Choosing the base: Profit, Revenue, or Remaining
What each deduction/commission base means — Total Profit, Company Revenue, and Remaining — and how the wrong base changes payouts.
Whenever you set a percentage — a deduction or a commission — you also choose the base it multiplies. Picking the wrong base is the most common cause of numbers being off, so it's worth understanding the three options.
The three bases
| Base | What the % is taken from |
|---|---|
| Total Profit | The full profit line on the report, before any vendor split or deductions. |
| Company Revenue | Your net revenue after the vendor split (Total Profit × Company Split %). Equal to Total Profit when the split is 100%. |
| Remaining | The running balance at this point in the waterfall — after every deduction placed above this one. Also shown as Net after deductions. |
| A custom field | A figure read straight from the report file — e.g. a reported revenue or fee column you mapped yourself. See Custom fields. |
Why "Remaining" is special
Remaining is relative to position. A deduction based on Remaining uses whatever is left after the deductions above it — so both its value and the order of the stack matter.
Example. Revenue is $800. A $50 software fee sits above a 10% affiliate:
- Affiliate base = Remaining → 10% of ($800 − $50) = $75
- Affiliate base = Revenue → 10% of $800 = $80
Same percentage, different base, $5 difference — and it compounds down the stack. This is exactly the "10% of the remainder" behavior you usually want for stacked affiliate/partner cuts.
Which base should I use?
- Software / processing fees: usually a fixed $ (no base), placed high in the stack.
- Affiliate / partner cuts that stack: Remaining, so each is taken on the balance after the ones above.
- A cut meant to be off gross revenue regardless of fees: Revenue.
- A cut off a number the vendor reports directly (not profit or remaining): a custom field mapped from that column.
- Agent commissions: most commonly Remaining (net after deductions), but some agreements use Profit or Revenue — set per agreement. See Commission agreements.
The Profit-vs-Revenue guardrail
Income types have a Reports nature — Profit-based or Revenue-only. If a stream is Revenue-only (there's no profit figure, only revenue), SplitRun blocks "% of Profit" for it, because that number wouldn't mean anything. If you see a base flagged as Invalid, switch it to Revenue or Remaining. (Existing agreements aren't changed silently — they're flagged for you to fix deliberately.)
Rule of thumb
If a percentage should be "off what's left," use Remaining. If it should be "off the top," use Revenue (or Profit, when a profit figure exists). When in doubt, check the live worked example on the data source page — it recomputes as you change the base.