How Commissions Calculate

You marked a payout Paid, someone recalculated the deal, and now the record is gone. This article explains why — and everything else about how REDA turns a commission rule into actual payout records when a deal closes. You'll learn what triggers a calculation, how each rule item becomes one or more Commission records, how the amounts are figured, and the single most important caveat in the whole feature: recalculation deletes and rebuilds every commission on the deal. No prior REDA experience is assumed.

When commissions calculate

A calculation runs in two situations:

For a lease, there is no automatic close-and-calculate step the way a sale has; you run the calculation with the Calculate / Recalculate Commissions action once the lease is where you want it. There is a deliberate guard on mass runs — the action processes one deal at a time, so a bulk attempt returns "Only one record can be processed in one job. Please limit batch size to 1."

From rule to records

When a calculation runs, REDA walks the deal's rule item by item and builds the payout records. Here is the sequence:

Because step 5 fans splits out, a single rule item can produce several Commission records — which is why one item sometimes yields two or more payouts. And because splits are applied per account regardless of the item's role, the payout's role is taken from the split, not the item (see Commission Rules & Splits for that behavior).

The amount formula

Each Commission record carries a Net Commission Amount — the actual payout — figured from the item's type and the split share:

• Fixed item: the fixed amount, multiplied by the split share.
• Percentage item: the deal's commission base, multiplied by the commission percentage, multiplied by the split share.

A recipient with no splits has a share of 100%, so the split multiplier simply leaves the amount unchanged. When splits exist, each split's percentage is the share applied.

Worked example: a sale to David Okafor

The figures below are illustrative, chosen to show the math clearly; your own rates, amounts, and splits will differ.

A property sale to David Okafor closes with a commission base of 1,000,000.00, under the rule from Commission Rules & Splits. The rule has two items:

• Item A — Percentage 1.5%, recipient the brokerage Meridian Properties, which has splits House 40% and Agent 60%.
• Item B — Fixed 5,000.00 to the marketing-source account, with no splits.

The calculation produces three payout records:

The House and Agent records both keep Meridian Properties as their Parent Account. With Due After Days of 30 and an under-contract date of 1 July, each payout's Due Date lands on 31 July.

A leasing example: Nadia Khan's commission on Aisha's lease

Illustrative figures again — swap in your own rule when you read this.

Commissions aren't only for sales. At Meridian Properties, leasing agent Nadia Khan earns a commission each time a tenancy she brought in goes live. When she signs tenant Aisha Rahman to a lease on Meridian Court #101, the lease carries a commission rule with a single item: Percentage 2%, recipient the leasing agent's account, role Opportunity Owner, Due After Days 15. Suppose the lease's commission base is 14,400.00 (illustrative — a year of rent). Because the leasing agent's account has no splits, the calculation produces a single payout at a 100% share:

A lease has no automatic close-and-calculate step, so you run Calculate / Recalculate Commissions on the lease once it's set the way you want. The payout's key date is the lease start date, so with Due After Days 15 the Due Date lands 15 days after the tenancy begins. If Nadia's account later gained a house/agent split, that same item would fan out into one record per split instead — exactly as the sale example above does.

The single leasing-agent commission (C-0000000) generated against Aisha's lease. Its Role is Opportunity Owner, Status is Draft, and it is a Percentage type at 5.00% — the payout the deal owner earns when the lease is signed.

The Commission record

A payout at rest. Status is Draft, the rate is set at 5%, but Commission Amount — the base, copied from the deal — is still empty, so Net Commission Amount reads $0.00. A percentage with nothing to multiply pays nothing.

Each payout is a Commission record. Its key fields:

The Status ladder — Draft, Approved, Cancelled, Paid — is a set of labels you move by hand to track where a payout stands. It carries no automation of its own, so treat it as a manual marker, and remember that a recalculation resets every record to Draft. If you edit a record directly, REDA still enforces the type-matched amount, so you'll see "Please provide the Fixed Commission Amount." or "Please provide the Commission %." if the matching amount is blank.

A deal's commissions after a calculation run: three records — 6,000, 9,000, and 5,000 — each with its own recipient account, percentage, and where a split applies, the resulting split percent and net amount.

The agent's 9,000.00 commission: a percentage type at 5%, a 60% split share, the parent account it was earned under, a due date, and a Draft status waiting for approval.

Where to go next

1. Commission Rules & Splits — how to build the rule, items, and splits this calculation reads.
2. How Billing Works in REDA — the mental model behind charges, invoices, and payouts.
3. Charge Codes — the category set on each rule item.

Frequently asked questions