Commissions and referral fees
Plenty of referral relationships involve money. You send a partner a client and they pay you a cut, or a partner sends you one and you owe them a fee. ReferralPulse tracks those fees on the referral itself, keeps a running tally of who owes whom, reminds you when something has gone unpaid, and can even spot a payment in your inbox and offer to mark it settled. This article walks through the whole flow.
A quick note on how it works under the hood, because it explains everything else: a commission is not a separate record. It lives on the referral it belongs to. Every commission is attached to exactly one referral, and the direction of the money is worked out from the referral itself.
Turning commissions on
Whether commission tools show up at all is controlled by one setting. Go to Settings, open the Referrals tab, and pick your Commission Practice:
- Never is pure networking. No money changes hands, so all of the commission and compliance tools stay hidden and out of your way.
- Sometimes is the default. You exchange fees on some relationships but not others, so the options appear when they are relevant.
- Always means you regularly trade fees, so the full set of commission and compliance tools is on everywhere.
If you set this to Never, you can stop reading. The rest of this only appears once you are on Sometimes or Always.
You can also mark an individual partner as one who pays referral fees on their partner page. That is a handy default, but you still decide fee-by-fee on each referral.
Owed to you versus you owe
The direction of a commission comes from the referral, and it flips the wording everywhere so you never have to second-guess it.
- Owed to you. You gave a partner a client and won the deal, so the partner pays you. Screens read Received and Not Received, and the amount is labeled Your Commission.
- You owe. A partner gave you a client and you won the deal, so you pay the partner. Screens read Paid and Not Paid, and the amount is labeled Commission Due.
Adding a commission to a referral
When you log a referral, or when you mark one Won, you can attach a fee. In the referral form, turn on This referral involves a commission/fee, then choose a percentage or a fixed dollar amount. If you enter a project value and a percentage, the amount is worked out for you.
You can also add or change a commission later from the referral's own page, in its financial section. There is no separate "new commission" screen. A commission is always part of a referral.
Marking a commission paid, and how the status moves
A referral moves through two independent tracks. One is the deal outcome: Open, then Won, Lost, or Declined. The other is the money: whether the commission has been settled. A commission only comes into play once a deal is Won.
Marking the money settled is always a deliberate step. Open the referral and set its payment status to Received (on a referral you gave) or Paid (on one you received). Your assistant never flips a commission to paid on its own from a calendar event or a bank alert, because a client paying their own invoice is not the same as your partner receiving their fee.
When you mark a referral Won, fill in the actual project value and the commission at the same time. Those numbers feed your won-this-month totals and your commission report.
When your assistant spots a payment in your inbox
If you have connected your email, your assistant reads the partner correspondence it already scans for referrals and introductions, and watches for two more things: a note that a deal was won or lost, and a note that a referral fee was paid or received.
When it finds one, it does not change anything on its own. It adds a card to your Inbox Suggestions for you to review. A commission card names the client or company, shows whether the partner paid you or you paid them, includes any dollar amount from the message, and quotes the line that prompted it. Accept it and the referral is marked settled, with the date stamped for you. Dismiss it and nothing changes.
It matches the email to the right referral by the client's name or the client's company, so "we finally closed the Acme engagement" lands on the Acme deal even if the person you originally logged was someone else at the company. It only ever suggests this for a deal you have already won that still has an unpaid commission, so it will not invent one out of thin air.
This is review-first on purpose. Money is worth a second look, so a detected payment always waits for your yes before it changes a record.
Seeing what you are owed
The Commissions report, under Reports, is your accounts view. Three cards across the top show Owed to You, You Owe, and your Net Position, each with an overdue subtotal in red. Two tabs below split the detail into money coming in and money going out, and each one ages the open items into buckets, from not-yet-due through 90-plus days, so the oldest unpaid fees rise to the top. You can export the whole thing to CSV.
A commission counts as chaseable once the deal has been won for at least 30 days, or once the client has paid, whichever comes first. That grace window keeps brand-new wins from cluttering your follow-up list.
Reminders
Once a commission is chaseable and still unpaid, your assistant adds a follow-up to your day. It nudges you to collect what you are owed, or to pay what you owe, and it escalates the older ones. The moment the commission is marked paid, the reminder closes itself. You will not get pinged about a fee you have already settled.
What your partner sees
If your partner is also on ReferralPulse, the two of you share the referral. When you advance the payment status, their copy updates to match and they get a heads-up that the payment moved. The reverse is true too, so when they mark their side paid, you find out. The data keeps itself in sync between you; only an actual message to your partner waits for you to send it.
Get more out of your assistant
- Ask your assistant "what am I still owed?" or "who owes me commissions?" and it reads straight from your commission tracking.
- Ask "how much have I collected this year?" or "how much have I paid out?" for the settled side.
- When you accept a detected payment from your inbox, the follow-up reminder for that fee clears on its own.
On the iOS app
Everything here works from your phone. You can pull up the Commissions report, open a referral to mark a fee paid, and clear Inbox Suggestions from the app.
Voice is the fastest way to record money on the go. After a call, you can say:
Mark the Acme referral won, the project came in at 40 thousand and my commission is ten percent.
Your assistant fills in the value, works out the commission, and sets the status. You can also just ask, "what commission am I still waiting on?" and hear the list back.