and in the background.
In some retail environments, things can be more complicated; the salesperson (who walks around the shop talking to customers, persuading them to buy things) and the till operator (who presses the buttons on the till) may be different people. In circumstances like these, the till operators will need to specify which salesperson gets the commission on each sale manually.
To do this, before tapping GO TO TENDER and taking payment for a sale,
- they will need to tick all of the items in the basket:
- tap the Other options button at the top right:
More options will display underneath, including one marked Assign user commission.
- Tap this option.
You’ll be shown a list of all the users who are eligible to earn commission:
Now,
- click the name of the user you want those items’ commission to be attributed to.
That’s the commission successfully assigned. After tapping OK,
- you can then complete the sale as per usual (i.e. tap GO TO TENDER and take payment).
Reporting on commission earned
To see how much commission your staff have earned,
- you’ll need to go into your system’s Sales menu
- click into the Sales Commission Report (normally found about three quarters of the way down).
You’ll find yourself on a “filters” screen:
Here, you can choose the Locations you want to look at the sales from, and the Date range you want to look across.
You can also choose to look at the earnings for a particular Sales Person (or people), or just at transactions processed by a particular Till Operator, if you wished – although note that by default, the system will look at all salespeople and till operators, so most retailers will probably be best served leaving those fields alone.
Retailers who offer home delivery to customers might be interested in the Only Despatched tickbox. If you tick that, then the only sales which will appear in the results are ones where both;
- a customer wanted either home delivery or to collect it from the store at a later date, and
- that delivery/collection has taken place. (So, customer orders which you haven’t sent out yet will not be included in the results.)
Retailers who allow customers to reserve items by paying deposits may be interested in the Deposit Payments filter. This affects how deposit payments are treated by the report. There are three options to choose from, and they work as follows:
| Every part-payment recorded | Each separate payment the customer makes will appear as a separate entry in the report. Example: if the customer paid a £10 deposit to reserve an item worth £100 on Monday, then paid the remaining balance of £90 on Tuesday, you would see two separate payments of £10 and £90 in the report. |
| Grand total reported on day of first purchase only | Under this setting, even if the customer has only paid a small deposit to reserve an item, the report will treat it as if the customer has paid in full. Example: if a customer has only paid a £10 deposit to reserve a £100 item, it will look in this report as if they have already paid the full £100. When the customer pays off the remaining £90 balance, that won’t appear in this report at all. |
| Grand total reported on day of final purchase only | Under this setting, sales won’t appear in the report at all until the customer has paid the full value of the item. Example: if a customer has only paid a £10 deposit on a £100 item, then that sale will not appear in the report at all. After the customer pays off the £90 balance, though, if you run the report again, the sale will start to appear. |
Of course, if you don’t ever take deposits from customers, you can ignore the Deposit Payments field.
When you generate the report, the results it produces should look something like this:
There should be a table of the above format shown for every member of staff who has earned commission over your chosen dates. (You may need to scroll down to see them all.) Each row in the table is an instance where an item was sold, and commission was earned.
Here is an explanation of all the columns:
| Column | Explanation |
| Branch | The branch where the sale took place. |
| Transaction | The unique transaction number on which the sale took place. (NB – You may see several rows with the same transaction number, if the customer purchased several different items at once.) |
| Till Operator |
The till operator who processed the transaction through the till. (May be different to the salesperson who the commission is attributed to; the salesperson’s name will be in the header at the very top of the table.) |
| Date | The date on which thae transaction took place. |
| ItemRef | The unique item reference code of the sold item. |
| Item Name | The name of the sold item. |
| Qty | The quantity of units sold of the item. |
| Gross | The gross takings on that item. |
| VAT | How much VAT was incurred on the sale. |
| Net | The net takings (i.e. gross minus VAT) on that item. |
| Percentage | What percentage of commission the salesperson earned on the sale. |
| Commission | The amount of commission (in pounds and pence) the salesperson earned on the sale. |
A few points of note here:
- This report can be exported to CSV (exported as a spreadsheet), like most of the system’s reports can. Each member of staff’s table will have an “Export to CSV” button at the top right, and at the very bottom right of the entire report there will be an “Export all sections to CSV” button as well.
- You’ll notice that the system works out commission on the net takings, rather than the gross. This is the way most retailers calculate it.
- If you see any red rows with negative figures in there, they pertain to returns.
Example:
In this table, the first line shows us that salesperson ‘Alex Lavery’ sold 5 shirts. In the second line, though, one of those shirts was returned. Also note that even though we’re looking at the table of results for Alex Lavery, for the returned shirt, the till operator was a different person (‘Si’). This demonstrates that even if the till operator processing the return is not the original salesperson, the system can still remove commission from the original salesperson accordingly.
Note: For this to work, it of course assumes the till operators carrying out the returns process it in the correct way – i.e. by scanning the original receipt.
