Ready to build your first HR technology stack? Start here.

HR tech adoption is growing steadily, as evidenced by its 66% increase between 2020 and 2023. With 12.1 million U.S. employers investing more than $5 trillion in HR solutions and 74% of companies planning to raise their HR tech budgets, the trend is expected to continue.

There’s no mystery to HR tech’s popularity, delivering many proven benefits such as: 

• Greater employee productivity: Organizations with a fully integrated HR technology stack saw a 15% increase in employee productivity, according to Deloitte research.  
  
• Better change management: Companies that leverage HR tech are 4 times more likely to successfully manage change and are more efficient in attracting and retaining top talent, according to a PwC study.
  
• Higher revenue growth: Organizations using advanced HR technology experienced 26% higher revenue growth, according to PwC.
  
• Improved employee retention: Companies using HR tech had 40% lower employee turnover rates, according to PwC.
  
• Increased efficiency: Companies that invest in HR technology saw a 22% increase in efficiency, according to PwC.

The evidence is clear: HR technology is no longer a nice-to-have; it’s crucial to an organization’s ability to survive in today’s highly competitive marketplace. With the boost in efficiency, productivity, and revenue growth alone, the sooner you start building your HR tech stack, the better.

It’s been recommended that even early-stage companies benefit: “As small businesses scale and roles become more complex, they may consider tools to manage HR operations. Instead of relying on spreadsheets, small businesses can use HR software for tasks like onboarding, managing payroll, tracking time off, and performance reviews.”

HR technology stacks vary in size. However, according to HR.com’s State of Today’s HR Tech Stack and Integrations 2024, 13% of organizations have only one solution, while 68% have between 2 and 7 HR solutions in their HR tech stacks.

In our blog below, gain the confidence you need to develop the most streamlined, efficient, and effective HR technology stack.

Blog Takeaways:

• 74% of companies plan to expand HR tech investments
• HR tech stacks improve efficiency, employee experience, and compliance.
• Essential software includes payroll, commission management, recruiting, engagement, performance, and LMS platforms.
• Integration with Rippling and QuotaPath ensures smooth HR and payroll processes.

Integrate Rippling with QuotaPath

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What is an HR Tech Stack?

First, let’s define it.

An HR tech stack is a collection of software and digital tools designed to automate and enhance HR functions. These tools can streamline payroll, recruitment, benefits administration, and performance management, ensuring better compliance and efficiency.

Popular HR tech tools include Rippling and ADP for payroll and compliance, and QuotaPath and Xactly for commission automation. Many HR teams also use Greenhouse and Lever for recruiting, Peakon and 15Five for performance and engagement, and Docebo or TalentLMS for learning management. These platforms offer scalability, ease of use, and strong integration capabilities.

Why Having a Solid HR Tech Stack is Important?

As you can piece together, an effective HR technology stack enables your HR team to work smarter, deliver a better employee experience, and make more informed decisions while adopting the latest tools.

Key Benefits:

The key benefits are as follows.

Increased efficiency: Automating HR tasks reduces administrative burdens, allowing HR teams to focus on strategic initiatives.

Improved employee experience: Digital tools make processes like onboarding and payroll seamless, boosting satisfaction and engagement.

Data-driven decision-making: HR analytics help optimize workforce planning, compensation structures, and talent acquisition.

Software You Should Add to Your HR Tech Stack

Before building your HR tech stack, it’s essential to understand which tools offer the most value. A strong HR technology stack integrates a range of tools that support the entire employee lifecycle, including:

• Payroll software: Handles wages, taxes, and compliance to ensure timely, accurate pay.
• Commission management software: Tracks and automates variable compensation, especially for sales teams.
• Recruiting software: Streamlines job postings, applicant tracking, and hiring workflows.
• Employee engagement software: Gathers feedback and monitors morale to improve retention.
• Performance management software: Tracks goals, reviews, and feedback to align individual performance with company objectives.
• Learning management systems (LMS: Deliver and track employee training to support skill development.

Together, these tools help HR teams operate efficiently and strategically.

How to Pick the Right Software For Your HR Tech Stack

That’s a lot of options, huh? When you’re ready to start selecting programs, choose tools for your HR tech stack that align with your processes, integrate smoothly, and support long-term growth.

These steps will help you select the solutions that best suit your organization.

Step 1: Assess Your Needs: Identify key pain points and gaps in your current HR processes. Does recruiting slow you down the most? Onboarding new hires? Payroll?

Step 2: Prioritize Integrations: Ensure that selected tools seamlessly integrate with existing systems. Think single-sign-ons for employees, shared data, seamlessly working together to build adoption and workflows, like Rippling & QuotaPath.

Step 3: Evaluate User Experience: Choose platforms with intuitive interfaces to drive adoption among HR teams and employees. Request demos or free trials to test usability and gather input from actual users to see how easy the system is to navigate.

Step 4: Consider Scalability: Opt for solutions that can grow with your company’s workforce. Look for flexible pricing models, modular features, and vendor case studies that show successful scaling in companies of similar size or industry.

HR Tech Stack Challenges

Even the most advanced HR tech stack can create friction. Including the wrong tools or too many, can lead to inefficiencies, data silos, and low adoption rates instead of improving workflows. Companies face several common challenges when building and maintaining their HR technology stack. Here are the most common issues to watch for and how to address them:

Integration Issues

Many HR tech tools operate in silos, making it difficult to sync data across platforms.

• Lack of seamless integration with payroll, benefits, and commission management software can create inefficiencies.
• Solutions: Choose platforms with native integrations (like Rippling & QuotaPath) or use middleware tools like Zapier.

Data Security & Compliance Risks

HR software stores sensitive employee data, increasing the risk of data breaches.

• Companies must ensure compliance with GDPR, CCPA, and SOC 2 standards.
• Solutions: Prioritize software with strong encryption, role-based access, and audit trails.

User Adoption & Change Management

Employees resist change when new tools are introduced, leading to low adoption rates.

• HR teams need training programs to help employees transition smoothly.
• Solutions: Select tools with intuitive UX, self-serve resources, and strong customer support.

Choosing the Right Tech for Business Needs

HR teams often struggle with overlapping functionalities or choosing tools that don’t scale.

• Companies may prioritize cost over feature fit, leading to future inefficiencies.
• Solutions: Conduct a tech audit, prioritize must-have features, and consider future scalability.

Cost & ROI Justification

Budget constraints can limit the number of tools a company can implement.

• Demonstrating the ROI of an HR tech stack investment can be challenging.
• Solutions: Start with core platforms (payroll, commission management, recruiting) and expand as needed.

HR Tech Stack Example

To bring your HR tech strategy to life, it helps to see how different tools can work together in a real-world scenario. An example for a mid-sized company of 50–200 employees, a well-integrated HR tech stack might include:

Payroll & Benefits Management

Rippling: Runs payroll in 90 seconds, seamlessly integrates with HR data, and ensures compliance with tax regulations.

Commission Management

QuotaPath: Automates commission tracking, integrates with CRMs, and provides transparency into earnings for sales teams.

Recruiting & Talent Acquisition

Lever: An AI-driven applicant tracking system (ATS) that streamlines hiring processes, supports collaborative recruiting, and offers deep analytics.

Employee Engagement & Feedback

Culture Amp: Provides real-time feedback, employee engagement surveys, and actionable insights to improve workplace satisfaction.

Performance Management

Betterworks: Enables continuous goal-setting, OKR tracking, and performance reviews, fostering a culture of high performance and accountability.

Learning & Development

Seismic Learning (formerly Lessonly): Offers training and coaching for sales and support teams, with interactive learning experiences to drive skill development.

This HR tech stack ensures efficiency, compliance, and employee satisfaction, helping organizations easily manage their workforce.

Implementing Your HR Tech Stack

Rolling out your HR tech stack is a crucial step. To start, audit existing tools and remove outdated software to eliminate redundancy. Create an implementation timeline, prioritizing essential systems like payroll, recruiting, and compliance tools.

Train employees on new platforms and establish usage best practices to ensure a smooth transition. Finally, monitor adoption and performance using HR analytics and adjust as needed. A thoughtful, phased rollout will help your organization maximize the impact of your HR technology investment.Learn how QuotaPath and Rippling work together for effortless commission payments. Then schedule a demo to see it for yourself.

Did you know payroll typically accounts for 15-30% of revenue in most industries? But how do you know if you’re overspending?

The payroll to revenue ratio measures the proportion of a company’s revenue spent on employee compensation, including salaries, wages, benefits, and payroll taxes. This ratio is a key indicator of how efficiently a business manages its labor costs relative to the income it generates.

In financial management, the payroll to revenue ratio plays a critical role in evaluating operational efficiency, maintaining profitability, and guiding strategic decisions related to hiring and scaling. A well-balanced ratio helps ensure that payroll expenses are sustainable and aligned with the company’s revenue performance.

Moreover, most CFOs consider their organization’s compensation and payroll structures “ineffective.”

Plus, businesses in Sales, RevOps, Finance, and now HR can leverage this metric for decision-making around labor cost efficiency, business scalability and profitability, industry competitiveness, hiring and compensation strategy, and more.

Why are we writing about this? Because QuotaPath’s role in helping businesses manage commissions and payroll efficiency includes commission projections, gauging revenue and team efficiency, and maintaining teams aligned on revenue expectations.

In this blog:

• Understand the Payroll to Revenue Ratio: Learn how this financial metric helps businesses measure labor cost efficiency, predict profitability, and align workforce expenses with revenue goals.
• See Industry Benchmarks & Trends: Explore payroll-to-revenue ratio benchmarks across industries, from SaaS and tech (20-30%) to healthcare (40-50%) and retail (8-15%), and understand what these numbers mean for your business.
• Learn How to Optimize Payroll Costs: Discover strategies to improve payroll efficiency, from automating commission tracking to aligning compensation with revenue growth for better financial decision-making.
• Understand QuotaPath’s Role in Financial Planning: See how QuotaPath helps businesses anticipate commission expenses, track sales performance, and improve cash flow management in real-time.

What is a Payroll to Revenue Ratio?

First, let’s define what it actually is. The payroll to revenue ratio is a financial metric that shows what percentage of a company’s revenue is spent on payroll. In other words, it helps you understand how much of every dollar earned is allocated to employee compensation, including salaries, wages, benefits, and payroll taxes. It’s a straightforward way to gauge how efficiently labor costs are being managed in relation to company income.

