We recognize you love your spreadsheets. And, you should! They’re ‘ole reliable. But when it comes to sales compensation management, you ever stop to think that perhaps manual commission tracking creates more problems than it solves?
Spreadsheets are time-consuming to manage, prone to human error, and nearly impossible to scale, especially if your reps are running their own shadow accounting operations to calculate commissions.
Without real-time visibility, reps are left guessing what they’ve earned and why, while sales leaders and finance teams struggle to forecast accurately or explain payouts.
A single error in a formula or data entry can result in overpayments, underpayments, and prolonged disputes.
No wonder 80% of companies have admitted to paying their reps wrong.
As compensation plans grow more complex, the risks multiply, leading to payroll delays, damage to trust, and a risk to revenue.
It’s no wonder the sales commission software market was valued at $1.3 billion in 2024, and is anticipated to grow to $3.4 billion by 2033, according to Verified Market Reports.
If you’re ready to streamline your commission tracking process with a digital solution, read on.
We’ll define sales incentive compensation management software and discuss its essential features. Plus, check out our buying checklist, implementation guidance, and ROI tracking information.
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Start TrialDefining Sales Incentive Compensation Management Software
Sales incentive compensation management software is a tool that facilitates the design, implementation, and management of commission plans. Replacing manual processes with automation and real-time visibility saves time, reduces errors, builds trust with reps, and supports scalable revenue growth. There are about five major sales incentive compensation management software players in the market, including QuotaPath.
Core Components
Incentive-based compensation software helps organizations manage all aspects of a sales incentive compensation plan. These platforms support plan creation, sales incentive calculation, real-time commission tracking, and payout scheduling, reducing the administrative burden while increasing accuracy and transparency.
Versus Traditional Compensation Systems
Many sales organizations still rely on traditional methods like spreadsheets to manage compensation, despite being error-prone and time-consuming, and lacking transparency. We’ve found that 70% of organizations continue to use spreadsheets over software, even as compensation plans become increasingly complex.
In fact, TechRadar shared that 90% of organizations are still using spreadsheets to manager their most vital business data.
But, as David Thai, Head of RevOps at Augury, shared, “We were navigating on spreadsheets. Not necessarily everyone on the variable compensation plans is an Excel expert. And so we really wanted something that was going to be intuitive and remove a lot of the manual pains we had from calculating the commissions.”
Essential Features That Businesses Need
Ready to follow in David’s steps? If the time is now, start by looking for these key features from sales incentive compensation management software providers as you decide which tools to add to your list.
Commission Automation
Perhaps this is self-evident, but commission automation is the most crucial feature of any sales incentive compensation management software. Instead of relying on manual data entry or formula-heavy spreadsheets, these tools automatically calculate commissions using real-time CRM or deal data. So, what systems does the commission tool integrate with (and how) will be very important. This ensures greater accuracy while saving finance and administrators hours per month.
As Taggart Befus, Revenue Operations Manager at Whistic, explains, “Previously, commission processing took five to seven hours per cycle for a team of about 30 commissionable employees. With QuotaPath, that time has been reduced to just 30 minutes.”
That’s a 90% reduction in processing time, freeing RevOps to focus on more strategic initiatives.
AI-Powered Customization of Comp Plans
Another point to consider is how easy (or difficult!) it is to load your unique comp plans into your provider.
For instance, QuotaPath’s upload-PDF-to-build feature allows teams to generate compensation plans directly from existing documents or natural language inputs. AI enables teams to translate legacy plans into digital drafts, organize components with drag-and-drop ease, and visualize complex structures like shared quotas or tiered commission thresholds in a few clicks.
However, some platforms require meticulous setup and mapping to their deal sources to get going. When evaluating, see if the software provider can show you over a live call the build out of your comp plan… or better yet, sign up for a free trial if they offer it and do it yourself 🙂
Whether creating an incentive plan from scratch, adjusting last year’s quotas, adding a milestone bonus, or building a net revenue retention incentive scheme for your sales team, AI supports fast, accurate updates that reflect your current strategy. This level of customization helps businesses easily deploy incentive-based compensation plans that align with evolving goals.
CRM and Payroll Integrations
Now, back to those native integrations with leading CRMs and payroll platforms like Salesforce, HubSpot, Rippling, and Xero.
These are essential to remove roadblocks that hinder incentive pay processing. These integrations with your sales tech stack ensure real-time deal data syncing, eliminating manual errors for improved accuracy and timely payroll processing.
Setting up these integrations is easy with QuotaPath’s guided wizard experience, which is even available with a free trial. Check out our Integrations Hub to find your data source platform.
Rep Dashboards and Real-Time Tracking
Dashboards and real-time tracking give reps visibility into where they stand in relation to their goals and where the next milestone is. This encourages them to keep pushing. In other words, visibility motivates performance. According to Psychology Today, tracking progress fuels success by making reps more aware, focused, and motivated.
Andre King, Director of Sales at Rootly, said, “Visibility into their earnings has changed what the reps are pushing for, and showing your reps how much more they can make on longer contracts changed how they sell.”
Available Support
Lastly, this is people’s money on the line. So you must have access to support when you have an incentive compensation question or issue.
If something goes wrong or needs urgent adjustment, you need reliable teams to help. Whether resolving a payout issue or making a last-minute plan update, having a support team available when you need them ensures your compensation process stays on track.
