Payment processing. As an industry, we know better than most the power of a smooth-flowing, friction-free process. We go to the greatest lengths to ensure that our payment processing strategy is fully optimized, delivering the very best results and experience to merchants and their customers, sidestepping fraud and delivering a wide range of payment options.

When it comes to the internal management of our payment processing commissions process, a little care and attention can, similarly, go a long way. When we focus on improving efficiency within our payment processing commissions workflows, we create a ripple effect that triggers benefits throughout our wider business.

In this short guide, we’ll take you through four of the core ways that you can take a proactive approach to streamlining your payment processing commissions, to improve key outcomes and avoid some common payment processing commission pitfalls. Ready to see some real improvements? Read on…

1. Automate Your Terminal Sales And Transaction Commissions 

In recent years, automation has had a transformative effect on just about any industry you care to name -– and when it comes to managing your payment processing commissions, it represents a significant opportunity.

Let’s start by considering the alternative. Manually tracking your terminal sales and transaction commissions in a non-automated system is time consuming at best. At worst, it’s inaccurate and limiting, especially in terms of your ability to dependably scale. For some businesses, spreadsheets may have proven an adequate tool for commission management up until a certain point – but the scales are easily tipped, and if growth is to be welcomed and easily accommodated, their ability to keep pace with the demands of real acceleration is dubious.

Automation brings the added advantage of drastically reducing the margin for human error within your system, pulling through data points with perfect accuracy, with no lag time or margin for misinterpretation. Working with a system that enables this kind of data handling means you’re going to gain more clarity, and this can be translated into better agency transparency, giving a more accurate and realistic overview of performance and helping to forecast future success on their part.

In terms of the elements of your payment processing commissions that can be processed, look for a solution that enables agent mapping (meaning that the correct sales and transactions will be automatically allocated to the agent responsible) and clawbacks (for easy and accurate remuneration, if a merchant churns.)

Make It Happen

Commissionly is a commission management platform that enables full automation. In terms of its specific suitability for the payment processing sector, you’ll be able to implement ​​manager, agent and sub agent commission hierarchies with ease. Splits between agents in terms of transaction report commissions can also be handled automatically by the platform.

2. Integrate Your CRM  

Knowledge is power – and this is especially true when it comes to the easy interpretation of the data that your commission management systems generate. In order to ensure that you’re getting the most actionable insights from your payment processing commission data, it’s important to avoid silos. The answer? Smart integrations that link your solutions and ensure that information can flow freely, giving you the clarity you need to make progress and improvements.

Integrating your CRM into your commission management solution carries a whole range of benefits. For a start, you’ll gain much better visibility of any emergent trends and patterns – helping you to act swiftly to amplify any positive impact. Conversely, you’ll also be more likely to receive an “early alert” to any developing issues, giving you a chance to take evasive action. Better access to data also means better future forecasting (as previously mentioned, a big benefit when it comes to building up trust and retention amongst your agents.)

Overall, a dependably integrated CRM will enable you to be more operationally efficient, with instant access to to precise stats and data, as and when you need it – all updated in real time with no need for manual input, and guaranteed accuracy.

Make It Happen

Commissionly is designed to integrate perfectly with a wide range CRMs, from Salesforce and Freshsales through to Excel and Google Sheets. So, however you currently manage your CRM data, you’ll be able to rely upon a boost to the clarity and practical insights you’re able to achieve. 

Learn more about how Commissionly is adapted to serve the Payment Processing industry  

3. Formalise Your Reporting Cadence 

Another big benefit that you can bring into play when looking to streamline your payment processing commissions is a more formalised reporting cadence. With easier access to your data, there are many benefits to be gained by scheduling more regular reporting. Having standardised “check in points” helps refine your performance assessment and the adjustment of your forecasts and ongoing strategy.

Time won back via automation can be better leveraged here, as you are released from the tedium of manual input and instead can focus on the areas of your process that would benefit from attention. This is where real strategic improvements can start to be seen – helping drive better revenue outcomes and ensuring that your commission management solution is earning you a great return on investment. 

Make It Happen

Commissionly is designed to make it easy to produce detailed transaction reports for your payment processing commissions. Parameters are fully customisable, and we offer a wide range of custom templates to suit all processors and help with flawless data import and help you identify patterns with ease and confidence.

4. Invest In Your Agents 

Finally, let’s unpack the final piece of the puzzle – the impact that your agents have upon the efficiency and impact of your payment processing operation. Agents’ experience has a big part to play in terms of contributing to your operational effectiveness and efficiency. Their success and performance depends on more than initial onboarding and training, and yet for many operations, this is typically the extent of the investment they’ll experience.