Formula:
Payroll to Revenue Ratio = (Total Payroll Expenses / Total Revenue) × 100

For example, if a company’s payroll is $1,000,000 and its revenue is $5,000,000, the ratio would be 20%. This ratio matters because it helps gauge labor cost efficiency and profitability impact. It’s a key metric that enables HR, Sales, and Finance teams to align workforce expenses with revenue growth, ensuring headcount investments are sustainable and strategically sound.

Calculating Your Payroll to Revenue Ratio

Before optimizing payroll spending, you must understand where you stand. Calculating your payroll to revenue ratio is the first step in assessing labor cost efficiency and financial performance.

Step-by-step guide to calculation: 

• Identify total payroll expenses: Salaries, benefits, bonuses, commissions, taxes.
• Determine total revenue: Sales, services, recurring revenue.
• Apply the formula: Use the equation to calculate the ratio.
• Compare over time: Monthly, quarterly, or annually to track trends.

Payroll Costs vs. Revenue Comparison

Benefits of Calculating Your Payroll to Revenue Ratio

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, labor is one of the largest business expenses, accounting for up to 70% of total operating costs in some industries. What percentage of expenses should payroll be?

Once you’ve calculated your payroll expense to revenue ratio, interpreting the result is just as important. Understanding this ratio can unlock valuable insights that drive better financial planning and business growth.

Labor Cost Efficiency: Helps businesses control expenses and improve profitability.
Workforce Optimization: Ensures HR teams effectively structure salaries, bonuses, and commissions.
Strategic Decision-Making: Aligns workforce costs with revenue goals and business scaling.
Predicting Profitability: Helps forecast hiring costs and future payroll budgeting.

Average Payroll to Revenue Ratios By Industry

Payroll structures vary widely by industry, driven by differences in labor intensity, operational models, and cost structures. What’s considered a healthy payroll to revenue ratio in one sector might be unsustainable in another. The table below outlines payroll as a percentage of revenue by industry to help you compare and contextualize your own numbers.

Source: Rippling

Statistical Insights

Understanding how the payroll to revenue ratio varies across industries provides important context for evaluating what’s considered a healthy or sustainable benchmark.

Tech and SaaS companies have higher payroll expenses due to commissions, bonuses, and the need to attract top talent in a competitive market. This drives their payroll to revenue ratios upward, reflecting the significant investment in human capital required to stay competitive and innovative.

Healthcare and service industries often have a higher ratio because a substantial portion of revenue is dedicated to payroll expenses, which can potentially reduce profitability. Conversely, a lower ratio indicates that the company is retaining a larger revenue share after accounting for labor costs, which can improve margins and support reinvestment in other business areas.

According to Rippling, retail businesses operate with tight margins and rely heavily on sales volume. As a result, these companies tend to maintain lower payroll to revenue ratios to preserve profitability and remain agile in highly competitive environments.

What to Include in Payroll Costs

To accurately calculate payroll to revenue ratio, it’s important to understand what goes into the “payroll” side of the equation. Here’s a breakdown of the most common payroll components that factor into this metric.

Breakdown of payroll expenses that impact the ratio: 

• Salaries and Wages: Fixed salaries, hourly wages.
• Bonuses and Commissions: Sales incentives, performance bonuses.
• Payroll Taxes: Employer contributions to social security, Medicare.
• Benefits and Perks: Health insurance, retirement plans.
• Stock Options & Equity Compensation (for startups & tech companies).

How QuotaPath Helps with Optimizing Pay Spend

Unexpected financial events, such as the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in 2023, highlighted the importance of having real-time visibility into payroll and commission expenses for companies.

While traditional payroll systems provide insights into fixed salaries, they often lack clarity on variable compensation, like commissions.

That’s where QuotaPath plays a role.

In the wake of SVB’s shutdown, many businesses turned to QuotaPath’s earnings forecasts, deal reviews, and approval tools to assess upcoming commission expenses.

Instead of scrambling for spreadsheets or waiting on reports, they could log in and instantly see expected payouts. Here are three key ways QuotaPath helps businesses manage payroll, cash flow, and team efficiency, regardless of market shifts.

1. Get a Pulse on Expected Commission Expenses

• Understanding upcoming payroll expenses is critical for financial planning, especially in uncertain times.
• QuotaPath provides real-time commission tracking, helping teams:
  • Prepare for end-of-month or quarterly payroll runs
  • Forecast commission payouts when applying for loans, fundraising, or managing cash burn

Use Case: Finance and HR leaders can quickly assess how much cash is needed to cover payroll, including commissions.

2. Measure Your Capital & Team Efficiency

• QuotaPath tracks historical commission data, giving businesses deeper insights into cost-per-win and rep effectiveness.
• Teams can:
  • Analyze effective commission rates
  • Showcase revenue efficiency to investors
  • Identify patterns in sales performance and compensation trends

Use Case: A startup preparing for a funding round can present commission expense trends to investors to demonstrate capital efficiency.

3. Improve Weekly Pipeline & Sales Reviews

• QuotaPath’s pipeline tracking tools help sales and finance teams stay aligned on revenue expectations.
• How it works:
  • Use Team Attainment leaderboards to review active deals and projected commissions
  • Reps can share won deals, forecasted earnings, and upcoming opportunities
  • Leadership can evaluate sales momentum and compensation impact

Use Case: Sales teams can align forecasts with finance, ensuring accurate projections of cash flow and commissions.

Optimizing Your Payroll to Revenue Ratio

Keeping payroll and revenue balanced is critical as compensation is often a company’s largest ongoing expense. If payroll grows faster than revenue, it can quickly erode profitability, strain cash flow, and limit growth. A strong payroll to revenue ratio reflects labor cost efficiency and indicates that compensation strategy is aligned with financial performance.

Improving this ratio requires visibility into fixed and variable pay structures and real-time insights into how compensation impacts your bottom line. This is where QuotaPath makes a difference. QuotaPath helps businesses manage compensation, cash flow, and team efficiency to optimize the payroll-to-revenue ratio.

See how QuotaPath simplifies payroll to revenue ratio optimization. Schedule time with a team member today.

We just got back from RevOpsAF, RevOps Co-Op’s annual conference down in New Orleans. 

And, let me tell you, this community just keeps getting sharper, louder (figuratively and literally, shoutout to all those who braved the karaoke stage), and more essential to the future of go-to-market strategy.

Between beignets and breakout sessions, I walked away with a fresh dose of inspiration, amazing new connections, and a few takeaways on RevOps, which is evolving fast.

1. AI is giving CRMs a glow-up

Reps not updating their CRM? Never!

A recurring theme at RevOpsAF was how teams are leaning on AI to automate CRM updates. No more manual data entry, no more begging reps for pipeline notes. This is a win for RevOps and sales, freeing up time and energy for more strategic, revenue-driving work.

2. RevOps is leveling up (fast)

There was a lot of talk at the conference about what it means to act senior in RevOps. It’s not just about reporting metrics or running ops efficiently anymore. It’s about thinking like a business partner. Driving strategy. Showing up with insights that shape product direction, financial planning, and yes, board-level conversations.

The climb from analyst to VP is real, and RevOpsAF was packed with tips on confidently taking that next step.

3. The function best positioned for alignment: RevOps

RevOpsAF made it clear: this team is the MVP of an org.

You’ve got the line of sight across sales, marketing, customer success, and finance. And you’re often the only team thinking holistically about how they all connect.

At QuotaPath, we talk a lot about alignment, especially when it comes to comp planning. 

Having a north star metric that teams can rally around is powerful. And when RevOps leads that alignment conversation (especially with the help of AI for prioritization and visibility), the whole GTM machine runs smoother.

That’s a Wrap Until 2026

RevOpsAF left me energized. This growing community is shaping the future of revenue and doing it with intention and serious strategic chops.

If you missed the conference but want to get plugged in, come join us at RevOps Co-op. 

And if you want to talk about how comp planning fits into all of this (hint: it does), let’s chat. 

We’ve got ideas.

Effective sales tools play a critical role in enhancing B2B sales processes. According to McKinsey, leading B2B companies increased sales team capacity by 20% with automation. These companies also shaved significant costs and improved sales productivity by as much as 30%.

Results like these have led to an increasing reliance on digital platforms in B2B sales processes, with 81% of sales teams testing or using these AI-powered tools, according to Salesforce. A boost in efficiency is evident as 83% of sales teams using these technologies saw revenue growth versus 66% of those not leveraging them.

As the adoption of advanced sales tools increases in popularity, businesses must follow suit to remain competitive.

These technologies enable organizations to outperform their rivals by providing them with insights that facilitate more informed decision-making. For instance, 84% of B2B businesses already use advanced analytics tools to manage content effectively.

In this blog, we’ll guide you through selecting and integrating the most effective sales tools into your B2B tech stacks, through categories like CRM systems, commission management, email automation, sales intelligence, prospecting software, and demo tools.

Let’s start with the key features to consider in B2B sales tools.

What To Look For In A B2B Sales Tool

Searching through the vast selection of available B2B sales tools can be overwhelming. According to the 10th edition of the SalesTech landscape, the number has surged to 2,100, a 34% increase over the previous year. Simplify the selection process by knowing what to look for before you get started.

1. Identify Your Business Needs: Determine your sales team’s specific challenges to select tools that effectively address these issues.​
2. Comprehensive Feature Set: Seek tools offering a range of functionalities, such as CRM integration, lead generation, and analytics, to streamline sales processes.​
3. User-Friendly Interface: Choose tools with intuitive designs to ensure quick adoption and minimize training time for your team.​
4. Scalability: Ensure the tool can accommodate your business growth, adapting to increasing data volumes and additional users.​
5. Integration Capabilities: Verify that the tool integrates seamlessly with your existing software, such as email platforms and marketing automation systems.​
6. Data Quality and Accuracy: Opt for tools that provide reliable and up-to-date data to enhance decision-making and targeting.​
7. Customization and Flexibility: Select tools that allow tailoring to your specific sales processes and workflows for optimal alignment.​
8. Pricing Structure: Consider the tool’s cost relative to its features and your budget, ensuring it delivers value without unnecessary expenses.​
9. Customer Support and Training: Prioritize vendors offering robust support and training resources to assist with implementation and ongoing use.​
10. Security and Compliance: Ensure the tool complies with relevant data protection regulations and incorporates robust security measures to protect sensitive information.

The Best B2b Sales Tools For Your Tech Stack

Next, let’s take a look at key tools within each of the major B2B sales tools categories.

How To Build A B2B Sales Tech Stack

Now, you’re ready to build your own! Check out the following process to build your first sales tech stack or update an existing one.

