You may find yourself in a situation where a tour guide or driver brings you some clients, and you need to pay them out commission once the trip departs. You can record this process in full and make sure the transaction is fully auditable. Please note that this function is only available after the trip has departed - the system will not allow you to pay driver commission prior to the trip happening.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- System configuration
- Account setup
- Paying commission to the referral agent
- Pay driver commission via POS
- Reversing driver commission via POS
System configuration
- You need to set up a retail item of type Non-stock called ‘Driver commission’ or something similar. If you specify a percentage in the Extra info field, this will be used as the default driver commission percentage if it is not already specified in the account used.
- Once you have the driver commission item setup, you need to enter the PLU code in the System settings screen in the Point of Sale section: Cash commission plu code. The default is PLU 997.
Account setup
Accounts need to be configured to support each different sale type and commission rate that an agent uses. E.g. if they do both agent all and referral sales, an account will need to be set up for each. The commission rate should be configured appropriately – e.g. if the company receives 15% referral commission but 25% when the sale type is 'Agent All', the accounts should be set to these commission rates. You may need multiple accounts for one contact in order to accommodate different commission rates in different scenarios.
If a driver can also receive a commission, the commission rate can be configured in the Retail box next to the commission field on the agent account.
Paying commission to the referral agent
If you have the setting Auto-post referrals ticked in Global settings, when a booking of sale type referral or deposit is taken to Point of Sale, the user is prompted to confirm the amount of commission and invoice posting records are automatically generated for the account.
If you do not have this setting enabled, follow the steps below to post referral commission on a booking:
- Open your booking in the Booking screen and ensure the agent is set to the correct referral commission account. The sale type must be set to referral
- Select Post to invoice from the Functions menu on the booking screen
- In the Post to account popup, the debtor line is disabled, only a header line and commission line are generated
- Click Apply to generate the referral commission
- This generates a pending credit invoice record for the agent which you can then pay out using the standard IBIS creditor process or export to your GL package to manage from there
Pay driver commission via POS
To pay out cash commission to a driver, follow these steps:
- Open your booking in the Booking screen
- Select Drivers commission from the Functions button
- Check the Account is correct (it defaults to the same as the booking account) or choose a different one if required.
- Check the commission rate
- If the commission rate is incorrect on this screen you can amend it here. Changing the percentage will automatically calculate the dollar value, or alternatively just overtype the dollar value. Although changing the dollar value will not amend the percentage in the same way, the correct dollar amount will be taken through to POS
- Fill in the driver’s name
- Click Pay – this takes you to the Point of Sale screen where you can select the payment type (Cash) to complete the transaction. Once completed, you will be returned to the booking screen where you can see the commission and cost of sale lines have been added under the transaction tab
Reversing driver commission via POS
If you have paid out commission to a driver on the wrong account, you will need to reverse it.
- Open your booking in the Booking screen
- Under the transaction tab, locate the account the commission was paid to and the amount of commission paid
- Click Functions then select Driver Commission
- Ensure the account matches that which was originally paid out
- Enter the amount of commission as a negative amount of that originally paid (ie -5%) and take to POS
- At this point you can change the percentage if necessary - altering the percentage will calculate the cash amount accordingly. If you prefer you can just enter the cash amount as a negative value. This will not alter the displayed percentage however it will still pay out the entered cash amount
- Settle the sale with cash (assuming you paid out cash originally)
- If you look at the transactions tab in the booking, you’ll see the reversal records assigned to the correct account