There’s a need to establish loyalty – and as with any commission based model, this depends upon their faith in the opportunity you represent for them. 

Make It Happen

Commissionly gives you the opportunity to actively improve your agent relationships – with time won back through automation, and better insight obtained through improved reporting and integrations. Build a reputation to be proud of, reducing the burden of acquisition, reducing agent churn and building a reliable and experienced network to help your business grow from strength to strength.

Conclusion

With the rapid and ongoing acceleration of digital payments, the payment processing industry looks set to experience many opportunities and challenges in the year that lies ahead. The providers who thrive will be those with the bandwidth to adapt and evolve alongside the industry – not those who are still hindered by manual process and endless, error-prone spreadsheets.

With greater clarity (from easier access to more reliable data) and more time (saved via smart automations) to invest in their agent retention, the providers relying on Commissionly to streamline their Payment Processing Commissions can expect to drive real operational improvements. 

Book a demo to learn more about the ways that Commissionly can bring efficiency and accuracy to your payment processing commission management.

Managing commissions within the merchant services and payment processing industry can rapidly become a significant drain on operational effectiveness. As a key component of your business model, the accurate tracking and reconciliation of terminal sales and transaction commissions is essential. But all too often, issues arise – hampering your ability to scale and impacting the relationship that you’re able to establish and maintain with your active agents. 

In this article, we’ll explore five of the key issues that can commonly occur when it comes to the effective management of payment processing commissions – and suggest a few easy fixes that you might like to consider implementing.

1. Failure To Automate 

There’s a reason that automation tools have dominated within the world of SaaS for the last decade. Extending your capacity in the most reliable and seamless way, automation boosts your bottom line twice: once as it improves your efficiency and again with the reduction you can expect to see in errors.

The transactional world of payment processing and merchant services is a particularly data heavy industry. Working manually with spreadsheets is one solution – but this approach can only scale so far, and ultimately, is going to end up hampering your ability to grow (as well as frustrating your staff and carrying the potential to eat into huge amounts of their time and capacity.)

With so many inputting factors coming into play (especially with multiple payment processors involved) the risk of human error is also fairly significant – and has the potential to be costly. Automation helps solve these problems, leveraging AI and machine learning to provide a truly dependable tracking and management system. Within the realm of commission, it enables you to create workflows that are a match for growing future ambitions.

In the case of Commissionly, imported transactional data will automatically map your agents to the customers MID number, Name or Code. This alone can save untold hours of manual effort. Similarly, in the case of your transaction report commissions, any splits that are required between agents can be set up and handled automatically – reducing the margin for error and giving your team one less process to factor into their individual workflows.

2. Missed Opportunities To Gain Insight From Data 

As previously mentioned, the payment processing and merchant services sector is a data-heavy space, and this can be framed as a challenge to be mitigated – or as an untapped benefit, ready for careful leverage. The sheer amount of information generated by the actions of your agents unlocks the opportunity for deep, actionable insight and ongoing operational efficiencies.

In order to fully capitalize on this valuable stream of data, you’ll need a way to generate clear reports that can highlight areas of potential and flag up issues that require attention  or improvement. Commissionly helps make this process simple, connecting directly to your CRM or a sales platform via a wide range of integrations, including Salesforce, Hubspot, Monday and Zapier. You can also sync to any system leveraging Rest APIs. The outcome? Clarity and control over your data – showing you the next best step, via custom reporting.

3. Ineffective Data Import 

When it comes to mapping and recording transaction commissions (as well as recording additional data points such as terminal sales) one necessity really stands out: flexibility at scale. Business models are unique, and likely in ongoing states of evolution and flux. As a result, transaction reports need the ability to accurately accommodate a wider range of data points. Reports should also be easy to customize, amend and reconfigure.

Within the realm of payment processing, a solution that enables you to easily track and attribute data points such as customer MID numbers, Names or Codes. This is where flexible, customer templating comes into its own. Commissionly offers the ability to structure your pay terminal commissions based on any combination of terminal type, monthly charge, contract length add ons and more.

4. Inefficient Clawback Processes 

Claw back is a necessary evil, and while it’s something we all hope to minimise the need for, the importance of an effective claw back process if a merchant does churn cannot be overstated. Once again, the key word here is scale – as your number of operational agents grows, your ability to keep track of this process with any degree of efficiency or accuracy diminishes.

Improvements to your clawback procedure is about more than just ensuring your own operational efficiency and profitability – it can also play a key role in keeping your agents motivated and informed. Having a dedicated solution in place here plays a role in helping your business attain wider transparency in this field. Additionally, there are clear benefits to having an automated clawback process that syncs into wider reporting.

