Commission agreements & effective dates

A commission agreement is the record of what an agent earns on a vendor or income type: the percentage, the base, and the dates it applies to. Agreements are the source of truth for every commission number — assigning an agent to a merchant says who earns; the agreement says how much.

Add or edit an agreement

1. Open Agents → the agent → the Vendor Agreements card.
2. Click Add Agreement (or edit an existing row).
3. Set:
   • Vendor and Income Type it applies to.
   • Commission % — e.g. 50%.
   • Base — Profit, Revenue, or Remaining (net after deductions). See Choosing the base.
   • Effective date — when the rate starts.
   • Expiry date — optional; blank means no expiry.
4. Save. The rate now applies to every merchant that agent is assigned to under that vendor/income type.

Effective dates do the heavy lifting

Setting an effective date in the past lets SplitRun apply the rate to earlier months automatically. Set a rate effective January 1, upload January–March, and all three months calculate correctly — no need to touch each month. This is why back-loading a few months of data "just works."

• An agreement only pays within its effective → expiry window.
• An expired agreement pays $0 — a common cause of an agent showing "not earning." Check the dates first.

The "Effective from" field defaults to your earliest data. New agreements, overrides, and deductions now default their Effective from date to the earliest period you have report data for — not the current month. So when you configure in, say, July to reconcile April–June, new records cover those months automatically. Before, they defaulted to the current month and silently missed the back periods you were reconciling (you had to remember to backdate every one). You can still change the date to whatever you need; if you only want a rate to start this month, set it forward.

Changing a rate (without breaking history)

When an agent's rate changes, don't overwrite the old one — create a new rate effective from the change date. SplitRun closes the previous agreement (expiry = day before the new one) and starts the successor, keeping the old rate for historical recalculation. Past months keep their old rate; new months use the new one, with no double-paying.

Plans, SPIFs, and agreements — how they relate

• Commission Plans (the Plans page) are a way to define a rate structure once and assign many agents to it — useful when lots of reps share the same rates. A plan has base rates per income type and a list of assigned agents, each with effective dates.
• Agreements are the per-agent, per-vendor rates described above — the most direct way to set what one person earns.
• Incentives are bonus programmes layered on top of commission — a standing recurring bonus, or a bonus per N new merchants boarded. They have their own Incentives item in the sidebar (no longer under Plans).
• AI plan builder (Plans → New / Advanced): describe a compensation structure in plain English and SplitRun drafts the rules for you to review and save.

For a single ISO-style book, per-agent agreements are usually all you need; plans and SPIFs help when you're managing many reps on shared structures.

After a change

Any agreement change recalculates the affected periods. See Recalculating commissions.