Auditing sales reports and commission payouts can be a daunting task, especially for businesses with large sales teams or complex compensation structures. Manual auditing is error-prone, time-consuming, and becomes even more difficult as businesses scale.
The launch of AI-integrated commission management software has made the complex task of auditing a simple and straightforward process that can be done in a fraction of the time. In fact, AI-driven tools can completely automate the task of auditing for administrators, bringing any potential issues found in sales data or reports right in front of the administrator in seconds. This makes AI automated auditing an extremely desirable feature of commission management software.
The Challenges of Manually Auditing Sales Reports
Prone to errors: In most cases, administrators have to pull data from several different sources and merge all the data into a single report. This task of merging commission data from different sources can be incredibly prone to error.
Each data source is an additional variable that administrators are responsible for ensuring gets accurately incorporated into the end sales numbers. For every manual step of combining data sources, there is a potential for a mistake. And once a mistake is made, it can be like a needle in the haystack to find where the mistake was made, if it’s even noticed before the cycle is processed. If there is a mistake in the final processed commission cycle, it can lead to incorrect commission payouts, which can lead to frustration among your team.
Time-Consuming: Auditing sales reports manually is an extremely tedious and time-consuming task. An administrator’s time is extremely valuable, and when they are forced to pour over thousands of data lines to review and audit reports, it takes their attention away from other more important tasks. It’s not uncommon for the entire process to take multiple days of the administrator’s time to process just one cycle.
When mistakes are identified, it adds a mountain of extra work for administrators to isolate where the error occurred and to take steps to correct it on all the necessary reports and outputs. This extra work translates to hours of focus dedicated to rectifying widespread errors.
Scalability: All the above-mentioned challenges are problematic enough, but as businesses grow, these challenges become even more difficult and pose a bigger burden on the administrative team responsible for managing commissions.
While the increased sales volume is great news for your business, it can be extremely tiring and stressful for your administration to keep up with the new volume of sales data being processed. Traditional auditing can be completely unsustainable in these cases where growing sales teams results in exponential line items added to sales reports.
Additionally, as companies expand, it’s very common for commission plans to be restructured. When additional variables and rules are added to compensation plans, it adds complexity that the administrator on the backend has to manage to ensure commission calculations and reports are accurate.
How AI Software Automates Sales Report Auditing
AI-integrated commission management software is a game-changer for streamlining sales report auditing through automation. The days of spending endless hours carefully and meticulously pouring through lines of sales data are over. AI takes the task completely out of your hands and here’s how it works:
- Automated Data Analysis: AI-driven tools work to automatically analyze sales data from the various sources an organization uses, such as CRM and accounting systems. This helps ensure that the data from each source is accurate before the actual commission calculation occurs, giving the administrator extra reassurance that the data they are using to process their commission cycle is valid and error-free.
- Pattern Recognition: AI algorithms are able to use historical data patterns to identify any irregularities or inconsistencies in sales reports, such as missing data, duplicate entries, or unusually high commission amounts. By isolating these factors, administrators are able to hone in on potential issues right away without having to go through pages of reports.
- Predictive Analytics: In a similar fashion, AI can also use historical data to help administrators predict future sales trends and commission expenses. Sales forecasting and budgeting reports can be extremely difficult to put together manually, but with AI, companies can allocate their budgets and strategize sales efforts more accurately and efficiently.
- Workflow Automation: Every organization has a specific protocol or workflow that administrators follow prior to processing commissions. An example of this may be having sales managers review and approve reports for the reps they oversee before the data is used to process commission cycles. All of this can be automated with AI technology by automatically sending reports to managers to approve within a specific due date. This approval process itself is stored electronically and can be automatically audited. So, if one of your sales managers forgets to approve the report, administrators will be notified prior to processing commission payments.
Audit Automatically with AI-Driven Commission Management Software
The ways in which AI technology can be leveraged to automate aspects of commission management are numerous. One of the most important aspects of commission management is ensuring that payments to sales reps are accurate and AI’s presence in commission management software makes this task so much easier.
By using AI-integrated commission management software, you will drastically cut down on time spent auditing sales reports while feeling confident that the data you are using to calculate payments is valid and correct.
Contact us or schedule a demo so we can show you firsthand how Core can automate your commission management processes.