5. Poor Communication Of Progress And Targets To Agents

We’ve previously touched on transparency, but it should be stressed that the benefits here go beyond the realm of clawbacks. There are big benefits linked to better communication of progress and targets more broadly.

Beyond this, if many other previously time-consuming areas of commission tracking, attribution  and management have been automated and optimized, the time won back can be reinvested into the training, guidance and assistance of agents. This additional contact and education can be optimized via the clarity brought by better reporting and more clearly illuminated trends.

One outcome of working with a dedicated commission management solution such as Commissionly is the ability to set realistic expectations of progression. Forecasted targets can be used to help motivate and (crucially) retain your agents – a big factor in their ongoing loyalty and success with you! Success here means a reduction in your ongoing acquisition costs, and a more experienced and effective agent base.

Side Step Common Payment Processing Commission Issues

As this article has shown, the payments processing industry is plagued by a small handful of 

Common (but persistent) commissioning headaches. By taking action to remedy these problems and apply a long term solution, some significant advantages can be unlocked – unlocking optimized procedures, more internal efficiencies, boosted revenues and valuable insight into ongoing operational performance.

A few tweaks to your operations within the realm of payment processing commission have the impact to send positive, profitable ripples across all levels of your business. With a vertical specialism in the payment processing commissions sector,  Commissionly represents the ideal solution for delivering these changes – bringing benefits that extend far beyond your commissioning departments, via increased efficiency, improved forecasting and data-backed decision making.

Digital.com Reviews: The Best Commission Software of 2021

Digital.com commission software reviews are the result of over 40 hours of research on 50+ commission software companies from across the web. These reviews and their commission software guide help small businesses and startups find the best commission software for their business.

We are proud that Commissionly is listed as one of their Top Picks!

To learn more about how Commissionly can help you eliminate spreadsheets and automate your sales commission processes Contact Us or Request a Demo.

Commission management software provider Commissionly has announced its new service for merchant service providers, ISOs, and payment processors.

The Commissionly Payments platform is a tool created for businesses that need to create reports and manage commission payments on terminal sales, rate agreements and transaction reports.

This versatile platform is tailored towards businesses and individuals working within the payment processing chain.

Commissionly’s payment functions were created with the intention of removing Excel from the equation. The platform has automated many of the traditionally manual tasks, such as Auto Assignment of Merchant IDs – link Merchant IDs to any internal data such as ISOs, Sales Agents, or Merchants. Commissions calculations based on terminal unit sales or transaction volumes with the ability to split between the house and other sales parties.

A full custom reporting engine can output the information Payment companies require to manage the commission payments.

Martin Baker, Commissionly CEO, said: ” We start where processing companies finish – the sales and transaction report. It expands businesses ability to manage and control the inflow of fee data across multiple activities and sources. Clients can use Commissionly to pay their agents and independent contractors in a fraction of the time that it would take to do manually making Commissionly a must-have piece of software for any card payment professionals and ISOs.“

To request more information on the new service, you can book an appointment with a Commissionly Payments Commissions specialist today, by going to their website: https://commissionly.io/commission-management-software-for-merchant-service-providers/

COVID-19 is at the forefront of everybody’s minds – we’ve posted a couple of times about it recently here. Businesses across the world are adapting to the changes that have to be made to survive. It’s important that your sales team retains confidence in your business during these trying times as, while none of us knows what the future holds for many industries, your staff are going to be key to ensuring that you remain in a strong position.

Question is, what can you do to keep business confidence alive?

Sales performance goals: the heart of your company’s future

Sales performance goals are crucial during the lockdown. By updating these goals regularly, your staff will know that there is still every reason to strive to make as many sales as possible and to keep nurturing a rapport with your customers. This will also have a reverse effect on your business success by helping your company not just stay afloat but thrive: the more your sales staff put in, the more the company will achieve, which means your sales staff can keep giving it their all. Keep sales performance goals at the forefront of your strategies and this cycle will only get stronger.

Business confidence starts with leadership

When you update your sales team’s sales performance goals, they’ll see that you’re on the ball, keen to help, and excited about the potential of the future. When you project yourself as a leader that actively backs your staff – and therefore your business – this energy will only spread throughout your teams, whether sales or otherwise, ensuring you know your staff have just as much faith in the business as you do.

The solution to ongoing business confidence

Using Commissionly to create sales performance goals is the easiest way to give strength to your staff and your business. You’ll be able to set new goals whenever you choose, keeping staff motivated and business confidence alive, whatever the upcoming weather.

