“What’s so great about this little Commission Calculator?”

The answer comes from a comical story. When my brokerage grew from 7 agents to 40 within a year, I knew we need real estate software to keep everything running efficiently. In particular, we needed a better commission calculation and tracking system than the Google Sheets I was using. The first commission calculator and payment tracking system we selected after engaging in several sales demos seemed great. So we hired them. Unfortunately, as we were learning and setting-up their system we noticed the final commission numbers their system gave were always a bit different than what Google Sheets method provided.

It took numerous calls to get to the bottom of it. Their system couldn’t understand that more than type of deduction might be taken out of gross commission. For example, say your brokerage takes 10% of gross and you owe a referral that is 20% of gross. Seems easy enough.

'Our Math'
Gross Commission 
- Referral Adj. (GC * 20%)
- Brokerage Adj. (GC * 10%)
= Commission to be Paid
----------------------
$10,000 Gross Commission
- $2,000 referral (10,000 * 20%)
- $1,000 brokerage (10,000 * 10%)
= $7,000 Commission to be Paid

Easy enough, right?

But unfortunately this $500/month commission system we had just paid for was hard-coded to deduct the Brokerage’s 10% out of what remained of Gross Commission, after the referral was deducted. It’s a minor thing, but it didn’t jive with how we ran commission calculations at our brokerage. The sales rep for the commission system had the audacity to say, “your math is wrong” on a support call.

'Their Math'
Gross Commission 
- Referral Adj. (GC * 20%)
= Remaining Commission

Remaining Commission
- Brokerage Adj. (RC * 10%)
= Commission to be Paid
----------------------
$10,000 Gross Commission
- $2,000 Referral (10,000 * 20%)
= $8,000 Remaining Commission

$8,000 Remaining Commission
- $800 brokerage (8,000 * 10%)
= $7,200 Commission to be Paid

Our math wasn’t wrong, we just needed a system more flexible to run calculations the way we had been doing so for year. Their system couldn’t be fixed and the next system with as many features and could do ‘our math’ was over $1,500/mth. So we spend the next year writing our own in-house commission calculator / tracking / payment system. We’re in the process of re-developing that commission system into DashLoops as an add-on feature.

-Terry Peterson, Founder