Assess Your Sales Process and Needs

Before investing in new tools, identify pain points and inefficiencies in your current sales workflow. Where are the bottlenecks? Are reps spending too much time on manual tasks? Are qualified leads slipping through the cracks? Pinpointing these issues will reveal where technology can make the most significant impact.

From there, establish key sales objectives. Are you focused on generating more leads, improving pipeline visibility, or boosting forecasting accuracy? Being clear on your priorities will help guide your tool selections. Make this a cross-functional effort. Loop in sales, marketing, and RevOps to align tool selection. Diversified input ensures that the tech stack solves real problems while supporting the entire revenue engine.

Define the Core Categories of Your Tech Stack

The next step is to outline the key categories your tech stack should cover. By defining these categories upfront, you can ensure your stack is aligned with your team’s daily workflows and long-term goals. The following categories represent typical B2B sales tools used by high-performing B2B sales organizations. Select the ones that best address your current requirements.

• CRM – The foundation for managing customer relationships and tracking deals.
• Commission Management – Automates sales compensation to ensure transparency and accuracy.
• Email Automation – Streamlines outreach and follow-ups to improve engagement.
• Sales Intelligence – Provides data insights on prospects and market trends.
• Sales Prospecting – Helps reps find and connect with the right leads efficiently.
• Demo & Presentation Tools – Enables engaging and interactive product

Prioritize Integration and Scalability

As you evaluate B2B sales tools for your tech stack, choosing platforms that seamlessly integrate with your CRM and other existing software is crucial. This reduces data silos, improves workflow efficiency, and creates a unified ecosystem for your team to work in. Otherwise, you risk creating duplicate work, misaligned data, and frustrated teams.

Remember to think long-term to ensure flexibility for future growth, avoiding tools that might become bottlenecks. Choose flexible platforms that can scale as your team expands or your sales process evolves. Investing in scalable solutions now can save you the time, cost, and disruption of replacing tools down the road.

Evaluate and Test Different Solutions

Research the top solutions in each category. Leverage free trials, product demos, user feedback, and customer reviews to get a well-rounded view of each option. Consider factors like usability, automation capabilities, and pricing. Then, test new tools with a small team before a full rollout. This phase allows you to gather hands-on feedback, identify potential roadblocks, and set the stage for a smoother, more successful implementation.

Implement, Train, and Optimize

Once you’ve selected the right tools, create a structured onboarding process to drive adoption. Start with a structured onboarding plan that includes setup, configuration, and clear documentation. This helps your team get up to speed quickly and seamlessly, so reps start seeing value without daily workflow disruption.

Implementation isn’t one-and-done, so provide ongoing to maximize tool efficiency. Schedule regular check-ins, provide refresher sessions, and gather user feedback to identify areas for improvement. Regularly assess and refine the stack to align with evolving sales needs.

Build Your Tech Stack with the Best B2B Sales Tools 

Building your tech stack with the best B2B sales tools means assessing your sales process for pain points and inefficiencies to determine your key objectives and priorities. Then, seek seamless integration with your current tools and look for the key characteristics we discussed above. After testing and evaluating your options, implement, train, and optimize your tech stack to align with evolving sales needs.

QuotaPath meets all our recommended criteria, fits seamlessly into your tech stack, and is pivotal in rep visibility, motivation, and time savings. Don’t take our word for it. Schedule a time with a team member to see QuotaPath for yourself.

FAQs

What is a B2B sales tool

A B2B sales tool is software designed to help businesses streamline and automate various sales tasks, such as lead generation, customer relationship management, and sales forecasting, to improve efficiency and boost revenue.

What are the best B2B sales tools for SaaS companies?

The best sales tools for B2B SaaS companies include CRM platforms like Salesforce and HubSpot, sales engagement tools like Salesloft and Outreach, and sales intelligence platforms like ZoomInfo and Clearbit to streamline lead generation, prospecting, and sales cycle management. 

What are the best sales tools for startups?

The best sales tools for startups include CRM like HubSpot or Close, sales automation platforms like Salesloft or Outreach, and prospecting tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator or Apollo.io, to streamline outreach and boost efficiency. 

Sales compensation plans are designed to reward performance, but they can expose your business to unexpected and outsized liabilities without the right safeguards. 

A wildly overperforming rep, a misaligned deal, or a lack of control around payout timing can skyrocket commission costs and wreck your forecast.

Example: A rep closes a $1.2M multi-year deal in Q2 with heavy discounting and poor margin. With a rich accelerator and no controls, they earn a $150K commission — all paid before the customer is fully onboarded or any revenue is recognized.

Finance now has a six-figure payout booked against zero collected cash and no visibility into long-term retention.

That’s where cash protection levers come in.

Why Cash Protection Levers Matter in Sales Compensation

These aren’t about capping commissions or discouraging overperformance. Instead, they act as smart financial guardrails that help you:

1. Avoid surprise commission liabilities that blow past your budget
2. Drive more strategic selling tied to margin, retention, or payback periods
3. Delay payments until value is realized, protecting cash flow and aligning with revenue recognition
4. Improve forecasting and financial control by adding predictability to comp expenses
5. Maintain plan flexibility as business goals and GTM strategies evolve

In this post, we’ll break down five proven cash protection levers you can build into your comp plans — so you can continue incentivizing top performers without risking your budget or financial strategy.

5 Compensation Safeguards

These levers let you reward high performance without creating runaway liability. 

Plus, they’re already being used by SaaS finance leaders trying to strike the balance between growth and efficiency, which matters most to venture capitalists right now. 

1. Tiered Accelerators Based on Payback Period or Margin Thresholds

Instead of a flat accelerator, reps unlock higher rates only after the deal meets key financial criteria, like:

• Payback period under 6 months
  
• Gross margin above a set threshold (e.g. 70%) This ensures high payouts only come when deals are financially healthy.

2. Ramp-to-Quota Safeguards

During a rep’s ramp period, limit full accelerators until a minimum activity level is hit (e.g. pipeline creation, number of qualified opportunities). This avoids ballooned payouts for a few early wins that don’t represent sustained performance.

Sales Ramp Calculator

Input annual quota, contract value, sales cycle, and variable pay below to calculate a monthly or quarterly breakdown for your new hire’s quota and ramping comp plans.

Use Calculator

3. Accelerator Gates Based on Strategic Metrics

Instead of giving top-heavy accelerators purely on revenue, you can gate them behind strategic behaviors like:

• Multi-year contracts
  
• Full-price deals (low discounting)
  
• ICP-fit customers

This directs reps to deals that support efficient growth and cash flow, not just volume.

4. Commission Timing Tied to Collections or Milestones

Delay commission payouts until cash is collected or the customer reaches a product milestone (e.g. implementation complete or first usage). This avoids paying large commissions upfront for deals that might churn quickly or default on payment.

5. Deal Size Caps Per Period with Manual Review

Set a soft ceiling on how much commission can be paid out per deal or time period (e.g. monthly), triggering a review for high-value deals. You still reward the rep, but finance gets a chance to model cash impact and time payouts if needed.

Final Thoughts 

These safeguards aren’t about limiting reps. Instead, they’re about protecting the business while still celebrating great sales behaviors.

Protecting your bottom line shouldn’t come at the cost of demotivating your sales team. By building in thoughtful cash protection levers, you can confidently reward overperformance and keep commission costs predictable.

QuotaPath makes it easy to design, test, and manage comp plans with the proper safeguards, without the spreadsheets or surprises. 

Book a demo to see how.

Q2 often feels like a slump… even for the strongest sales teams.

Let’s set the scene (although hopefully it’s not too triggering). 

Your team came out swinging in Q1. 

Fueled by fresh quotas and the urgency of a new year, reps leaned into January’s pipeline with aggressive deal cycles and executive-assisted closes to hit early-year targets. Everyone wins. Attainment is high. Commissions land (accurately and timely, thanks to a little help from your commission automation tool *wink*).  And spirits remain up.

But now it’s the Spring. 

You notice a lighter demo schedule across your team’s calendars. 

Prospect responses slow down.  

Your Q2 pipeline looks emptier than you’d like, and reps are feeling the hangover from a front-loaded quarter. 

It’s not just your team. It’s the pattern.

Behind the Q2 Dip

This happens every second quarter.

For many B2B buyers, Q1 represents new budget authority. 

That often triggers a wave of purchases aimed at kicking off initiatives early. In contrast, Q2 sees decision-makers re-evaluate spending, delay onboarding, or pause until H2 planning. Add in procurement cycles, fiscal year misalignment, and post-Q1 buyer fatigue, and fewer signed deals follow.

Comp plans don’t always help here.

If quotas are evenly spread across quarters without adjusting for real buying patterns, or worse, if Q1’s quota was heavier to take advantage of early momentum, Q2 can feel like a desert. Sellers see commissions dry up, motivation dips, and attainment suffers.

But this isn’t inevitable.

Below, we’ll cover:

• How seasonal buyer behaviors impact Q2 attainment
• Compensation and quota structuring strategies to offset mid-year slowdowns
• Tactical ways to deploy SPIFs and short-term accelerators 
• How leading RevOps teams are using QuotaPath to fix attainment discrepancies and keep teams aligned and motivated

Recommended Reading

The SPIF Report: Curious how top revenue teams use SPIFs and accelerators to align with key business goals and drive measureable results? Our latest report below dives into our data from $7.3M in sales incentives.

View Report

Compensation: The Quiet Culprit Behind Q2 Underperformance

If you’re only looking at pipeline health or rep activity in Q2, you’re missing a big piece of the story. The compensation structure is critical in sustaining momentum following a strong Q1.

Here are a few levers to pull should you find yourself in this situation. 

1. Rebalance Quotas Around Seasonality

First, instead of evenly dividing quotas across four quarters, align them to historical attainment data and buyer behavior. 

For many SaaS orgs, that might look like:
– Heavier quotas in Q1 and Q4
– Lighter quotas in Q2 when deal velocity slows
-A buffer in Q3 to prep for year-end pushes

To help, you could use QuotaPath’s Plan Performance Modeling tool to simulate different quota distributions to predict rep earnings, attainment, and commission cost impact. Use it to test a “light Q2” model without overcorrecting total OTE.

2. Deploy SPIFs Preventatively (not reactively)

Additionally, you could implement SPIFs.

The key, however, is to have these SPIFs lined up before you start to lose out on pipeline. 

According to our Q1 SPIF Report, the most effective SPIFs are those tied to very specific behaviors, not just general revenue boosts.