If you’re currently using a spreadsheet to calculate commission, and you’d like a simpler, more efficient way to manage sales performance, why not consider Commissionly? You can benefit from a free trial with a demonstration on how to improve your sales performance management. With a host of powerful features, like sales territory management, sales quota management, and sales objective management, you’ll soon find yourself wondering how you ever managed with a simple spreadsheet.

When it comes to sales performance goals, there are many different aspects to consider. One of those is the current trading conditions of the industry. For most industries, there are going to be times when there are slow periods.

During these times, it can be hard to motivate your team. Sales teams that aren’t motivated will often fail to meet sales performance goals. And this can be a problem in the long-term.

If this happens, your business’s performance can be worse than expected. And some staff might think they’ll lose their jobs during one month of bad performance.

The key to this is to keep motivation high when times are tough. So, how do you do this? Here are some of the top solutions.

1. Non-monetary rewards

A great option is to add non-monetary rewards. These can be applied to work such as the time spent on the phone, adding new leads to the database, etc. Such a reward need not be linked to the conversion of sales (that is “rewarded” with sales commission), it is rather rewarding tasks that may be neglected. Keep in mind that such tasks can still be monitored in sales performance software.

Some Good examples might be an extra hour off at lunch or food hampers. Having some non-monetary rewards, allow for the effectiveness of the sales commission to still be maintained.

2. Run team-building exercises

Team building exercises can be a great way for your team to come together and face the slow times as a community. They can build communication skills, learn vital selling skills and even have some fun. All of these build on the effectiveness of the sales team.

It’s also good to arrange team-building exercises during quiet periods. Then you won’t disrupt the successful run of sales and restrict the team’s earning potential. It also means they could exceed sales performance goals and feel better about their skills.

3. Good leadership

The importance of leadership is really vital during slow periods. A good leader will continually communicate with their staff and remind them of their skills and/or value during the good and bad times. You can use comparisons to the past year’s slow period and show any sign of sales improvements since then.

Leaders should always be present. Team members can feel more confident when they see the leadership team taking an interest in their everyday work. When out and about, talk to your team and ask them how they are going. You can offer guidance on how they can improve and meet sales performance goals. And if you are unable to be in the office together, then do the same through conference calls, emails, etc. The team needs the communication, while stuck at home, more than ever to get through bad times.

All businesses have good times and bad times. During the good times, you should push them to maximise results. This ensures that during bad times, you can build on the skills of your sales team and keep spirits high, preparing for the next busy season.

Incentive compensation is a form of pay structure which is based upon how the business and its individual employees perform. Essentially, employees receive a base salary with an extra reward (tallied up using a sales compensation calculator) for meeting specified targets. There are multiple performance metrics that can be used to determine which employees qualify for commission.

Create and track incentive compensation

When developing your incentive compensation plan, your decision-makers will need to work hard to create a system which attracts the best sales talent, motivates and encourages the right business decisions. However, incentive compensation plans can become complicated, particularly when they involve several different performance measurements – or if you have different employee levels, for example. Your sales compensation calculator within Commissionly can help speed up the process.

The benefits of incentive compensation

Incentive compensation is incredibly effective when it comes to encouraging desired behaviour in employees. It allows organisations to promote upselling, incentivise customer interaction and the use of a variety of different sales techniques.

Here’s how a sales compensation calculator within our compensation software could help your company to benefit:

Help align your incentives with your business objectives.
• More likely to meet long-term and short-term targets of the business.
• Focus attention on the behaviours and working culture of the business.
• Encourage your teams to plan ahead and highlight any expectations.
• Attract more sales-driven candidates for vacancies within your business.
• Save money related to salary rises through the allocation of funds for when goals are achieved.

Creating the perfect incentive compensation plan

While incentive compensation is a great concept for improving productivity, it can be difficult to implement without the right commission calculation software.

It’s virtually impossible to manage different commission parameters with manual systems or spreadsheets. This is where a sales compensation calculator comes in. With our commission calculation software, your organisation can ensure that employees are rewarded accurately and on time, to help keep them motivated to continue hitting those all-important sales targets.

For more information on how Commissionly could help you to develop your incentive compensation strategy, please do not hesitate to contact us today.

High employee turnover among your sales team can be toxic to your whole business. And unfortunately, it’s an issue that affects a huge number of organisations. There are a number of factors that can be at the root of this problem and, more often than not, they’re linked to sales performance management.

Here are 3 of the most common causes you may need to address;

1. Over-the-top expectations

Sales, by nature, is a high-pressure area to work in and no one ever applied to a sales job expecting an easy ride. However, when your sales team has over-the-top quotas and expectations hanging over their heads, it should be no surprise that people start jumping ship.