Setting a commission percentage on individual items without using bands
Back on the product option editor, just beneath the Commission Band field, you may have spotted another field marked Commission* just underneath:
Rather than assigning a product to a commission band, you could type in a percentage value here. If you enter a value, then the system will ignore the Commission Band field completely, and assign your specified percentage commission to your salespeople instead.
This could be useful if (for example) there are a few specific products that you wish to drive sales of; you could set a special ‘boosted’ commission rate here, thereby incentivising your salespeople to focus on pushing those particular products.
The value you enter can have up to two decimal points, and it needs to be entered without a percentage sign. So, in the example depicted here:
…your salespeople would get 25% commission on selling this item.
(If the field is left with its default value of ‘0.00’, then the system will refer to the Commission Band field when calculating whether to give commission – and how much - instead.)
This field can also be edited using Data Import Manager. You would need to map one of the columns in your spreadsheet to the Commission field, which can be found on the Map Data screen a short way up from the very bottom:
Reporting consequences of setting commission values instead of bands
There is one side-effect of setting commission values rather than bands for a product you should know about: All your salespeople will earn it. In an earlier chapter, we saw how you need to edit your user accounts and tick the commission bands that apply to each user before they earn any commission. This Commission field side-steps that requirement completely. If you set a Commission value for a product, any till operator who sells it – even till operators that you have not yet activated any commission bands for - then you’ll see their name and sales appearing in your Sales Commission Report.
‘Commission band by value’ approach
Some of our retailers have a more complicated way of calculating commission: Their staff only earn commission on sales of products from category A, and even then only if they are sold along with something from category B.
Here’s an example of such a scheme from a cycling store:
‘If a customer buys a bike and some accessories, the salesman gets some commission based on the total value of the accessories.
If a customer buys just a bike, then no commission is earned.
If a customer buys just some accessories, then no commission is earned.
It's only when the customer buys both at once that the salesman gets any commission.
How much commission the salesman gets depends on the total value of the accessories purchased; they get £1 commission for every £20 worth of accessories sold. (So, customer buys £0 to £19.99 worth, no commission.
Customer buys £20 to £39.99 worth, £1 commission. Customer buys £40 to £59.99 worth, £2 commission etc.)’
That’s an example of a ‘commission by value band’ system.
Let’s look at what’s involved in setting a scheme like this up…
Enabling the feature
This is a ‘licenced feature - meaning it needs to be switched on by Cybertill head office for any retailer who wishes to use it. If you don’t see any of the options described here on your Cybertill system, contact either your Account Manager or our Projects team (0844 855 1600).
Once the feature has been switched on for your system,
- Click into the Admin menu then scroll all the way down to the bottom and go into Default Settings.
If you then scroll to the bottom of the Default Settings page, you should find these two settings a few rows up from the end:
- Put a tick in the Enable Sales Commission Dropdown in Edit Categories box.
The Sales Commission Rule setting will probably say ‘Sales Commission via Percentage’ by default. This is how it should be set if you wanted to simply give commission as a percentage of sales, as described in the previous chapters of this manual. To do a scheme like the ‘accessories/bikes’ example cited above,
- you’d need to change this setting to ‘Sales Commission via Bands’.
There is a third option for Sales Commission via Percentage & Bands. You could select this if you wanted to do a combination of both schemes, e.g. as well as earning commission on category A but only if they are bought with category B, also offer a flat percentage commission on category C.
- Click Save at the bottom when you’ve made the desired changes.
Once the screen refreshes, you should see a yellow ‘success’ message at the top:
As per the message,
- you’ll now need to log out and back in again before those settings take effect (and so will any other PCs or tills currently in use).
So, bear in mind that unless your shop staff make a special effort to close and restart Cybertill on all points of sale, whatever new commission rules you set up apply may not start being applied until the following morning.
Creating Commission by Value Bands
After logging back in again,
- go to the Admin menu
- Look for a new option called Commission by Value Bands, normally found a short way down from the top:
You will be taken to a new screen, which will probably be empty.
In our ‘bike shop’ example from earlier, staff were to get £1 commission for every £20 worth of accessories sold. To do that, we would need to set up ‘commission value bands’ for £0.01 to £19.99, then £20 to £39.99, then £40 to £59.99, and so on, until we’d created as many as we ever expected to need.
- Click the New link along the bottom to get started (indicated in red above).
You’ll then find yourself looking at this form:
- Enter the Minimum and Maximum values for your first band (e.g. ‘0.01’ and ‘19.99’, and then in the Commission Value field, enter how much commission you’d want such a sale to get you (which in our example would be ‘1’ for one pound).
- Click Save and add at the bottom.
That will save your first band, and clear the form so you can go straight into creating a second one (e.g. with minimum ‘20’, maximum ‘39.99’ and commission value ‘2’), then a third and so on.
Once you’ve created as many as you need, click Back to list, and you should see them all listed in a table:
Setting ‘eligible’ and ‘qualifier’ categories
Now that the bands are set, we need to specify which categories contain the ‘qualifier’ products (which you need at least one of in the sale to qualify for commission; the bikes, in this example), and which categories contain the ‘eligible’ products (the ones you actually earn commission on, i.e. the accessories).