In Q2, consider:
– SPIFs tied to self-sourced opps to offset demand gen lulls
– Bonus for multi-product deals to maximize value per close
– Higher rate accelerators for deals with shorter time-to-close

An easy way to spin up temporary plan components without disrupting core plans is through QuotaPath. Reps see the incentive in real time, while leadership tracks performance in the same dashboard. Frees you up from having to track and calculate SPIFs in an extra spreadsheet, too. 

3. Add a Q2-Only Bonus Layer

Even a simple milestone bonus, “Close 3 deals in May, get $500,” can re-inject urgency.

Reps respond well to tangible, near-term goals. 

Unlike a quarterly quota that may feel out of reach by mid-May, a defined milestone tied to a bonus delivers immediate focus and motivation, especially for your mid-tier performers.

It gives sellers something they can realistically strive for and track in real time. These bonuses also work especially well in Q2 when the pipeline might be lighter, helping to build momentum through smaller wins.

Pro tip: Include a visual forecast of bonus impact inside your reps’ dashboards. Seeing how close they are to earning more drives action.

(Reps thrive on short-term visibility. QuotaPath’s component-based plan build structure allows you to add these in minutes and toggle them off at the end of the quarter.)

Pipeline Fixes Start with Plan Design

Implementing SPIFs, milestone bonuses, or shifting quota targets isn’t just a flip of the switch. Instead, it starts with how your comp plan is designed and modeled in the first place.

This is where RevOps and Finance teams can get ahead. 

Using QuotaPath’s AI-Powered Plan Builder and our Draft Plans feature, you can quickly build different versions of your plan before you roll them out and test them against historical numbers to see how they’d fare. That means less guesswork, more clarity, and faster alignment across stakeholders.

With QuotaPath, teams can:
– Forecast the cost and impact of Q2-only adjustments
– Test SPIF scenarios using real CRM and attainment data
– Visualize how individual reps would be affected based on their historical performance

This level of flexibility gives teams the confidence to act quickly when Q2 shows early warning signs, without risking confusion or misalignment.

Final Thoughts: Get Ahead of the Dip

You don’t need to accept a slow Q2 as the norm. 

With thoughtful comp structuring, aligned incentives, and visibility into earnings potential, your team can sustain momentum even when the market slows.

The key? Use your comp plan as a performance driver, not just a calculator.

If reps can see exactly how to earn more, and your plans adapt to real pipeline behavior, Q2 becomes an opportunity, not a letdown.

Learn more by scheduling a time with our team. 

Skip the blog and go straight to our free comp plan ramp calculator.

When a new sales hire joins your team, the first few months can make or break their long-term success. Without a structured ramping comp plan, new reps risk falling behind, losing motivation, and burning out before they’ve even had a fair shot at full productivity.

That’s where our Sales Ramp Calculator comes in—a free tool designed to help revenue leaders create fair, motivating, and data-backed ramping compensation plans.

Comp Plan Ramp Calculator

Set rep quotas and ramp comp plans to give them an equal shot at their full on-target earnings.

Use Calculator

Why Ramping Comp Plans Matter

Most reps don’t ramp overnight.

 In fact, our Sales Ramp Report found the average ramp period to be 6 months, with some stretching as long as 12–18 months for teams with longer sales cycles. Despite this, few companies have a structured approach to adjust quotas and commissions during this critical time.

Without a clear plan, new hires face unrealistic expectations. Meanwhile, leadership is left guessing on payout structures and ramp ROI.

Here’s the truth: you can’t afford to wing it.

QuotaPath’s Sales Ramp Calculator takes the guesswork out by turning your sales inputs into a clear, fair ramp plan—complete with quota breakdowns, commission rates, and earnings projections.

How the Sales Ramp Calculator Works

In just a few steps, the calculator helps you build a tailored ramping comp plan:

1. Input Your Key Metrics:
   
   • Annual Quota
   • Average Contract Value
   • Sales Cycle Length
   • Variable Pay (OTE)
     
2. Generate a Ramp Structure:
   
   • Starts with guaranteed OTE
   • Transitions to partial quota + higher commission rate
   • Ends with full quota and standard rate
     
3. Customize by Ramp Length:
   
   • Monthly, quarterly, or annual depending on deal volume
     Adjusted quotas based on sales cycle
     
4. Get a Downloadable Breakdown:
   
   • Earnings, commissions, and quota month-by-month
   • Easy to export and share
     

Report: Ramping Comp Plans

See how 100+ revenue leaders set their new reps up for success by creating ramping comp plans with adjusted quotas and commission rates.

View Report

Backed by Industry Data

Plus, we surveyed 100+ revenue leaders on how they approach ramping comp plans. Here’s what we found:

• 40% offer guaranteed commissions (draws or bonuses)
• Quota adjustments are the most common ramping strategy
• Only 30% of teams allow accelerators during ramp
• Enterprise teams rely more heavily on progressive quota steps than small teams
  

The calculator is built around these patterns—balancing structure with flexibility.

Examples of Ramping Models We See

Here are real frameworks from teams who participated in our report:

• 0-50-75-100% quota over a 4-month period
• 3 months guaranteed pay, followed by higher commissions on reduced quota
• Flat bonus payouts with eligibility for accelerators once reps are fully ramped
  

The calculator can model all of these—and more—based on your unique data.

Structuring Ramping Comp Plans

The right ramping comp plan aligns your team from day one. 

Without it, reps can’t predict their earnings, and leadership can’t forecast compensation expenses.

With QuotaPath’s ramping tools:

• Reps see how, when, and what they’ll earn
• Leaders get accurate commission projections for cash planning
• RevOps, Finance, and Sales stay aligned
  

Most importantly, ramping plans become repeatable, transparent, and strategic.

Build Your Ramping Comp Plan in Minutes

If you’re still relying on spreadsheets or building plans from scratch, it’s time to simplify.
Use the Sales Ramp Calculator to design a data-driven plan in minutes—and set your reps up for long-term success.

To dig deeper, check out the full Sales Ramp Report for more data-backed trends and examples.

Ramping a new sales rep is one of the trickiest balancing acts in revenue leadership. Reps need time to build pipeline, but the business needs bookings. Enter ramping comp plans: the not-so-secret weapon that aligns early rep activities with long-term performance goals.

We surveyed 114 revenue leaders across team sizes and industries to learn exactly how they’re building these plans. The results? Tactics you can borrow today to design a ramping strategy that supports new hires and hits your number.

Report: Ramping Comp Plans

See how 100+ revenue leaders set their new reps up for success by creating ramping comp plans with adjusted quotas and commission rates.

View Report

6 Months is the Sweet Spot

While ramping timeframes vary, six months was the most common ramp period among respondents. For companies with long sales cycles, that stretch can extend to 12-18 months. The takeaway: base your ramp period on your sales cycle length and how long it truly takes for reps to close their first deal.

Draws, Reduced Quotas, and Safety Nets

40% of companies provide guaranteed commissions during ramp, mostly through draws:

• 20% use non-recoverable draws
• 10% use recoverable draws
• 10% offer flat-rate bonuses

Smaller teams (1-10 reps) are more likely to offer higher commission rates with lower quotas. Meanwhile, 100% of enterprise teams (101+ reps) rely on reduced quota structures to give new hires breathing room.

Adjusting Quotas is the #1 Ramping Tactic

The most widely adopted ramping method? Lowering quota expectations. This allows reps to focus on pipeline generation before jumping into the deep end. Some companies pair this with higher commission rates to keep early earnings competitive.

An example progression might look like:

• Month 1: 25% of full quota
• Month 2: 50%
• Month 3: 75%
• Month 4+: 100%

Or a quarterly model with quotas ramping 50% > 75% > 100%.

Accelerators: Earn More, Earlier

Only 30% of companies allow reps to hit accelerators during ramp. But when used, this tactic boosts early motivation and rewards high performers from day one. For companies that delay accelerators until full ramp, the goal is to prevent overpaying before consistent performance is proven.

Activity-Based Pay? Not So Much

Less than 3% of teams tie ramp pay to activities like calls or demos. The majority reward only closed-won revenue. However, several leaders noted they’re exploring MBO-based ramp plans to offer structure before deals start closing.

Ramp Plan Examples to Steal

Here are some real frameworks from survey respondents:

• Small team (1-10 reps): 6-month ramp. First 3 months focus on pipeline only. Months 4-6 carry progressive quota (33%, 66%, 100%). Accelerators kick in at full quota.
• Mid-sized team (11-50 reps): Reduced quota with flat-rate payout. Bonus if rep hits full ramp quota. Accelerators delayed until post-ramp.
• Large team (51-100 reps): 90-day ramp. Non-recoverable draw instead of reduced quotas. Accelerators allowed during ramp.

Want to see how your plan stacks up? Try our free Ramp Calculator to model your own.

Final Thought: Ramp is Your First Chance to Get Comp Right

The right ramping comp plan doesn’t just shorten time to productivity. It builds trust. It aligns effort with earnings. And it sets the tone for performance expectations going forward.

With QuotaPath, you can design, implement, and communicate comp plans that reps actually understand. Use our intuitive builder to create structured ramp plans, add transparency with deal-by-deal earnings visibility, and drive the right behaviors from day one.

Want to see how it works? Schedule a demo and let’s build your best ramping strategy yet.

Lastly, need more data? Don’t miss our Q1 Spiff Report for insights into tactical short-term incentives.

For many RevOps leaders, the sales tech stack is the sacred key to operating efficiently.
With the right combination of tools, sales teams can automate tasks, streamline workflows, and gain valuable insights to close more deals.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through:
– What a sales tech stack is and why it matters
– The essential tools every sales team needs, from CRM to commission management software
– How to choose and build the right sales technology stack for your business

Whether starting from scratch or refining your existing sales stack, this guide will help you make informed decisions that drive revenue and efficiency.

What is a Sales Tech Stack?

Let’s start with the basics. A sales tech stack is the collection of software, tools, and technologies a sales team uses to manage processes and optimize performance. Sales technology plays a crucial role in modern sales teams, with an average of 10 tools per stack, according to Salesforce. 

The sales stack streamlines processes, enhances productivity, and drives growth with data analysis, automation, and customer engagement.

Key software categories in today’s sales stack include tools for every sales aspect, including prospecting, commission management, lead enrichment, appointment scheduling, CRM, and contract management. This makes sales technology foundational to any successful sales strategy.

Why You Need a Strong Sales Tech Stack

Now that we’ve defined what makes up a sales tech stack, let’s dig into why having the right one in place correlates to your team’s success.

For any growth-oriented organization, this is a must-have.

First, investing in the right tools increases efficiency and productivity by reducing administrative tasks and enabling sales teams to focus on selling. A strong sales technology stack automates manual tasks, such as data entry and follow-ups, saving valuable time.