Quotas should always be challenging in a way that gets the most from your team. But they should never be impossible.

As a starting point, analyse your sales targets and compare them against your team’s output. From there, you can set targets that will still get great work from your sales team, without sacrificing (vital) morale.

2. Uncompetitive compensation

Compensation is obviously a major factor in sales performance management. With salary and commission being such a fundamental part of sales work, perfectly competent sales managers can be at risk of missing the forest for the trees in this area.

Obviously, the ever-changing landscape of your industry will mean that simply offering higher basic wages or commission is not always an option. But this is never an excuse for poor compensation that isn’t as good or better than what your sales staff can get elsewhere.

Be sure to assess how you’re compensating your staff regularly, both in terms of salary and commission, and various benefits and frills.

3. Poor training

Your bright new prospects won’t last long if they’re not given adequate training. A hardcore sink-or-swim method of sales performance management can make some salespeople thrive, but they will always be the minority. For the rest of your team, this will only cause stress and more errors, leading to a negative snowball effect.

Be sure to invest in thorough, personalised training to get the best results from your team members. More importantly, remind them that they are an asset; worthy of investment and long-term personal development.

Sales compensation is a tricky thing for some companies, who’re reluctant to give away profit. But sales commissions can benefit your company in a number of ways.

Commission is motivating

The idea that staff should prioritise the company above their own interests is a nice one, but it’s simply not grounded in the facts. Motivation is essential if you want staff to perform at their best. Remember that for a lot of people, more money is a strong motivator.

And, naturally, your sales staff are the team you want to motivate the most. Without them, your business can dry up fast.

Commission means more revenue

Companies that object to a commission-led environment usually see the size of commission payments from their industry and wince. However, they’re not thinking in terms of what those commissions really mean.

Imagine paying out $100,000 a year to your top salesman. Now that’s a LOT of money, for sure. To a small business, it’s a massive payment. Nigh impossible. But now imagine that this salesman has made you $2,000,000 in revenue; then, $100,000 is just his cut of 5%. Would you get rid of that salesman? Of course not!

Don’t think of commission… think of just how much bigger the revenue will be to the company.

Commission gives more certainty

Measuring results gives employees and companies more certainty. It’s motivating for staff to know exactly what they’re contributing to the company. This motivation is intrinsically linked to the company’s success.

Reviewing staff performance for many businesses is too subjective. They grade staff according to how they ‘think’ they’ve performed. This can be awkward for the company, and frustrating for the staff member who’s put in years of extra work but doesn’t get rewarded because ‘subjectively’ the company isn’t sure how their work is paying off.

Commissions require specific tracking, which lets everyone know where they stand.

Commission attracts the best staff

The best salespeople thrive on competition and measured performance. They want to excel, and to be rewarded for excelling.

In a commission environment, you’re giving your staff everything they need to thrive and reap the rewards. The best salespeople will go where the rewards are, so you give yourself a better chance of attracting them. Commissionly is the first step.

When it comes to making sales performance goals, staff need every advantage. While phoning endless leads, whether they’re hot or cold, is the traditional route, it doesn’t always yield the best results. It can also be very stressful.

Modern technology can come to the rescue. For managers, there is excellent commission software, and for salespeople, there are new ways to generate leads and build strong connections that can reduce the sales process and improve conversions.

So, in what ways can modern technology be used to help staff meet sales performance goals? Here are three ways.

1. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a very common way that sales people can actually find leads online. The social media channel has a lot of important information on it that can help identify and communicate with social media users who are decision-makers within their businesses or homes.

Just a few minutes a day and salespeople can connect with dozens of people and communicate with them quickly. Salespeople can prepare three or four standard messages they can use to introduce themselves and the services offered. These can be used to start conversations.

2. Blogging

Research has shown that blogging can result in higher lead generation (up to 67% more leads than not blogging). And sales people can get involved. If they write just one blog post per week, they can get traffic to the company website. At the end of the blog post, they should include their contact information. And then, when people contact them, they can initiate the sales process.

Alternatively, salespeople can subscribe readers to an email list they can use to start the process of selling to them.

It should be noted that the more times that a company blogs, the more sales they’re likely to get. To get the best results, businesses should be blogging at least every other day. But, if there are multiple sales people within a company, this can be easily achieved.

3. Quizzes

People love quizzes and salespeople can use quiz technology to find out more about prospects and collect contact information. Quizzes can be developed for free using website software and other apps.

At the end of the quizzes, the contact details can be collected and the salesperson can then speak to the person.

By using the above three options, salespeople can quickly find more leads, with more information about the contact than is possible through cold calling or using an old database. Then, using this information, salespeople are more likely to meet sales performance goals.