There are many potential reasons why sales or commission dollars do not show up properly in reports. Most can be attributed into how the reports are read, or errors or omissions during the import processes.
February sales do not match the sales for commissions I imported in February?
A: That’s normal. Repfabric’s “Sales reports” (from the menu) are based on Invoice date of the transaction, not the Check date of when the Commissions were entered into Repfabric. Alternatively, Commission Report operate on Check Date, which is the date the agency records the commission income. That income may span multiple months of invoices with different invoice dates. It is fairly common that one commission check contains invoices from a few months, especially for lines that pay when they get paid by the customer.
If the differences between the sales reports and commission reports are not the problem, most likely there is an issue in either the source information or configuration of Repfabric. Here is a list to check in sequential order:
1. Is there an alias problem? Is the record pointing to the wrong company?
Is the company listed in the sales or commission record aliased incorrectly to the wrong company in Repfabric? The best way to check this is to review the imported records in the Re-alasing screen within the Import transactions menu. From Re-alias, you can check the original company from the import record and see what company it matched to in Repfabric. If there is an error in the matching, check the following in the “Alias Browser” in the Aliasing option in Import Transactions.
The aliasing logic for a new record works as follows:
1. Is there a Manufacturer Ship-to Number? If there is MSN in your import map, a common problem is when the same ship to number is used for multiple locations of a company (really making that the sold to number, right?). The company selected the first time aliasing gets assigned that Manufacturer Shipto Number, and all future rows of records that have that Manufacturer Ship to Number will alias to that first selected Company (regardless if the company names don’t match). The fix is to delete the alias in the alias browser with that Manufacturer’s shipto Number, and reimport without using that column (since multiple shiptos share the same MSN).
2. Next the system looks for Company name + city +zip fields
3. Company name +zip
4. Company + city
5. Company name only. This match can be a problem when one company name in a record can match multiple locations of a company. Again, the first company location you alias it to during the first aliasing process is the company location that all future imports will assign the records to. The fix is to do one of the following: a) if you need to cherry pick each record one by one to assign to a specific location, select the “Do Not Alias” option when aliasing for the first time. This is the least efficient for future imports, but allows you to assign sales or commission records one by one during every future import. b) consider modifying your spreadsheet to define the company locations prior to import. This makes aliasing work as its normal process, but again is tedious requiring month pre-analysis and updates to the original import sheet. c) consider using part number aliasing if you get part number level detail. By selecting “Alias by part number”, you alias part number 1234 to company location 1, while part number 2345 you can alias to company location 2. This approach works when you have part numbers in your import sheet and those part numbers can be correlated to specific company locations that “caused” the sales. d) You can always manually enter the spreadsheet, choosing the appropriate company location. Again, tedious however.
2. Are exceptions influencing the output improperly?
After aliasing is complete and you have confirmed the sales and commission dollars are pointing to the right account, the next area to check is exceptions. There are two different types: Customer or Manufacturer Exceptions, and Part Number Exceptions.
Customer or Manufacturer exceptions redirect sales and commission credit based on rules set up in the Customer Exceptions menu area of data management. Customer execptions allow you to credit or pay sales and commissions to sales people based on which line it is, which customer it is, or which group of customers it is. An example – “For all customers of Manufacturer A, pay sales and commissions at X split rate between the company and this other sales person/team.”
Check to make sure customer exceptions are not overriding the Basic splits for the sales team you were expecting.
Are part number exceptions overriding your expected results? Similar to Customer and Manufacturer exceptions, part number exceptions are used to listen for a part number in future import records, and when found, redirect sales and commission credits to another sales team. Check your part number exceptions to make sure they are behaving properly for both percentage rates, and direct matches of the part number listed in the spreadsheet compared to the part number listed in Repfabric. Small difference is punctuation and sometimes leading and trailing whitespaces can make part number exceptions get missed.
3. Are sales teams assigned to the right company and with the correct percentages?
By far the most common reason besides missed aliases, the configuration of the sales teams and the companies they are assigned to are the cause of numbers not showing up correctly in reports.
Check the Sales team assigned to the Company
The sales team is assigned on the company record to which imported sales and commission are matched during the aliasing process. The aliasing process takes the sales record and assigns it based on that match to the sales team. The Sales team usually has multiple members, including the lead outside person whom you want to credit for the sales in your reports. If you expect sales for Acme Company to be credit to Tom, is the sales team on its company record assigned to Tom’s sales team? If it is not, Tom’s numbers will not reflect the sales and commissions for Acme company.
Check the percentages assigned to the sales team
For splitting commissions between the house and one or more sales people, if the problem is not the customer’s sales team assignment, but the credited percentage amounts of sales or commissions applied to the house and/or individuals, check the commission percentages allocated to the sales team assigned to the customer. If you are expecting Tom to get 25% of the agency commission applied to his personal wallet (in Commissions>Sales Rep reports), but instead he is received some other percentage, this is due most often to improper percentages set in the Sales team for Tom assigned to this customer.
Advanced Features
Repfabric has several advanced features such as the ability to split commissions between purchasers and specifier customers, such as OEMs and CEMS or Distribution Centers and Distribution Branches that require additional troubleshooting. Please see articles related to these topics for more information.
If you still can’t figure out what is happening after troubleshooting using the steps above, please send your source import file with comments about the issue and the specific troubleshooting steps you have taken (so we can not repeat them to answer you faster) to support@repfabric.com