Managing commissions doesn’t end when the calculations are complete. Once commissions have been calculated and processed, there’s still the work of ensuring proper communication systems are in place to keep your team informed.
Of course, your sales reps need their commission reports, and your leadership teams will likely want revenue reports, but more often than not, commission communications extend far beyond this.
Even with an online portal to access commission reports themselves, reps need to be notified when there are new pay details to review or whether their commission dispute has been approved or denied. A new sales rep will need onboarding information, and your RevOps teams may need to view the latest sales forecasting report.
For many teams, these communications are handled manually through a combination of spreadsheets, email drafts, and recurring calendar reminders. The commission process may be automated, but the communication around it is still taking time.
That’s where automated, customized email templates can make a difference.
With the ability to pre-program emails directly within your commission management platform, you can create different templates for different recipients and situations, then send them in bulk when they’re needed. Instead of recreating the same emails every commission cycle, your team can build the communication once and reuse it whenever necessary.
Why Automating Commission Communication Matters
As mentioned above, commission reporting often involves more than simply generating a report.
Once a commission cycle is complete, your admin may need to:
- Generate individual commission or payment reports
- Determine which employees should receive each report
- Send reports to employees and/or managers
- Prepare separate communications for leadership
- Keep employees notified about their commission dispute status
- Follow up with new users during onboarding
- Answer questions about when or how reports are distributed
When these steps are handled manually, even a relatively simple commission process can become time-consuming.
Automating these communications helps create a more consistent process while reducing the amount of administrative work required each commission cycle. No more manually inputting email addresses or copying and pasting templates into new emails, hoping that they are addressed to the correct person.
Most importantly, it helps ensure that communication happens the same way every time.
Use Cases for Automated Commission Communications
1. Send Commission Reports in Bulk
One of the most obvious and straightforward applications is automating the distribution of commission reports. Rather than manually creating an email for each employee, you can create a standardized email template and use it to distribute individualized reports in bulk.
With just a few keystrokes, you can send your entire sales team their individualized payment detail reports, managers the commission details for their direct reports, and leadership the revenue metrics they need – all at once.
The email itself can be customized based on the recipient, while the underlying reports remain individualized. This is particularly useful for organizations with large sales teams, multiple departments, or different groups of employees who need different commission information.
2. Automate Commission Dispute Notifications
Aside from sending commission reports, handling communications surrounding commission disputes is the next most time-consuming part of manual communication processes.
A typical dispute process will usually involve several different notifications. An employee submits a dispute, the manager reviews it and passes it along to the admin team, the admin team looks into the issue, and the employee eventually needs to be notified of the outcome.
Without automation, that can mean sending individual emails at every step of the dispute process. Instead, you can create templates for each step.
- The employee submits the dispute and receives an automated email confirming that it has been received.
- The manager is notified that a dispute is pending and, if it can’t be immediately reconciled, it can be escalated to the admin team.
- Both the manager and employee can be notified when the dispute moves to the next stage.
- Once the admin team reviews the dispute, they can approve or deny it, triggering a final notification to the appropriate parties and letting everyone know the issue has been resolved.
This process not only keeps communication automated but also improves it by streamlining the process and creating greater transparency for all involved.
3. Improve the New User Onboarding Experience
When someone is added to your sales team, you can easily onboard them to your commission management platform with a customized email giving them all the information they need to seamlessly join their team, such as:
- A welcome message
- Instructions for accessing the platform
- Information about reviewing commission reports
- Instructions for submitting commission disputes
- Important deadlines
- Links to training or documentation
- Contact information for questions
Instead of sending these instructions manually every time someone joins the platform, you can create a standard and consistent onboarding email that your team can reuse. This also helps ensure that every new user receives the same essential information.
The Importance of Keeping Commission Communication Consistent
When multiple people are responsible for managing commissions, communication can easily vary from one person to another. One administrator may include detailed instructions, while another may send a two-line message with an attachment.
Creating pre-programmed email templates provides a standard starting point, so that your team can establish consistent messaging for recurring situations, including:
- Commission report distribution
- Commission approvals
- Dispute resolutions
- New user onboarding
- Report availability
- Review deadlines
- Policy or process reminders
That doesn’t mean every email has to sound robotic or impersonal. Templates can still be customized to fit your company’s communication style while eliminating the need to start from scratch.
This also allows your entire team to keep a record of what types of communications were sent and when.
Other Ways to Use Automated Email Templates
Once you have the ability to create reusable, recipient-specific email templates, there are plenty of other ways to incorporate them into your commission process.
For example, you could create templates for:
- Commission approval notifications: Notify managers or leadership when a commission cycle is ready for review or has been approved.
- Report availability: Let employees know when their latest commission report is available to review.
- Missing information: Notify employees or managers when additional information is needed before a commission can be finalized.
- Commission deadlines: Remind employees about upcoming deadlines to review statements or submit disputes.
- New plan or compensation updates: Communicate changes to commission plans, compensation structures, or other relevant processes.
- Recurring management reports: Distribute recurring commission summaries to department heads or leadership teams without recreating the email each time.
- Audit or exception notifications: Notify the appropriate team when a commission record requires additional review or attention.
You can streamline and automate nearly any email correspondence your commission admin team manages, helping save significant time and reduce repetitive work.
Commission Automation Doesn’t Stop at the Calculation
Communication processes that depend on admins manually generating reports, checking recipients, preparing emails, attaching documents, answering questions, and following up on disputes all add additional administrative work to an already time-consuming process.
With Core, teams can free up their inboxes by automating nearly every type of commission-related communication, whether it’s sending individualized pay detail reports in bulk, onboarding new employees, or addressing disputes from employees. All communication is centralized, standardized, and completely automated.
Schedule a demo to see how Core’s automated email features can streamline your commission communications.