Commission Tracker
Work out what every rep has earned — including accelerators above quota — then keep it running live for the whole team.
How sales commission is calculated
A flat plan is one multiplication: deal value × commission rate. A $40,000 deal at 8% pays $3,200. Most teams outgrow that quickly, because a flat rate pays the same on the deal that got a rep to 60% of quota as it does on the one that took them to 130%.
That is what a tiered plan fixes. Revenue up to quota pays a base rate; revenue above it pays an accelerator. Take a $120,000 quota with 5% base and 8% above. A rep who closes $150,000 earns 5% of the first $120,000 ($6,000) plus 8% of the $30,000 over the line ($2,400) — $8,400 in total, against $7,500 on a flat 5%. The extra $900 is the part that changes behaviour in the last week of the quarter.
The calculator above runs both. Leave the accelerator equal to the base rate and it behaves as a flat plan; raise it and the split happens automatically at the quota line.
What a commission tracker should record
The calculator above works at the rep level, which is what you need for a running total. When you move to a deal-level record — the thing payroll actually reconciles against — these are the columns that matter:
| Column | Why it is there |
|---|---|
| Rep | Groups every deal to the person who gets paid for it. |
| Deal / account | Makes a disputed line traceable back to something in the CRM. |
| Close date | The single most-skipped column. Without it you cannot filter to a month or quarter, and the sheet becomes an ever-growing flat list. |
| Deal value | The commissionable amount — net of discount, and excluding tax and pass-through costs. |
| Rate | Kept per line, not hard-coded in the formula, so split deals and one-off SPIFFs do not break the model. |
| Commission | Deal value × rate. Calculated, never typed. |
| Quota & attainment | Lets you compare reps who carry different numbers, and drives the accelerator threshold. |
For the spreadsheet version of this — the SUMIFS setup, a worked tiered formula, and Google Sheets and Excel instructions — see the free commission tracker template.
Where a commission spreadsheet stops working
The math is not the hard part. A spreadsheet handles the math fine. Two other things break it.
The first is maintenance. Someone owns the file, and updating it is nobody's actual job. It stays current for two or three weeks after the quarter starts and then drifts, until it is rebuilt in a rush before payroll.
The second is visibility, and it is the expensive one. The rep who would push for one more deal cannot see how close they are without asking someone to send the file. A commission number that only finance can see does not motivate anyone — it just gets reconciled.
A shared live tracker fixes the second problem, and mostly fixes the first, because reps update their own line. Everyone opens the same link; the standings are current because the people with the newest information are the ones entering it.
Tracking commissions live instead
A live commission board is a leaderboard with money as the score. Add each rep, set the board to display currency, and share one link. Reps log deals from their phone, the ranking re-sorts itself, and the board goes on a TV on the sales floor or gets pinned in Slack.
Teams that would rather not put individual earnings on a wall track deal count, revenue, or quota attainment instead, and keep the dollar figures in the private admin view. The competitive effect comes from the ranking, not from the amounts.
The same board runs a monthly contest, a quarterly race, or a year-long sales leaderboard. If you are designing the plan itself rather than tracking it, sales contest ideas covers the formats that work.
Commission tracking FAQ
Related tools & resources
Keep the commission board live
One shared link the whole team can open. Reps log their own deals, the ranking updates on any screen.