This automation also improves data accuracy and forecasting enabling better decision-making and revenue predictability.

Lastly, well-integrated sales technology enhances collaboration across teams by aligning marketing, sales, and customer success to a single source of truth.

The right sales stack empowers your team to work smarter, move faster, and drive consistent growth.

Tools You Need For Your Sales Tech Stack

Next, let’s check out the key tool types that make up a strong sales stack.

Prospecting Tools

Prospecting tools help sales teams identify, connect with, and qualify potential leads more effectively, filling the top of the funnel with high-quality opportunities.

Prospecting Software Use Cases
– Finding and Engaging Leads: Identify and reach out to potential customers through automated prospecting.
– Automating Outreach Sequences: Streamline follow-ups with personalized email and call sequences.
– Enriching Lead Data: Gather additional firmographic and behavioral insights to improve lead quality.
– Prioritizing High-Intent Prospects: Score and filter leads based on engagement and buying signals.
– Tracking Outreach Performance: Measure open rates, response rates, and conversion metrics to refine prospecting efforts.

Prospecting Software Benefits
– Increases Efficiency: Automates manual lead sourcing and outreach tasks.
– Enhances Personalization: Provides data-driven insights to tailor messaging for higher engagement.
– Improves Lead Quality: Helps reps focus on high-potential prospects with better qualification.
– Speeds Up Pipeline Growth: Fills the sales funnel with a consistent flow of targeted leads.
– Seamless CRM Integration: Syncs with your CRM to keep prospect data current.

Prospecting Software Examples

• Apollo.io – A comprehensive prospecting platform offering contact data, enrichment, and automated outreach.
• ZoomInfo – Provides market intelligence, lead enrichment, and buyer intent data to help sales teams target the right accounts.
• Lusha – A simple, effective tool for finding verified contact information and enriching lead profiles.

Commission Management Software

Commission management software streamlines commission tracking and calculation, ensuring accuracy and transparency.

Commission Management Software Use Cases
– Tracking and Calculating Commissions: Automate commission calculations based on deal data.
– Providing Transparency for Sales Reps: Offer real-time visibility into earnings and potential payouts.
– Forecasting Earnings: Allow reps to estimate their commissions based on pipeline performance.
– Ensuring Compensation Accuracy: Eliminate manual errors in commission calculations.

Commission Management Software Benefits
– Saves Time: Automates commission tracking and reduces manual calculations.
– Boosts Sales Motivation: Real-time earnings visibility incentivizes performance.
– Improves Accuracy: Ensures fair and error-free payouts.
– Seamless CRM Integration: Syncs with your sales data for automated tracking.

Commission Management Software Example

QuotaPath – A commission tracking and forecasting platform that integrates with CRM, Payroll, and data warehousing platforms to provide transparency and accuracy in compensation.

Spiff – A sales commission automation tool calculates and manages real-time commission plans.

Xactly Incent – A robust incentive compensation platform for enterprise sales teams to manage complex commission structures.

Lead Enrichment Software

Lead enrichment tools enhance raw lead data with valuable insights; sales reps prioritize outreach and tailor messaging.

Lead Enrichment Software Use Cases
– Enhancing Lead Data: Add firmographic, demographic, and behavioral insights to leads.
– Improving Lead Scoring: Use enriched data to prioritize the highest-value prospects.
– Personalizing Outreach: Provide sales reps with deeper insights to tailor messaging.
– Automating Data Updates: Keep CRM records fresh with continuous data enrichment.

Lead Enrichment Software Benefits
– Increases Lead Quality: Ensures sales teams work with accurate and complete prospect data.
– Enhances Personalization: Provides deeper insights to craft targeted messaging.
– Saves Time: Automates data collection and updates in real-time.
– Boosts Conversion Rates: Helps reps engage more effectively with high-quality prospects.

Lead Enrichment Software Example

Clearbit – A lead enrichment tool that provides real-time firmographic and technographic

LinkedIn Sales Navigator – A prospecting tool that enhances lead data with social and professional insights.

LeadIQ – A prospecting and enrichment platform that captures and updates lead contact data.

Appointment Scheduling Software

Appointment scheduling tools simplify booking prospect meetings, reducing friction and accelerating the path from interest to conversation.

Appointment Scheduling Software Use Cases
– Automating Meeting Booking: Allow leads to book meetings directly from emails or websites.
– Reducing Scheduling Conflicts: Sync calendars to find available time slots.
– Improving Speed-to-Lead: Instantly schedule follow-ups after lead capture.
– Enhancing Team Coordination: Route meetings to the right sales reps.

Appointment Scheduling Software Benefits
– Eliminates Back-and-Forth Emails: Automates scheduling to reduce friction.
– Improves Lead Engagement: Makes it easier for prospects to book sales calls.
– Enhances Productivity: Saves time by reducing manual scheduling tasks.
– Integrates with CRM and Email: Syncs with existing tools for seamless scheduling.

Appointment Scheduling Software Example

Chili Piper – An intelligent scheduling tool that automates meeting bookings for sales teams.

Calendly – A widely used scheduling software that simplifies booking meetings with prospects and customers.

HubSpot Meetings – A free scheduling tool that integrates with HubSpot CRM for seamless appointment setting.

Sales Engagement Software

Sales engagement platforms empower reps to manage and automate their outreach across channels, keeping prospects engaged throughout the buying journey.

Sales Engagement Software Use Cases
– Automating Sales Outreach: Schedule multi-channel touchpoints (email, calls, social).
– Tracking Engagement Metrics: Monitor open rates, click-throughs, and response rates.
– Managing Sales Sequences: Set up automated follow-up sequences.
– Improving Rep Productivity: Reduce manual outreach tasks.

Sales Engagement Software Benefits
– Streamlines Outreach: Helps reps stay organized and proactive.
– Enhances Personalization: Uses AI and data to tailor messaging.
– Improves Response Rates: Optimizes outreach timing and frequency.
– Integrates with CRM: Keeps all engagement data centralized.

Sales Engagement Software Example

Outreach – A sales engagement platform that automates and optimizes outbound sales efforts.

Salesloft – A multi-channel engagement platform that helps sales teams personalize and scale outreach.

Apollo.io – Combines prospecting, enrichment, and engagement into one platform for automated outreach.

CRM

CRM serves as a central hub for managing customer relationships, tracking pipeline activity, and ensuring consistency in the sales process.

CRM Use Cases
– Managing Customer Interactions: Centralizes customer data and communications.
– Tracking Sales Pipelines: Provides visibility into deal stages and forecasts.
– Automating Sales Workflows: Reduces manual data entry and task management.
– Enhancing Customer Retention: Supports account management and renewals.

CRM Benefits
– Improves Sales Efficiency: Keeps teams organized with a single source of truth.
– Enhances Data Accuracy: Eliminates duplicate and incomplete records.
– Provides Actionable Insights: Helps forecast revenue and measure performance.
– Scales with Your Business: Adaptable to teams of all sizes.

CRM Example

HubSpot CRM – A user-friendly CRM with powerful automation and reporting capabilities.

Salesforce – An industry-leading CRM known for its scalability, customization, and integrations.

Pipedrive – A visual pipeline-based CRM designed for small to mid-sized sales teams.

Market Intelligence Software

Market intelligence tools equip sales teams with up-to-date insights into buyer behavior, industry trends, and competitive activity to refine targeting and messaging.

Market Intelligence Software Use Cases
– Gathering Industry Insights: Understand market trends and competitive landscapes.
– Identifying High-Value Accounts: Find potential customers based on firmographic data.
– Tracking Buying Intent Signals: Detect when prospects actively seek solutions.
– Enhancing Sales and Marketing Alignment: Provide shared data for better targeting.

Market Intelligence Software Benefits
– Improves Targeting: Helps sales reps focus on the right accounts.
– Speeds Up Lead Qualification: Provides real-time buying intent data.
– Strengthens Competitive Positioning: Helps teams anticipate market shifts.
– Integrates with CRM and Outreach Tools: Keeps data accessible for sales teams.

Market Intelligence Software Example

ZoomInfo – A market intelligence platform that provides detailed insights on companies and buyers.

Cognism – A B2B data provider that delivers intent-based lead generation insights.

Lusha – A contact and company data enrichment tool that helps sales teams find verified prospect information.

Sales Analytics Software

Sales analytics platforms turn raw sales data into actionable insights, enabling teams to make informed decisions, optimize performance, and forecast confidently.

Sales Analytics Software Use Cases
– Tracking Rep Performance: Monitor individual and team metrics.
– Analyzing Deal Trends: Identify what’s working and what’s not.
– Optimizing Sales Processes: Find bottlenecks in the pipeline.
– Improving Forecast Accuracy: Use data to predict revenue.

Sales Analytics Software Benefits
– Provides Data-Driven Insights: Helps sales leaders make informed decisions.
– Enhances Coaching Opportunities: Identifies areas for rep improvement.
– Improves Pipeline Health: Detects weak points in the sales process.
– Integrates with Sales and CRM Systems: Offers real-time visibility.

Sales Analytics Software Example

Gong – An AI-powered sales analytics platform that analyzes sales calls and pipeline health.

Chorus.ai – A conversation intelligence tool that helps sales teams analyze call and meeting insights.

InsightSquared – A revenue analytics platform that provides deep sales performance reporting.

Sales Forecasting Software

Sales forecasting tools use historical data and AI to help sales leaders project revenue, assess pipeline health, and make strategic decisions with greater certainty.

Sales Forecasting Software Use Cases
– Predicting Revenue Trends: Use historical data to project future sales.
–  Assessing Deal Health:  Identify which deals are at risk.
–  Improving Pipeline Visibility: Provide real-time insights into sales performance.
–  Optimizing Quota Setting:  Align goals with data-driven forecasts.

Sales Forecasting Software Benefits
– Improves Revenue Predictability: Helps companies plan more accurately.
– Reduces Uncertainty: Uses AI and data modeling for better forecasting.
–  Enhances Decision-Making: Helps leadership adjust strategies based on trends.
– Integrates with CRM and Analytics Tools – Ensures real-time updates.

Sales Forecasting Software Example

Clari – A revenue intelligence platform that improves forecasting accuracy.

BoostUp.ai – A forecasting tool that combines AI-driven analytics with deal insights.

Aviso – A predictive sales forecasting platform that uses AI to provide deal and revenue forecasts.

Deal Management Software

Deal management tools centralize and streamline the workflow of advancing, approving, and closing deals, improving consistency and reducing sales cycle friction.

