Sales departments have long used commissions to incentivize workers and produce more revenue for their company. When used consistently, commissions work, which is why they’re so common.
But if you calculate your sales compensation on a spreadsheet or (gasp) by hand, the chances of making a mistake increase dramatically. Sales commission software automatically calculates commission and payouts based on custom company rules, and reducing error is one of its biggest selling points.
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The best sales commission software will offer the following features:
- Ability to track and input individual sales figures
- Accounting and distribution of incentive-based payments through direct payments or data exports to accounting systems
- Custom settings for role type, location, company tenure, and sale type
- Reporting and analytics to improve outcomes
In this article, we’ll look at some of the top solutions sold either as standalone sales commission tools, or as features built into a larger sales platform.
Integrated sales commission software systems
As part of larger CRM or CPQ system, these options help sales teams track their sales process and calculate commissions from a single platform.
Commissionly.io: Best for small business usability
SAP Callidus Cloud: Best for enterprise scalability
Iconixx Sales: Best for complex sales plans
QCommission: Best for industry-specific needs
Xactly Incent: Best for advanced analytics
Performio: Best for comprehensive integration
Commissionly.io – Best for small business usability
Pros
Cons
- Real-time commission tracking: Commissionly.io provides a robust platform where businesses can monitor commissions in real-time, delivering transparency and instant insights.
- Sales forecasting: With built-in predictive tools, the platform offers advanced sales forecasting capabilities, enabling small businesses to project future revenues more accurately.
- CRM integration: Commissionly.io bolsters productivity through seamless integration with popular CRM systems, allowing for a streamlined sales process.
- Customizable dashboards: The software offers customizable dashboards, empowering users to tailor their view according to individual or business needs, enhancing data visibility and comprehension.
Admin only access: $15/user/month
Admin & sales rep access: $20/user/month
Commissionly.io earns a top spot for its unparalleled usability and feature set, tailored for small businesses. Its strength lies in its user-friendly interface, combined with its cost-effectiveness that makes it ideal for smaller enterprises. Real-time commission tracking, predictive sales forecasting, seamless CRM integration, and customizable dashboards deliver a comprehensive suite that facilitates improved sales operations. Furthermore, its cloud-based nature ensures rapid deployment, thereby quickly enabling businesses to get up and running. For small businesses seeking a sales commission solution, Commissionly.io stands out as a prime choice.
Build your small business sales targets in Commissionly, and the sales commission tool will pull metrics from those targets to calculate flat or tiered commission plans. Apply the target to your sales team and assign a commission calculation to the target, then all team members who work that target receive the same calculations, automatically.
Commissionly primarily functions as a sales CRM, but the inclusion of sales targets and commission rates can simplify your calculations. GetScorecard’s integrated tools also let you see in-depth and granular reports that show your team which strategies are successful and where they have room to grow.
SAP CallidusCloud- Best for enterprise scalability
Pros
Cons
- Lead to Money suite: The Lead to Money suite in CallidusCloud offers a comprehensive set of solutions from lead generation to money realization, creating a streamlined sales process.
- Territory and quota management: CallidusCloud features an advanced territory and quota management system, allowing companies to assign sales territories and set quotas efficiently.
- Incentive compensation management (ICM): CallidusCloud’s ICM is designed to motivate employees and drive sales performance by providing transparent and fair incentives.
- Sales performance manager (SPM): SPM offers tools to align sales objectives with business strategy, enabling sales teams to meet and exceed their targets.
- Professional Plan: $50/user/month
- Enterprise Plan: $90/user/month
- Performance Plan: $110/user/month
CallidusCloud’s comprehensive suite of solutions, from sales enablement to performance management, establishes it as the go-to for enterprise scalability. Its integration with SAP modules offers a robust, interconnected platform for large enterprises. The tool’s machine learning capabilities provide advanced sales forecasting, while its multi-currency support enables global operations. Despite its complexity requiring sufficient training and resource allocation for implementation, the depth and breadth of its functionality, coupled with customizable workflows, make CallidusCloud a compelling choice.
CallidusCloud’s sales performance management solution helps you automate tracking, calculation and payouts of commissions. Set quotas and territories based on historical data, rather than just guessing. Automated sales training and on-boarding takes your new hires and veteran sellers through important employee development when they need it, without requiring oversight from HR or managers. You can even connect to the CallidusCloud SalesMotivate sales gamification tool to boost sales or learning management through gamified inventive programs.