- Go into Admin, then Products and Categories.
Browse through your category tree until you can see the categories you’re interested in,
- click the Edit link at the right of the screen for the first of them:
On the editing screen, you should find a field called Set Sales Commission type:
| Option | Explanation |
| Inherit from [parent] | If you are editing a subcategory, and you have already set its parent category to either ‘qualifier’ or ‘eligible’, then choosing this ‘inherit’ option here will ensure your subcategory follows the same rules as its parent. This is the default option, and that’s usually a good thing; most retailers would prefer to simply edit this setting for a parent category, rather than painstakingly edit all of its subcategories one by one. |
| Qualifier | Choose this if the category you’re editing contains the ‘qualifier’ products (the bikes, in our example). |
|
Eligible for Commission |
Choose this if the category you’re editing contains the products which commission is actually earned on (the accessories, in our example). |
| Not eligible | If commission does not apply to this category at all (i.e. it is neither a qualifier nor eligible), select this option. |
- Select the appropriate one, then click Save at the bottom.
Once it has successfully saved, click on Cancel / Back to [parent] along the bottom of the screen:
That’ll take you back to the parent category you started in. You can repeat that process for whichever other categories you wanted to set as “qualifiers” or “eligible”.
Processing ‘commission band by value’ transactions through the till
With this system of commission (and unlike the ‘by percentage’ methods described earlier), it’s crucial that the salesperson sign into the till with their PIN and process the sale themselves. The Other Options > Assign User Commission button will not work here.
So, just to be clear, you can’t have till operator A key a sale in to the till, but choose to attribute the commission for the sale to salesperson B. With this type of commission scheme, it’s always the till operator who gets the commission.
Aside from that condition, no special actions are required on the till; you can simply scan in the items and sell them like normal, and the till will work out on which sales commission is earned, and how much, automatically. Note that it won’t announce on screen how much commission your salesperson earned on each sale, though; you have to run a report in the back office screen to see that.
Reporting on ‘by value’ commission earned
- Go into your Sales menu
- Look for the Sales Commission (by Value Bands) Report, usually found three quarters of the way down:
Notice that this a different report then the ‘Sales Commission Report’ covered earlier in this manual. That report will only show you any ‘percentage commission’ earned, and this report we’re looking at now will only show you any ‘value band’ commission earned. You’ll never see the first type of commission appearing in the second report, and vice versa; they are kept separate.
As per usual, you can choose the Locations and Date Range you wish to report across, along with a few other (mostly quite self-explanatory) filters.
When you click Generate to run the report, the results should look something like this:
Each row of the report represents a transaction on which commission was earned. Here’s a breakdown of what all the columns mean:
| Column | Explanation |
| Date | The date and time of the transaction, in DD/MM/YYYY HH/MM/SS format. |
| Ref |
The unique transaction reference. Clicking this will bring up the receipt for the sale in a pop-up window. |
| Branch | The branch the sale took place on. |
| Operator | The till operator who processed the sale through the till. |
| Commission User | The user entitled to the commission for this sale. This will usually be the till operator, except in rare cases where it has been manually edited (see the next chapter for more detail). |
| Till | The name of the till the transaction was put through. |
| Customer | If the customer’s details were recorded, their name will be listed here… |
| AccRef | …and their unique account reference will be here. |
| Status | The status of the transaction. (This should be ‘Complete’.) |
| Total | The total value of all the items on the transaction. |
| Items | The number of units sold on the transaction (not how many different item codes were involved in the sale). |
| Commission | How much commission the salesperson earned on this transaction. |
As with most of the system’s reports, you’ll have a button at the top right to Export to CSV, which you can use to pull the data out of Cybertill and into Excel.
Reassigning ‘by value’ commission to a different user
There may occasionally be circumstances where you want to reassign the commission on a transaction to a different salesperson. Example: if a till operator were to retrieve and complete a suspended sale on which one of their colleagues had already done most of the work, you might decide that the user who started the sale is more deserving than the one who finished it.
This can be done by,
- clicking into Admin, then Commission Manager.
In here, you’ll be shown a list of all the transactions on which “by value” commission has ever been earned:
Rather than browsing through the (possibly very long) list to find the one transaction you want, it’ll probably be quicker to click the Filter available option at the top of the screen (indicated in red above). This will bring up a panel of options:
Use these to pinpoint the transaction in question (e.g. if you know the date it took place on,
- edit the Transaction Date/Time options at the bottom to include that date, then click Filter).
Once you’ve found the transaction,
- click the Edit button to the right of it.
You’ll be taken to this screen, where you can now select a new Commission user:
- Change that box to the correct salesperson, then click Save.
Next time you run the Sales Commission (by Value Bands) Report, you will see that the name in the Commission User column has changed to reflect your actions here.
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