Deal Management Software Use Cases

– Managing Sales Approvals: Streamline contract and pricing approvals.
– Optimizing Deal Workflows: Automate handoffs between teams.
– Tracking Deal Progress – Provide visibility into deal stages.
–  Ensuring Pricing Consistency – Standardize pricing across the team.

Deal Management Software Benefits

– Speeds Up Deal Closures: Reduces bottlenecks in approvals.
–  Improves Compliance: Ensures deals meet company policies.
– Enhances Collaboration:  Aligns sales, finance, and legal teams.
– Automates Pricing and Discounts: Ensures consistency.

Deal Management Software Example

Salesforce Revenue Cloud – A deal management tool that automates complex pricing and approvals.

PandaDoc – A document automation tool that streamlines contract and proposal workflows.

DealHub – A sales proposal and deal acceleration platform that simplifies pricing, quoting, and approvals.

Contract Management Software

Contract management solutions automate and secure the process of drafting, sharing, signing, and storing agreements, accelerating deal closure and improving compliance.

Contract Management Software Use Cases

– Automating Contract Creation: Generate agreements quickly.
– Managing E-Signatures: Securely collect digital signatures.
– Tracking Contract Expirations: Keep tabs on renewals and expirations.
– Ensuring Compliance: Standardize legal language across contracts.

Contract Management Software Benefits

– Speeds Up Sales Cycles: Reduces delays in contract approvals.
–  Enhances Security and Compliance:  Keeps documents secure.
– Automates Approval Workflows: Streamlines handoffs between teams.

Contract Management Software Example

DocuSign – A leading e-signature and contract management platform.

Ironclad – A contract lifecycle management tool that automates contract approvals and compliance.

Dropbox Sign (formerly HelloSign) – A simple and secure e-signature tool for contract management and approvals.

How To Choose What Tools To Include In Your Sales Tech Stack

This process will help you select the best software for your sales stack.

How To Build A Robust Sales Tech Stack in 5 Steps

These steps will enable you to create a strong sales technology stack.

Step 1: Audit Your Existing Tools

• Identify what’s working and what’s redundant.
• Consolidate overlapping software to streamline workflows.
• Ensure your CRM serves as the central hub for all data.

Step 2: Implement Tools in Phases

• Start with essential tools (CRM, engagement, forecasting).
• Gradually introduce new software to avoid disruption.
• Train sales reps on each tool before full implementation.

Step 3: Foster User Adoption and Training

• Provide hands-on training and documentation.
• Assign internal champions to help with adoption.
• Regularly collect feedback and optimize usage.

Step 4: Monitor Performance and Optimize

• Track tool usage and impact on sales efficiency.
• Adjust settings and workflows to maximize effectiveness.
• Stay updated on new features and software updates.

Step 5:  Reevaluate Your Stack Annually

• Conduct a yearly review to identify gaps and new opportunities.
• Remove outdated or underutilized tools.
• Stay ahead by exploring emerging sales technologies.

Schedule time with a team member to see how QuotaPath can fill the commission management hole in your sales tech stack.

The most common career jump in sales is the move from Business Development Representative (BDR) to Account Executive (AE). Done right, this transition unlocks top-performing sellers and accelerates revenue growth.

…Done wrong, it leads to underperformance, frustration, and high turnover.

I’ve seen both.

At QuotaPath, we’ve successfully helped BDRs transition into AEs, contributing to five consecutive quarters of 110% blended attainment. Along the way, we’ve refined the systems, coaching, and compensation structures needed to make this promotion work for both the rep and the business.

If you’re a sales leader preparing to move a BDR into an AE role, here’s what you should do to set them up for success.

Step 1: Structure a BDR Compensation Plan That Reinforces AE Behaviors

Before a BDR ever applies for an AE role, their compensation plan should be preparing them for the responsibilities of closing revenue. Too often, BDRs are only comped on demos booked, creating a “throw it over the fence” mentality that disconnects them from deal quality and conversion.

Instead, a BDR’s comp plan should evolve over time:

1. Start with Demo Booked Quotas: For ramping BDRs, an initial focus on quantity makes sense.
2. Incorporate Qualified Pipeline or Sales Accepted Opportunities: Encourage better alignment with AEs.
3. Tie Compensation to Closed-Won Revenue: BDRs should care about the outcomes of their deals.

As a leader, your job is to ensure BDRs don’t just chase demo volume but start thinking like closers early on.

That mindset shift is critical to their success as an AE.

Step 2: Give BDRs a Soft Ramp into Closing Before They Get Promoted

We implemented a structured, low-risk way for BDRs to gain closing experience before officially stepping into an AE role. We did this by letting BDRs take on smaller, lower-risk deals—like our 1-4 user seat demos—to give them hands-on practice closing new customers.

This model worked because:

• It allowed BDRs to build confidence and practice key skills like negotiation and objection handling.
• It gave us, as leaders, a data-backed way to evaluate their ability to close deals before a promotion.
• It provided an “earn-up” opportunity where BDRs could make additional commission without distracting from their core BDR targets.

By the time a BDR officially stepped into an AE role, they had already won deals, making their transition faster and smoother.

Step 3: Develop the Core Sales Skills AEs Need

A BDR’s role is different from an AE’s. BDRs are focused on outbound activity, while AEs manage full-cycle sales. This means the biggest skill gaps when making the jump include:

• Pipeline Ownership – Understanding how to manage, forecast, and grow a book of business.
• Multi-Threading – Engaging multiple stakeholders and navigating complex sales cycles.
• Negotiation & Contracting – Learning to hold pricing, justify value, and manage deal terms.

To bridge these gaps, we run weekly training sessions covering topics like pricing and packaging, competitive differentiation, and objection handling. We also assign BDRs to shadow AE calls, provide hands-on deal coaching, and use call reviews where BDRs critique AE performances.

One of my favorite coaching methods is BDRs coaching AEs—not just the other way around. This gives BDRs a framework for evaluating deal quality before they’re responsible for closing them.

Sales Ramp Calculator

Input annual quota, contract value, sales cycle, and variable pay below to calculate a monthly or quarterly breakdown for your new hire’s quota and ramping comp plans.

Use Calculator

Step 4: Use the Right Comp Plan to Drive Success in the AE Role

A comp plan should set expectations from Day 1.

 We’ve found that a properly structured ramping AE comp plan can make or break success in the first 90 days.

• Should promoted AEs get a ramp? In many cases, no. If the rep already understands the business and product, a full ramp might not be necessary.
• If ramping, what should change? A lower quota with higher commission rates can ensure the rep stays motivated without the pressure of a full AE target too soon.
• Ensure visibility into earnings: Reps need to see how much they make on deals closed and forecasted. This is why at QuotaPath, we emphasize commission transparency, so reps can game their comp plans in the best way possible—closing revenue that’s great for the business and for their paychecks.

Additionally, I also offer free compensation plan consultations to help leaders design plans that balance rep motivation with business revenue goals.

 If you’re considering ramping your newly promoted AEs, I’d love to help.

Step 5: Coach for Retention (Not Just Promotion)

Many leaders assume every BDR wants to be an AE. That’s not always the case. Some BDRs best suit customer success, RevOps, or account management roles. Others might be elite BDRs who can generate massive pipeline and should be compensated accordingly.

Instead of making AE the only path, have career conversations early. Some of the best BDRs I’ve seen have become revenue operations pros or high-earning senior BDRs, making $300K+ by specializing.

If AE is the right move, ensure BDRs continue doing what made them successful—prospecting, asking great questions, and qualifying deals. One of the biggest pitfalls is when newly promoted AEs think prospecting is over, only to realize that inbound leads won’t always fill their pipeline.

Final Thoughts: Invest in Your BDR-to-AE Pipeline

The best AEs don’t always come from external hiring. 

Developing BDRs into strong AEs can drive faster ramp times, better quota attainment, and stronger team culture.

But success isn’t guaranteed. 

Even the most promising BDRs can struggle in an AE role without the right comp plan, coaching, and training.

Let’s chat if you’re thinking about improving your BDR-to-AE career path. 

At QuotaPath, we help teams design strategic comp plans that balance seller motivation with business goals. 

Schedule a free compensation consultation today, and let’s build a plan that sets your BDRs and your business up for long-term success.

According to 82% of sales professionals, sales operations (SalesOps) play a critical role in business growth and are the backbone of a high-performing sales team. This team supports and enables frontline sales teams to sell more efficiently and effectively.

SalesOps provides strategic direction, improves cross-departmental collaboration and communication, reduces sales process friction, and manages tools, processes, and data to achieve its goals. 

With the right tools, sales ops can streamline processes, improve forecasting, and drive predictable revenue growth. Companies that invest in sales operations tools see:

• Higher quota attainment rates
• Faster deal cycles
• More accurate forecasting

In this blog, we explore comprehensive sales operations tools and strategies. This guide covers key features, implementation tips, and the transition to RevOps.

Recommended Reading

SalesOps vs. RevOps: An interview with RevPal Founder Christian Freese

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What Is Sales Operations

Sales operations, SalesOps, is the strategic function that supports and enhances a sales team’s efficiency. It bridges sales, finance, and RevOps, ensuring sales teams are equipped with the right processes, data, and tools to succeed.

Sales operations strive to increase revenue efficiency by optimizing workflows, automating tasks, and improving sales performance tracking. SalesOps enables sales teams to focus more on selling and less on administrative burdens, ultimately contributing to the overall growth and success of the business.

Key Responsibilities of Sales Operations

As far as responsibilities, SalesOps handles the following critical functions that support a high-performing sales organization:

Process Optimization – Standardizing and improving sales workflows to increase efficiency.

Sales Data & Analytics – Collecting, analyzing, and leveraging data for better decision-making.

Technology & Automation – Implementing and managing CRMs, forecasting tools, and automation platforms.

Compensation & Commission Tracking – Ensuring accurate commission payments and motivating reps with performance-based incentives.

Sales Strategy & Planning – Aligning sales efforts with company goals through quota setting, pipeline management, and forecasting.

The Evolution of Sales Operations

Traditionally, sales operations focused on data entry, reporting, and administrative tasks. However, the role has evolved. Today, modern Sales Ops teams act as strategic revenue enablers, leveraging automation, AI, and real-time analytics to drive predictable revenue growth.

Sales operations is increasingly merging with Revenue Operations (RevOps), which integrates sales, marketing, and customer success into a unified revenue strategy. This evolution reflects a broader shift toward cross-functional alignment and data-driven decision-making in today’s competitive business landscape.

Key Features To Look For In Sales Operations Tools

Now, for the tools! Sales operations software optimizes day-to-day sales functions. When selecting the best tools for your organization, consider these crucial features.