This is a higher-priced system that charges per user with a minimum user count at each payment level, but extensive level of integration makes CallidusCloud worth the price point, especially for high-pressure enterprise sales environments.
Dedicated sales commission calculators
To say that these standalone platforms work solely as “calculators” understates their capabilities. The following options will provide your team with simple or complex commission rules, and they often integrate with your current software stack.
Iconixx Sales – Best for complex sales plans
Pros
Cons
Plan design and modeling: With its comprehensive platform, Iconixx Sales empowers organizations to design and model complex sales plans, allowing for customized compensation structures, rules, and hierarchies that align with specific needs and strategies.
Goal setting and quota management: Optimize goal setting and quota management with Iconixx Sales, as it provides advanced tools to define sales targets, allocate quotas, track performance, and make real-time adjustments, ensuring alignment with business objectives.
Incentive compensation management: Simplify and automate incentive compensation calculation, administration, and tracking using Iconixx Sales, enabling organizations to handle complex commission structures, incentive plans, and sales hierarchies with accuracy, efficiency, and transparency.
Performance analytics and reporting: Unlock valuable insights into sales performance, incentive payouts, goal attainment, and other key metrics through the robust analytics and reporting capabilities of Iconixx Sales, facilitating data-driven decision-making and enhancing overall sales effectiveness.
Plans start at $8,500/month/capacity
With its comprehensive platform, Iconixx Sales offers unrivaled capabilities for designing and modeling intricate sales plans. The solution’s advanced tools for goal setting, quota management, and incentive compensation ensure optimal alignment with business objectives. Iconixx Sales streamlines the entire process, automating complex commission calculations and providing real-time performance analytics. As a result, sales teams can enhance their effectiveness, drive revenue growth, and achieve greater sales success.
Iconixx boasts a transparent sales commission platform that helps teams and management understand their current sales practices and plan to reach their goals. Using automated commission calculations, your team can set up complex rules and still maintain visibility.
The Iconixx Sales platform brings commission calculations together with internal custom workflows, reporting, and the ability to forecast hypothetical situations. These tools remove advanced calculations and complicated spreadsheet reporting, allowing your sales force and managers to spend more of their time selling and clarifying goals.
QCommission – Best for industry-specific needs
Pros
Cons
- Customizable Commission Plans: QCommission offers extensive customization options for commission plans, allowing businesses to define complex commission structures, tiers, rates, and thresholds specific to their industry requirements and sales processes.
- Flexible Calculation Rules: With QCommission, businesses can set up flexible calculation rules to handle industry-specific commission scenarios. This includes support for various commission types, such as flat, tiered, percentage-based, split, and variable rates based on different criteria like sales volume, product categories, or customer types.
- Industry-Specific Templates: QCommission provides industry-specific templates that serve as a starting point for businesses in sectors like insurance, real estate, finance, or direct selling. These templates are designed to address the unique commission requirements and calculations specific to each industry, enabling faster implementation and reducing configuration time.
- Data Integration and Import: QCommission offers seamless integration with popular CRM, ERP, and payroll systems, allowing businesses to import sales and performance data directly into the software. This eliminates manual data entry, ensures data accuracy, and streamlines the commission calculation process for industry-specific needs.
Starting from $15/user/month
With its customizable commission plans, flexible calculation rules, and industry-specific templates, QCommission empowers businesses to address the unique complexities of their respective sectors. The software’s seamless integration capabilities enable data import from popular CRM, ERP, and payroll systems, ensuring accurate commission calculations. QCommission’s ability to handle complex commission structures and its focus on industry-specific requirements make it a standout solution, providing businesses with the necessary tools to streamline their commission management processes effectively.
Built as a standalone system that can import data from other software programs, QCommission handles simple and complex commission calculations as soon as your sales period ends. Use built-in reporting to provide clear commission statements to your entire team, or build custom reports based on your own process.
Import and export data from your other sales and business software including Salesforce, Quickbooks, MySQL reports, Excel spreadsheets, and MS Dynamix. QCommission runs on Microsoft technology, which gives it a familiar interface.
Xactly Incent – Best for advanced analytics
Pros
Cons
- Advanced Analytics and Insights: Xactly Incent offers advanced analytics capabilities, allowing businesses to gain deep insights into their sales data. With features like predictive modeling, forecasting, and trend analysis, organizations can uncover valuable insights and make data-driven decisions to optimize their sales compensation strategies.
- Data Visualization and Reporting: Xactly Incent provides powerful data visualization and reporting tools. Users can create visually appealing dashboards, charts, and reports that effectively communicate complex sales data. This enables better understanding and interpretation of analytics insights across teams and facilitates informed decision-making.
