CASE STUDY
Course sales commission settlement system
Built around multi-tier ranks and sales teams, the system links enrollment, payment and commission settlement into one flow. Every sale is calculated against the organization structure and rank rules in force at that moment, replacing commission reports assembled by hand.
RESULTS
What this project changed
- -95%
- Commission settlement time
- Real time
- Automatic multi-tier calculation
The problem
When courses are sold through a sales agent structure, the hard part is not collecting the money but deciding who is paid and how much. The organization has several rank levels, one sale often pays out across several of them, and the rules change as ranks change.
- Commissions were worked out by hand. Every settlement period, staff had to reconstruct the organization structure from enrollment records, which took time and invited mistakes.
- Sales agents could not see their expected income during the month and had to wait for the settlement result.
- After a rank change or team reshuffle, the basis used for earlier calculations was hard to trace, leaving disputes with nothing to refer to.
What we did
We made the organization structure part of the system's core data, attached commission rules directly to ranks and teams, and calculated at the moment of sale.
- Multi-tier ranks and sales teams are modeled with version history, so every commission can be traced back to the rule that applied at the time.
- Enrollment, tuition payment and payment status run in one flow, and a completed payment triggers the commission calculation.
- Each sales agent has a personal commission page showing calculated amounts across tiers and their settlement status as it happens.
Results
Settlement changed from a monthly push into routine work the system does in the background.
- Commission settlement time fell by about 95%, so management no longer commits people to reconciliation.
- Commissions across tiers are calculated automatically as sales come in, and agents can check their income at any time.
- Rule and organization changes are versioned, so a commission dispute can be settled by looking up what applied.
CONSTRAINTS
Constraints
The conditions that were fixed from the start. The trade-offs behind the approach only make sense once you know them.
The difficulty in a commission system is not the arithmetic but that one error changes what a sales agent actually takes home, so a few conditions could never be relaxed.
- Rank and team rules follow the company's existing scheme. The system has to accommodate that scheme rather than ask the company to simplify it to suit software.
- The organization changes, but settled commissions must not be rewritten, and every one has to be traceable to the rule that applied at the time.
- Because the amounts are agents' income, every calculation has to show its basis, not just a final figure.
- Agents check their own commissions at any time, and that view is limited to themselves and their own tier; other teams' data is off limits.
HOW IT WORKS
Technology and integrations
What the system connects to, how the data moves and why those choices were made — written so that no technical background is needed.
We made the organization structure part of the system rather than something reconstructed at each settlement.
- The relationship between ranks and teams is stored with version history. A rule change affects later sales only, and anything already settled stays as it was.
- Enrollment and payment run in one flow, and a completed payment triggers the commission calculation without waiting for anyone to start settlement.
- Agents and management see the same calculated result, so the two sides never end up with figures that cannot be reconciled.