Top Sales Operations Software

Sales operations leverage various tools to facilitate their multifaceted role efficiently. We’ve curated some popular options in key software categories commonly used by these professionals to aid your tool selection.

CRM Software

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software helps businesses manage, track, and document their interactions with current and potential customers. This tool organizes, automates, and synchronizes sales, marketing, customer service, and support activities.

Salesforce

Salesforce helps companies manage customer relationships, communication, conversion, lead tracking, and measure success through reporting.

HubSpot

HubSpot unites marketing, sales, and customer service on a single platform, enabling them to focus on the customer.

Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM helps businesses manage sales, marketing, and customer support activities in a single, unified platform. 

Pipedrive

Pipedrive is designed to help businesses close more deals by enabling sales teams to focus on managing leads, tracking sales activities, and automating sales processes. 

Forecasting Software

Sales forecasting software enables the sales operations team to accurately predict a sales team’s performance in the upcoming months by analyzing past trends and current performance indicators. These insights help allocate resources, detect weaknesses, improve budget management, and minimize risks.

Avercast

Avercast’s Sales forecasting software uses previous sales data plus current salesperson data to make sales projections. The software enables sales ops to create more realistic sales goals and adjust forecasts based on sales rep feedback.

OnPlan

OnPlan provides budgeting and forecasting capabilities, enabling sales operations to create “what-if” scenarios, track milestones, and gain insights into past performance through premade dashboards. 

Clari

Clari helps businesses create accurate forecasts by analyzing historical data and identifying patterns, reducing guesswork, and improving revenue predictability. 

Anaplan

Anaplan is a business planning, forecasting, and performance management software platform that connects financial, strategic, and operational planning in real-time, enabling better decision-making. 

Sales Automation Software

Sales automation tools standardize and automate repetitive manual tasks like emails, scheduling, and data entry, enabling reps to focus on sales activities to advance and close deals. Recent research by McKinsey indicates that leveraging automation can help boost sales by up to 20 percent.

Bardeen

Bardeen helps automate repetitive tasks and streamline workflows across various apps and websites by connecting different applications with a few clicks, saving time and effort. 

Zapier

Zapier connects different apps to automate workflows without needing to write code.

Boomi

Boomi helps businesses connect applications, data, and devices. Its user-friendly, low-code platform enables data integration, process automation, and API management. 

Apollo

Apollo automates sales lead generation, contact database management, email outreach, and engagement to streamline sales processes and boost efficiency. 

Sales Intelligence & Data Enrichment Software

Now let’s talk sales intelligence software, which equips sales ops teams with market insights, competitor analysis, and lead scoring, eliminating guesswork and facilitating data-driven decision-making.

ZoomInfo

ZoomInfo provides businesses with company and contact information, as well as tools for outreach and automation, to improve their sales and marketing efforts. 

Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Sales Navigator helps sales professionals find, qualify, and engage with leads more effectively, offering advanced search capabilities, lead recommendations, and CRM integration. 

Cognism

Cognism provides verified emails, phone numbers, and intent data to help businesses connect with their target customers.

LeadFeeder

LeadFeeder identifies and tracks website visitors, providing buyer intent data and enabling data-driven lead generation and sales decision-making. 

DiscoverOrg

DiscoverOrg provides contact data and sales intelligence, enabling sales operations to identify key decision-makers, manage and enrich data, and improve sales efficiency and pipeline velocity. 

Infer

Infer offers predictive lead scoring to prioritize high-potential leads and improve sales cycle efficiency.

MadKudu

MadKudu aggregates data, prioritizes leads, and provides context for outreach, helping sales teams focus on high-value prospects and improve deal velocity. 

Commission Tracking Software

Commission tracking software automates calculating, managing, and tracking sales commissions, bonuses, and incentives, streamlining processes and ensuring accurate payouts to sales teams. 

QuotaPath

QuotaPath provides real-time data syncs, personalized dashboards, and automated commissions to enhance earnings transparency and sales performance.

Qobra

Qobra automates commission calculation, validation, and sharing, reducing errors and boosting sales motivation with real-time visibility to enhance sales performance.

Xactly

Xactly automates compensation design and management to align seller behavior with revenue goals, reducing administrative time, improving quota attainment, and increasing payout accuracy.

Performio

Performio is used to automate and manage sales commission calculations. It allows businesses to design compensation plans and track sales performance. 

Spiff

Spiff simplifies incentive compensation management, builds trust, motivates sales teams, increases performance and earnings visibility, and drives top-line growth.

CaptivateIQ

CaptivateIQ blends the ease of spreadsheets with advanced automation tools, allowing companies to efficiently design, calculate, and manage complex incentive compensation programs.

Sales Analytics Software

Sales analytics software helps businesses analyze sales data, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions to improve sales performance and increase revenue. It provides insights into sales activities, customer behavior, and market dynamics, enabling businesses to optimize their sales strategies. 

Tableau

Tableau helps businesses make sense of data to solve problems. It’s used for business intelligence, data visualization, and analytics. 

Salesloft

Salesloft Analytics centralizes reporting, providing comprehensive insights that enable data-driven decisions.

Parabola

Parabola streamlines data consolidation, reporting, and analysis, facilitating data-driven decision-making.

Best Practices for Implementing Sales Operations Tools

All that is great, but remember that selecting the best tools means nothing if they aren’t properly implemented. Take a look these tips below to get the most out of your chosen sales operations software.

Sales Operations Org Structure

Start with org. structure. A well-defined sales operations org structure is essential for clarity, collaboration, and alignment with broader revenue goals.

Define roles and responsibilities:
– Clarify the distinction between RevOps, Sales Ops, and Finance teams.
– Assign ownership for data management, reporting, automation, and tool oversight.

Ensure alignment with revenue strategy:
– Structure the team to support scalability, forecasting, and efficiency.
– Connect sales leadership, finance, and operations for shared accountability.

Leverage sales ops to optimize processes:
– Improve pipeline visibility, compensation accuracy, and quota attainment tracking.
– Standardize sales workflows and data hygiene across all tools.

Determine Best Practices

Secondly, strong operational standards must be established to ensure that the tools support business outcomes effectively.

Establish clear workflows and processes
– Define how data flows between tools (CRM, commission tracking, forecasting).
– Ensure that automation supports key sales objectives.

Align tools with business goals
– Identify which metrics matter most and how tools should measure them.
– Set clear expectations for tool adoption and usage across teams.

Regularly evaluate and optimize
– Conduct quarterly audits to measure tool effectiveness.
– Gather feedback from sales reps, leadership, and finance teams.

Encourage Collaboration With Sales Leadership

Close collaboration with sales leadership helps ensure sales operations tools directly support frontline success.

Sales Ops as a strategic partner
– Work with sales leaders to define quotas, incentives, and compensation structures.
– Support deal strategy and pipeline forecasting with real-time insights.

Ensure sales leaders understand tool’s impact
– Provide visibility into how automation reduces administrative work.
– Show how tools optimize performance tracking and revenue forecasting.

Create a culture of transparency and accountability
– Ensure reps can see their earnings, goals, and progress in real-time.
– Implement multi-level approvals for commission accuracy.

Build A Skill Development Plan

Next, training is essential to maximize the value of tools and empower teams to use them effectively.

Train sales teams on best practices for using tools
– Offer ongoing education on CRM, automation, forecasting, and compensation management.
– Develop role-based training modules for different team functions.

Empower teams to use data effectively
– Teach reps how to interpret dashboards and optimize sales strategies.
– Train RevOps and Finance teams on commission tracking and quota modeling.

Foster a learning-driven culture
– Host monthly sales operations reviews to discuss what’s working and what’s not.
– Encourage sales ops to improve processes continuously based on feedback.

Roll It Out In Phases, Don’t Go Big Bang

Additionally, we recommend rolling out new solutions gradually. This ensures smoother adoption, fewer disruptions, and faster iterations based on feedback.

Start with a pilot group
– Test the new sales ops tool with a small team first.
– Gather initial feedback before full rollout.

Phase implementation across departments
– Introduce tools gradually to sales, finance, and RevOps teams.
– Ensure each group understands their role in the process.

Refine based on user adoption and impact
– Monitor early performance indicators to adjust workflows.
– Provide support resources to ease adoption.

Cross-Team Collaboration

Lastly, collaboration between sales, finance, and RevOps is critical to ensure tools deliver unified insights and scalable growth.

Unify sales, finance, and RevOps through shared insights
– Create centralized dashboards for real-time data sharing.
– Ensure all teams have access to the same performance metrics.

Encourage open communication between departments
– Hold regular alignment meetings to review tool adoption and impact.
– Foster a culture of continuous improvement based on data insights.

Optimize workflows for efficiency and transparency
– Automate commission tracking, approvals, and reporting to reduce bottlenecks.
– Use feedback loops to refine processes and improve tool efficiency.

The Future Of Sale Operations; Revops

We’ll end this long piece with some thoughts on the transition from SalesOps to RevOps, which continues to accelerate. RevOps topped LinkedIn’s Jobs on the Rise list in 2023, with nearly 60% of companies having established RevOps functions in the last two years. Forrester found that businesses that align the people, process, and technology in the demand engine, as they do in RevOps, experience 36% more revenue growth and up to 28% more profitability.

How are SalesOps professionals making the transition to RevOps? According to Christian Freese of RevPal, “Spend the time you’re in sales ops to learn and build those relationships internally with your current company or join RevOps Slack groups to get some mentors.

Start understanding the full funnel view of a company, from the inception of a lead to an opportunity, a deal, the handover to CS, and through to an upsell or cross-sell. Understand the responsibilities of every GTM function. You don’t have to be an expert in each one because a good RevOps person, in my opinion, is a generalist.

They know a little bit about everything and can lead a team that can build out what you’re planning.

Also, get familiar with what OKRs are and how companies plan their OKRs.  Then, learn how to align all the teams to drive that one OKR metric that drives the company forward.”

So there you have it. Now, you should feel fully ready to build that salesops software stack and prepare for a move toward RevOps!

FAQs

What is the difference between revenue operations and sales operations?

While both Sales Operations and Revenue Operations (RevOps) aim to improve revenue, RevOps takes a broader, holistic approach. It focuses on aligning all revenue-generating teams (sales, marketing, customer success) to optimize the entire customer journey. In contrast, Sales Operations focuses on streamlining the sales process and enhancing sales team productivity.  

Which sales operations tool has the most features? 

For sales operations, Salesforce Sales Cloud is often considered a leader in terms of feature richness, offering a comprehensive suite of tools for managing customer interactions, streamlining sales processes, and providing analytics.  