- Customizable Analytics: Xactly Incent offers customization options to tailor analytics features to specific business needs. Users can define custom metrics, KPIs, and calculations to track and measure sales performance accurately. This flexibility allows organizations to align analytics with their unique requirements and goals.
- Integration and Scalability: Xactly Incent seamlessly integrates with various data sources, including CRM, ERP, and other systems. This enables the consolidation of sales data for comprehensive analytics. Additionally, the platform is designed to scale effectively, accommodating the needs of growing businesses and handling large volumes of sales data for advanced analytics.
Quotation based, starting at $1/user/month
We chose Xactly Incent as the premier choice for advanced analytics in the realm of sales compensation management. With its robust suite of features, including advanced analytics and insights, incentive plan design and modeling capabilities, automation and accuracy, and real-time dashboards and reporting, Xactly Incent stands out as the leading solution. By providing organizations with powerful tools to optimize their sales compensation strategies and make data-driven decisions, Xactly Incent excels in empowering businesses to achieve greater efficiency, transparency, and financial success.
Xactly Incent comes in two editions — enterprise and express — to suit your business’s size and staffing requirements. Dashboards and analytical tools show reps and managers progress toward goals so teams can react to changing needs in real time. The enterprise version comes with complete mobile integrations across your devices, while the express SMB software integrates with your existing CRM.
Xactly Incent connects to the Xactly Insights platform, which provides big data benchmarking to help increase sales output from your top performers and coach your mid-performers toward greatness. A commissions sandbox lets your analytics team experiment with goals and outcomes based on historical data without disrupting current work. Built-in document management provides integrated support for quoting, contracts, and e-signatures without switching between systems.
Performio – Best for comprehensive integration
Pros
Cons
- API integration: Performio offers robust API integration capabilities, allowing businesses to connect and integrate data from various systems seamlessly. Its flexible and scalable architecture facilitates smooth data transfer and synchronization between Performio and other platforms, ensuring a comprehensive integration solution.
- Customizable data mapping: Performio provides customizable data mapping features, enabling businesses to map data fields between integrated systems according to their specific requirements. This customization ensures that data is accurately mapped and synchronized across platforms, maintaining data integrity and consistency.
- Real-time data syncing: Performio supports real-time data syncing, enabling immediate updates and availability of integrated data. This ensures that commission calculations, reporting, and analytics are based on the most current and accurate data, empowering businesses with real-time insights and decision-making capabilities.
- Integration monitoring and alerts: Performio offers integration monitoring and alerts, allowing users to track the status and performance of integrated systems. This feature provides visibility into any issues or errors during the integration process, enabling proactive identification and resolution of integration-related issues.
Starting from $50/user/month
With its extensive API integration capabilities, customizable data mapping features, real-time data syncing, and integration monitoring and alerts, Performio emerges as the leading solution for businesses seeking a seamless integration experience. By seamlessly connecting and synchronizing data from various systems, Performio empowers organizations to maintain data integrity, ensure accurate commission calculations, and leverage real-time insights for informed decision-making. Its comprehensive integration capabilities position Performio as the top contender for businesses aiming to streamline their data integration processes and maximize operational efficiency.
Performio offers a visual sales commission tool on mobile or desktop apps that gives sales teams and their managers deep insights into individual performance toward sales goals. Any member of the team can check the reporting tool to tell how your commission plan is running toward budget, track accounting across the entire team to reduce time lost to shadow accounting, and evaluate the overall performance of their sales processes.
Performio comes ready to connect to your CRM, accounting, HRIS, or ERP software via API, or choose to import sales data directly from an outside database to keep all your data centralized. You don’t even have to leave the software to collaborate. Instead, use the chat as workflow feature facilitates conversations and approvals in a format your teams are used to.
Whether you purchase standalone sales commission software or choose a larger, more integrated suite, using a centralized system will save your sales team a lot of headaches when it’s time for payout.
How we choose our top picks
At TechnologyAdvice, we assess a wide range of factors before selecting our top choices for a given category.
To make our selections, we rely on our extensive research, product information, vendor websites, competitor research and first-hand experience. We then consider what makes a solution best for customer-specific needs.
For our Top Sales Commission Software list, we looked at 23 options before whittling them down to the six that cover all sales commission needs for startups all the way up to enterprises.
Looking for the latest in Sales Enablement solutions? Check out our Sales Enablement Software Buyer’s Guide.
Featured partnersFeatured Partners: Sales Software
