Creating a Commission

This article will cover OpenSolar's Commission feature which allows you to intelligently set up Commissions for your salespeople that will automatically apply based on the user that is assigned to the project (note that the assigned user defaults to the user that created the project, but this can also be updated in the manage page). 

To get started with Commissions, navigate to Control > Pricing & Payments > Commissions.

Then you can click to create a new Commission:

From here you can set all of the fields for the Commission:

Title - This is the title of the commission which will be shown in the design area when it is either automatically or manually applied.

Commission base percentage (%) - This is the percentage of the base price (the price without adders/discounts or price overrides, but including price adjustments) that the commission will be calculated to be. So if the base price is $30,000 and you enter 5 here it would calculate the commission as 0.05 * 30,000 = $1,500.

Commission base price ($) - This is the fixed amount that would be added onto the commission on top of the base percentage commission amount. NOTE that this would not be restricted by the "Max Additional Commission Amount" field below.

Surcharge (%) - This field determines what percentage of the surcharge above the base price will be added to the commission. So say this field is set to 10% and the base price is $30,000 for the system. If the salesperson adds an extra $5,000 adder then they will get an extra 0.1 * $5,000 = $500 in commission.

Discount (%) - This field determines what percentage of the discount below the base price will be taken from the commission. So say this field is set to 100% and the base price is $30,000 for the system. If the salesperson removes $2,000 from the system price then they will lose 1 * $2,000 = $2,000 in commission. NOTE that the minimum commission amount is $0. 

Max Additional Commission Amount ($) - This field is linked to the "Surcharge %" field and imposes a restriction on how large that can be. So if this field is set to $3,000, then a 5% surcharge even on a $100,000 increase to the system price would be a maximum of $3,000 on top of the base commission.

Team members this commission applies to - This field determines which team members this commission will automatically apply to if they are the assigned user on the project. NOTE that each user can only have a maximum of ONE commission assigned to them. If you try to assign a commission to a user that already has another commission assigned to them then you will get a warning message. You can also choose to override the commission that is being is used in the project that you are on by going to the Design > pricing tab and selecting from the commissions in the dropdown. You can also choose to set the commission amount manually or apply no commission.

Is archived - Commissions that are applied on projects are restricted from being deleted as they would impact the calculations for that project. However you can Archive commissions which means that they will not show in the list of commissions that are selectable for a project and will be removed from the list you see in Control. If a commission that is archived is already used on a project, it will not be removed from that project and instead remain and show (Archived) next to the title in the dropdown. If you wish to see the list of archived commissions in Control and possibly un-archive any you can do this by clicking on the "Show Archived" button in the top right of the commissions list in Control.

Applying a Commission

Based on the values in the "Team members this commission applies to" and the assigned team member for a project, commissions will automatically apply. You can see which commission is being automatically applied in the Design tab underneath the Pricing tab: 

In this dropdown you can choose to either select a different commission for this system OR you can also choose to apply no commission OR you can choose to override the commission amount and enter one manually. 

Calculating commissions and adjusting in design

The final commission is calculated based on two main inputs: 

1. The "base" price before any price adders/overrides are applied (but including price adjustments)
2. The "final" price WITH any adders/overrides

The commission is then calculated as:

[Commission_base_percentage] * [Base_price] + [Commission_base_price] 

and then IF the "final" price is ABOVE the "base" price then ADD:

[Surcharge_percentage] * ( [Final_price] - [Base_price] )**

**up to a maximum of the "maximum additional commission amount"

OR if the "final" price is BELOW the "base" price then ADD: 

[Discount_percentage] * ( [Final_price] - [Base_price] )**

**down to a minimum of zero.

To adjust the Price adders/discounts, this can be done here in Design > Pricing:

To add price overrides you can go here in Design > Pricing: 

Filtering for projects with a certain commission

In the projects list page you can filter to find which projects use a certain commission by clicking on the "Filter" button in the top right.

Then choose the "Commission Used" option and select the commission which you would like to filter for. 

Commission amount in project CSV download

You can download your list of projects by clicking on the "Download" button on the bottom left of the projects list. This will download the details of your projects as CSV file. NOTE that if you download a list of more than 100 projects you will get a CSV that includes less data. If you want to get a detailed report of the projects (including the commission) you will need to download less than 100 projects at a time. You can do this by adding filters to the projects list and downloading the filtered list. For example you could add filters for when the project was created or what commission is used etc. Then when the list is <100 projects you will be able to see the detailed info such as the commission used and the amount. 
The relevant columns are:

• commission_title
• commission_amount