How can sales operations tools improve sales team productivity? 

Sales operations tools improve sales team productivity by automating tasks, streamlining workflows, providing data insights, and enabling better resource allocation, ultimately allowing sales teams to focus on closing deals and improving overall performance. 

What skills are essential for sales operations professionals? 

Essential skills for sales operations professionals include strong analytical and data analysis abilities, CRM proficiency, project management skills, communication, and collaboration with sales teams and other departments. 

Managing payroll is complex and time-consuming, especially for businesses with commission-based teams. The intricate calculations, variable pay structures, and compliance requirements make payroll processing challenging for HR and finance departments.

Many companies still rely on manual processes, leading to errors, compliance risks, and payment delays. One in five payrolls in the U.S. contains errors, each costing an average of $291, according to Paycom. These inefficiencies highlight the urgent need for payroll automation, which streamlines operations, reduces costly mistakes, and ensures employees are paid accurately and on time.

If you’re ready for payroll automation, our latest guide is for you. In this blog, we unpack the key benefits of today’s top solutions and where to start when implementing them.

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What Is Payroll Automation?

Payroll automation is the use of technology to streamline and manage payroll processes with minimal human intervention. By replacing manual calculations and data entry with automated systems, businesses can ensure employees are paid accurately and on time while reducing administrative burdens. These systems handle everything from tax withholdings and benefits deductions to direct deposits and compliance reporting.

As companies recognize the inefficiencies and risks associated with traditional payroll management, adoption rates are rapidly increasing. According to SaaSworthy, 80% of companies are expected to implement automated payroll systems by 2025. This shift reflects the growing demand for accuracy, efficiency, and regulatory compliance, as payroll automation significantly reduces errors and ensures compliance.

Why You Should Automate Payroll

Managing payroll manually is time-consuming and prone to errors, leading to compliance risks and unnecessary costs. However, automation of payroll streamlines processes, improves accuracy, and enhances overall business efficiency. Here’s why you should automate payroll:

• Saves time: Eliminates manual tasks and reduces processing from hours to minutes.
• Minimizes human error: Global payroll processing accuracy averages 75%, with 32% saying it takes two or more pay cycles to rectify mistakes. Automated systems improve accuracy by minimizing errors in data entry and calculations.
• Enhances security: Advanced encryption protects employee data and reduces the risk of data breaches, boosting security and privacy.
• Reduces costs: Streamlining processes, minimizing errors, and better record keeping result in lower operational expenses.
• Faster reporting: Audit-ready financial reporting with structure payout records ensures commissions align with ASC 606 revenue record requirements.
• Better record keeping: The SEC filed 760 enforcement actions and recovered a record $6.4 billion in penalties, with $1.235 billion in cumulative penalties paid in connection with the recordkeeping violations in FY22. Better record-keeping ensures compliance and penalty avoidance.
• Improve employee experience: On-time, correct payments, and self-service portals improve trust, transparency, employee satisfaction, and productivity.
• Ensures compliance: 53% of companies have incurred non-compliance payroll penalties in the last five years. However, businesses using automated strategic payroll systems report 70% fewer compliance issues.
• Increases transparency: Self-service portals enable employees to understand and track their earnings.

Payroll Automation Use Cases

Automated payroll processing offers tailored solutions to streamline payments, ensure compliance, and reduce processing time. Below are some of the most impactful use cases for payroll automation.

Use Case #1: Automating Commission-Based Payroll

Sales teams often rely on manual spreadsheets to track commissions, resulting in errors, delays, and compliance issues. Delays in commission payouts can demotivate sales teams and reduce overall productivity. Additionally, inconsistent commission calculations pose compliance risks, resulting in legal and financial complications.

Payroll automation streamlines commission calculations by integrating directly with CRM systems. It automatically extracts relevant deal data, ensuring accurate and timely payouts without manual intervention. Automation also integrates commission approvals directly into payroll systems, eliminating the risk of human error.

For example, companies that utilize the QuotaPath and Rippling integration can push commission data directly into payroll, reducing payout errors and delays.

Use Case #2: Payroll for Global & Remote Teams

Businesses with international employees face significant challenges in managing payroll across multiple tax jurisdictions. Paying international employees means companies must handle multiple currencies and ensure compliance with country-specific labor laws, further complicating payroll processing.

Payroll automation simplifies global payroll by automatically calculating salaries according to local tax requirements. It converts and pays salaries in multiple currencies, ensuring employees receive their correct wages without the hassle of manual exchange rate adjustments. Moreover, automation ensures compliance with location-based payroll regulations, reducing non-compliance risk.

For instance, a company with sales reps in multiple countries can use payroll automation to handle global payroll seamlessly without manual conversions.

Use Case #3: Reducing Payroll Processing Time & Costs

Payroll processing can be a time-consuming and costly task for HR and finance teams. Manually handling payroll requires hours of effort, and any errors that occur demand additional time for corrections. Payroll deadlines create a high-stress environment at the end of pay periods, increasing the likelihood of mistakes and compliance risks.

Implementing payroll automation reduces payroll processing time from hours to minutes. Automated systems identify discrepancies before payments are processed, minimizing errors and the need for corrections. Plus, payroll automation provides real-time reporting and forecasting, facilitating data-driven decisions.

Companies using automated payroll systems report a 20% reduction in administrative costs, according to Keevee.

Use Case #4: Ensuring Compliance & Reducing Risk

Maintaining payroll compliance is a critical concern for businesses, as payroll errors can lead to IRS penalties and legal consequences. Changing tax laws makes manual compliance difficult for HR and finance teams. Employees also need accurate tax deductions and reporting to ensure they meet their own tax obligations.

Payroll automation mitigates compliance risks by ensuring payroll taxes are calculated correctly and filed on time. Automated payroll systems keep up with state, federal, and international tax regulations automatically, without constant manual oversight. Furthermore, automation reduces the likelihood of audits and fines due to payroll discrepancies.

According to Deloitte, 71% of companies automate payroll functions to improve accuracy and compliance, highlighting the widespread adoption of payroll automation as a risk-mitigation strategy. 

How To Automate Payroll

Implementing payroll automation by following these steps will help optimize payroll operations, improve compliance, and minimize human error.

1. Evaluate Your Current Payroll Process

• Identify pain points in your existing system (manual entry, errors, compliance risks, delays).
• Assess how much time HR/Finance spends on payroll processing.
• Determine key automation goals (e.g., reducing errors, streamlining approvals, improving compliance).
  

2. Choose the Right Payroll Automation Software

•   Look for key features such as:
  • Integration capabilities (CRM, accounting, HR tools).
  • Tax compliance automation (federal, state, and local taxes).
  • Multi-currency & global payroll support (for international teams).
  • Commission automation (if managing variable pay).
•  Compare top payroll providers (e.g., Rippling, ADP, Paycom, Gusto).

3. Integrate Payroll with Existing Business Tools

•  Connect your payroll system to:
  • CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot) to sync sales data for commission-based payroll.
  • HRIS (Rippling, BambooHR, Workday) for employee records and tax filings.
  • Accounting software (QuickBooks, Xero) for financial reporting and audits.
• Set up API connections or use built-in integrations for real-time data syncing.

4. Automate Data Collection & Processing

• Ensure payroll software pulls real-time data from:
  • Employee hours worked (for hourly employees).
  • Deal close data (for commission payouts).
  • Tax deductions and benefits adjustments.

• Set up automated approval workflows to eliminate manual verification steps.

5. Set Payroll Schedules & Compliance Rules

•  Define pay periods (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly) based on business needs.
• Ensure automation includes tax withholdings, benefits deductions, and compliance with labor laws.
• Implement built-in compliance checks to prevent errors that trigger audits or fines.

6. Test & Validate the System

•  Run a parallel payroll test (manual vs. automated) for accuracy.
•  Check tax calculations, direct deposit transactions, and reporting accuracy.
•  Adjust settings if any discrepancies arise.

7. Go Live & Monitor Performance

• Fully launch the automated payroll system for your next pay cycle.
• Monitor early pay runs for errors, missing data, or workflow bottlenecks.
•  Gather feedback from employees on payment accuracy and access to payroll records.

8. Continuously Optimize & Improve

• Review automated payroll reports for efficiency improvements.
• Stay updated with payroll compliance changes and update settings accordingly.
• Explore additional automation features (AI-based forecasting, custom reporting, multi-tier approvals).

Features To Look For In Payroll Automation Software

Choosing the right payroll automation software means evaluating essential features that streamline payroll processes while ensuring compliance and security. Consider the following key features when selecting a solution.

1. Core Payroll Processing Features 

Automated Payroll Runs: Set up payroll cycles (weekly, biweekly, monthly) to run automatically. 

Direct Deposit and Payment Options: Supports direct bank deposits, checks, or digital payment methods. 

Tax Withholding and Filing: Automatically calculates and files federal, state, and local payroll taxes. 

Payroll Deductions and Benefits Management: Handles healthcare, retirement contributions, and other deductions.

2. Compliance and Security 

Tax Compliance Automation: Keeps up with changing tax laws and regulations to prevent penalties. 

Multi-State & Global Payroll Support: Ensures accurate tax calculations for employees across different locations. 

Audit & Reporting Tools: Provides real-time payroll compliance reports and error tracking. 

Data Encryption and Security: Protects sensitive payroll and employee data from breaches.

3. Integration Capabilities 

CRM Integration (Salesforce, HubSpot): Automatically syncs commission-based earnings from CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot for sales teams. 

HRIS Integration: Connects with HR software such as Rippling, Workday, and BambooHR for seamless onboarding and employee record management.

Accounting Software Integration: Syncs payroll expenses from platforms like QuickBooks, Xero, and NetSuite with financial reports.

Time Tracking Integration: Automates wage calculations from programs like Toggl, Clockify, ADP Time, and Attendance for hourly employees.

Commission Automation Integration: Integrate with a compensation management platform such as QuotaPath to automate end-to-end payouts in platforms like Rippling with the ability to push commissions into payroll.

How To Pick The Right Payroll Automation Software For Your Business

Payroll automation helps streamline payroll processes, reduce costly errors, and ensure compliance. Automated payroll can save time, enhance accuracy, and improve employee experience.

To choose the best payroll automation software for your business, consider the following:

• Assess your business needs
• Identify must-have features
• Evaluate integration capabilities
• Consider ease of use & scalability
• Compare pricing & cost efficiency
• Check customer support & reliability
• Read reviews and get a demo

Ready to leverage payroll automation? Schedule a demo to learn more about Rippling & QuotaPath.