“QuotaPath’s team is phenomenal. Our CSM, AE, and support staff have been incredibly responsive. Anytime we’ve had a question, they’ve been there with a quick solution.”
— Taggart Befus, Revenue Operations Manager at Whistic
Pre-Purchase Checklist
With a shortlist of potential platforms, it’s important to go beyond features and assess how well each solution fits your organization’s long-term needs. This checklist will help you evaluate strategic alignment, flexibility, compliance, and scalability before making a final selection.
Define Your Compensation Objectives
It’s critical to clarify what you want your compensation strategy to achieve. Are you trying to drive new business, reward multi-year contracts, increase self-sourced deals, or boost renewals? Your sales incentive compensation plan should directly support your go-to-market objectives, so the platform you choose needs to be flexible enough to model and adapt to those goals.
Evaluate Customization And Scalability
As your team grows and your go-to-market strategy evolves, your compensation platform must be able to keep up. Buyers should ask themselves, “How flexible is the plan builder? Does it support quota changes, spiffs, accelerators in addition to any organizational changes the team is facing?” QuotaPath solves this with AI plus a component library, making it easy to build and update plans without starting from scratch.
When assessing scalability, buyers should ask themselves, “Will this platform scale 2x or 3x our rep headcount? How easily will it be to add or remove reps, change teams, or roll up plans? As David Taub, Senior Director of RevOps at Hydrocorp, said, “The whole reason we bought a platform was because we’re scaling… It just gives a singular place for everybody to go get compensation, truth, and transparency.”
Ensure Compliance And Payout Transparency
Compliance and payout transparency are among the most overlooked challenges in incentive-based compensation management. Spreadsheets offer no central place to store payout records, generate an audit trail, or provide deal-level earnings visibility. Consequently, reps only see a total number without knowing which deals they’re being paid on or when they’ll actually receive their commissions.
QuotaPath solves this by connecting earnings to payouts, giving full visibility into deal data, scheduled payouts, and approval workflows. The resulting audit trail, rep sign-offs, and ASC 606-ready reporting improve data integrity, reduce disputes, and ensure compliance.
Post-purchase Implementation
Even the best sales incentive platform won’t deliver results without thoughtful implementation. Leverage these tips for a successful rollout that drives adoption across your team and maximizes long-term value.
Set Up Rules And Test With A Small Group
After selecting your compensation platform, begin implementing and testing your commission rules with a small pilot group. This phased rollout allows you to validate plan logic, identify gaps or inconsistencies, and collect meaningful feedback. Real-time visibility lets your team spot discrepancies early, reducing payout errors when the platform is fully launched.
Train and Onboard Your Sales Team
According to our 2024 Sales Compensation Plan Report, it can take reps 3-6 months to understand their compensation plans. Understanding sales incentive compensation plans is crucial to driving desired behaviors, keeping reps motivated, and achieving business objectives. Otherwise, reps become demotivated and disengaged and don’t trust their plans.
Properly training and onboarding your sales team on your new sales incentive tool will shorten that learning curve. When reps know how to use the platform, it will shorten the time it takes for them to understand how they earn incentive compensation while increasing their motivation and performance.
Monitor Usage And Collect Ongoing Feedback
Monitor your team’s usage of your sales incentive compensation management software to identify additional training needs or underutilized features, and gauge how your team is using the new tool.
Gather ongoing feedback to ensure the sales incentive tool meets their needs. You can collect feedback through short surveys, 1:1s, internal chat platforms like Slack, or anonymous forms. You’ll gain insights like user experience, usability issues, and team satisfaction.
Tracking ROI
One of the clearest returns on investment for sales incentive compensation software is the time it saves. Nearly every QuotaPath customer highlights reduced time spent calculating and managing commissions as a key ROI metric. David Thai of Augury shared, “We went from 45 days down to about 15 days to complete quarterly commissions… It’s like 25 days saved per quarter.”
At Whistic, Taggart Befus noted, “Previously, it took five to seven hours per cycle. Now it takes just 30 minutes.” For many teams, that time translates directly into cost savings. As Keegan Otter, Head of Revenue at Warmly, said, “QuotaPath has saved us thousands of dollars each month… just by removing the time spent troubleshooting commissions.”
Track Rep Performance and Retention
A sales incentive tool helps reps understand their plan, motivating them to exceed 100% sales quota attainment. It also helps managers identify where to prioritize coaching to boost performance. Track rep performance, retention, and commission disputes to measure the ROI of a sales incentive compensation platform.
Track Payout Disputes and Resolution Closure Timelines
Monitor the time it takes to resolve payout disputes and close the books after each commission cycle. By reducing the back-and-forth after paychecks go out, you speed up resolution timelines, increase team confidence in the process, and keep payroll on track.
Measure Performance Impact on North Star Metric
Use a tool like QuotaPath to design compensation plans that align directly with your North Star metric, whether new revenue, multi-year deals, or net revenue retention. By tying performance tracking to your top business objective, you can measure how compensation drives outcomes that matter most.
Streamline commissions for your RevOps, Finance, and Sales teams
Design, track, and manage variable incentives with QuotaPath. Give your RevOps, finance, and sales teams transparency into sales compensation.
Talk to SalesFinal Thoughts
Choosing and implementing the right sales incentive compensation management software can transform how your team plans, tracks, and pays commissions. From streamlining workflows to motivating reps and improving accuracy, the ROI is clear.
To learn how QuotaPath can help you modernize your comp strategy and streamline your commission process, schedule a chat with a team member.
