Step 7: Plan schedule

Step 7: Plan schedule

As the last step of configuring a commission plan, you have the Plan Schedule. Here, you define the duration the plan will be active.

When commission provisioning is a default activity, why determine duration?

As you might know, a commission plan reflects your business’ vision and objectives and by defining duration, you can
  1. Keep the plan aligned with your sales efforts. So, tomorrow if your sales strategies change based on market needs, you can do away with the out-dated remuneration criteria.
  2. Manage cash flow and commission provisioning. So, if there is a flux in your growth and revenue, you can design budgeting based on the cash flow
  3. Streamline revenue management
Therefore, a duration will let your plan be current or extended, as you wish.

Notes
Important note:
  1. A commission plan is valid only for the determined duration from the time of activation, commissions will not be processed after the configured window.
  2. The plan duration correspond to only one plan and each plan you create in your organization can have different schedules at a given time.
  3. You can schedule a commission plan for up to 2 years from the date of activation.

Plan Schedule : Components

Configuring plan schedule requires determination of activation mode and plan duration.

Activation mode

Activation mode lets you choose from when you want to activate this plan. You can choose to activate immediately after configuration or schedule the activation.
  1. If you choose to activate the plan immediately, the plan will be validated and then activated right away.
  2. If you choose scheduled activation, the plan will be validated and then be activated as scheduled.
Either way, the plan goes through validation.

Validation process

As part of validation, the incentives application checks for existing commission plans with same plan type, participating products, recipient base, and the plan schedule before publishing the configured plan.

Objective: Each commission plan must be unique in terms of their type, products, computation, and recipients, so that the commissions are not provisioned to the same set of recipients on the same grounds.
Criteria :
No two plans shall carry the same plan type (quota attainment or transaction) and plan basis (line item or total amount), same participating products, and the same set of recipients with same or overlapping plan schedule.
That is,
  1. The plan type, the plan basis, and products may be the same, but the recipients must be different between the plans.
  2. The plan type, the plan basis , and the recipients may be the same, but the products must be different between the plans.
  3. The plan type, the plan basis, the products, and the recipients may be the same but, one of the plans should have completed.
  4. The plan basis of two plans may be different, but if the recipients are same, they might be receiving commissions from both the plans.
Notes
Note: 
A plan can still carry same plan type, basis, recipients, schedule, but should not trigger on the same event.

In all these cases, the plan will be validated through a scheduler and result in a
"conflict".


Plan duration

The plan duration is the start date and end date of the plan.

Configuring plan schedule 

  1. After you have configured the approval, click Save and Next.
  2. In the Plan Schedule page, do the following:
  3. In the Activation Mode section, choose from one of the following options:
    1. Validate and activate plan immediately
    2. Validate and schedule plan for activation
  4. In the Plan Start Time,
    1. Click on the DD/MM/YYYY field and choose the month, year, and date from when the plan should start.
    2. In the neighboring dropdown field, select the timing.
  5. In the Plan End Time,
    1. Click on the DD/MM/YYYY field and choose the month, year, and date from when the plan should end.
    2. In the neighboring dropdown field, select the timing.
  6. Click Save and Publish, to publish the commission plan. Your commission plan configuration ends here.
  7. If you’d like to review and change, click Save as draft. This doesn’t publish the plan and the commissions will not be processed until you publish them.