Affordable, User-Friendly, Eliminates Excel Calcs and Provides Better Transparency
July 28, 2022
Affordable, User-Friendly, Eliminates Excel Calcs and Provides Better Transparency
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with QuotaPath
I was calculating commissions monthly in Excel for 5-15 AEs, AMs, managers, managers of managers every month, and was having difficulty calculating them timely. It was starting to take longer every month. I also wanted to be more proactive and provide commission calculations more timely to motivate the team and get them excited about hitting their accelerators. Once I knew that ASC 606 was going to impact how I calculated commissions and amortized the expense over our weighted average customer life, I decided that I needed to implement a software because I didn’t want to maintain a massive Excel that I could never delegate to someone else. The three software I considered were QuotaPath (QP), Spiff, and CaptivateIQ. I like that QP’s pricing was very transparent on their website (which I just found out will be changing in the future to be more subscription based than user based), the UX/UI looked good, it integrated with our CRM (Salesforce) and could handle ASC 606. At the time I looked at Spiff, their minimum price was about 3 times the price for QP, which did not make sense for us. I would have loved to have tried Spiff and Captivate, but the price was the limiting factor for me.
- We don’t have to calculate commissions in Excel anymore! It takes a fraction of the time it used to calculate commissions. Saves about 1-2 days on month end close. I like that it is easy for me and reps to drill down and see the calculations of their payouts. Reps can see calcs all month long instead of having to wait until the end of the month, so acts as a motivator. Sales managers can manage their direct reports better.
- When I first started using QP, I was not thrilled with the quota attainment reporting for dollars, percent, and team management. I’m glad that they added leaderboards and are working on better reporting. I like the UX and UI of the whole software.
- I like being able to export the following easily to Excel – resolved payouts for all payouts, payouts by rep, and Ledger (ASC 606) info.
- Admins can request that reps acknowledge their plans through QP, which helps with compliance and ensures we are in agreement with calculations. I like that they are adding a docusign feature.
- You can easily adjust earnings if a correction is needed, even after the month is closed. Just make sure you reverse from the end of the process (i.e. undo in ledger, undo the resolved payout, delete the unresolved payout, un-approve the deal).
- For any tool that you use, you need to make sure you have CRM data that is clean. You need proper fields setup with accurate data since it will be syncing to the commission software. You should be able to see in your CRM the fields that you plan to add, subtract, multiply, divide, etc. I had to make several updates in my CRM before implementing QP.
- You need to be careful with overrides! I recommend not doing any overrides and just update your plans and paths instead. For example, if you update your CRM, but you already synced and overrode the amount in the past, then the new calc will not override the override so you could accidentally pay the wrong amount (I did this) and ledger will over-recognize since overrides are at the total level, not the individual path level. So, you need to manually adjust the amount to recognize in Ledger. Just don’t do overrides. QP needs to work on better notifications in the system related to overrides.
- I have had some sync delays with our CRM (Salesforce) and it’s hard to know the status of when it will finish syncing, even with the sync status button on the upper right hand of the screen
- The effective rate on the earnings page for reps is confusing and reps think you are underpaying them. You need to click into the actual deal line to see the correct commission payouts. I asked QP to remove or let me hide the column.
- We have some complicated plans, and it was difficult to get them all set up in QP. It is still somewhat difficult to modify and update plans, but they are making improvements, such as changing rate over time period (i.e. month) in the same plan instead of separate plans
- You can’t lock periods like other accounting software, which I don’t like as an admin, but I can see how reps like that if something changes in the CRM. I just don’t want to the CRM to mess up QP and reps start thinking QP isn’t accurate or they were not paid correctly
- Now that I’m set up with the software, I’m still trying to figure out, “how do I delegate this to someone else?”, and I’m having trouble doing that because I don’t have granular security settings. For example, it would be helpful to have one of my direct reports just verify all the bookings info is pulling in correctly, but since I don’t want them to see payroll information, I can’t give the person access to the system
- In Ledger, you can’t say “I reviewed this transaction and don’t want to recognize it” so you have a growing list of unresolved and unrecognized transactions that is annoying and would not be clear to someone independently looking in the system that Ledger is being properly used and managed
- For Ledger, it would be nice to customize the export, such as remove the “additional benefits” line in the export and give me a proper table that I can use. I find myself having to do some Excel clean-up before I can use the data.
- I think the reps still get confused on the differences between earnings, deals, and payouts, and think the software could do a better job of explaining the process. Earnings sync from CRM > deals are then approved > unresolved payouts are then scheduled > resolved payouts are then the finalized payouts that will be included in payroll (CSV export sent to payroll) > Ledger needs to get updated where deals that need recognition are recognized > entries need to be made in GL accounting software
- 1-2 business days saved during month end close; a fraction of the time to calculate commissions when compared to Excel
- Automated calculations and more transparency for sales team members and their managers whenever a deal is booked rather than waiting until the end of the month
- Ability to more easily scale and motivate existing and new sales team members
- More focus from the company to make sure our CRM has accurate information so commissions are calculated properly, which also helps us with our bookings and renewal opps in the future when more people are reviewing and verifying information for accuracy
- Spiff and CaptivateIQ
QP was the most affordable and transparent with their pricing.
Do you think QuotaPath delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with QuotaPath's feature set?
Yes
Did QuotaPath live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of QuotaPath go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy QuotaPath again?
Yes