A settlement process for plumber, electrician and painter commission

Dealers reward the plumbers, electricians and painters who steer customers to the counter. The promise is usually verbal. A tap fitter claims he sent twelve bills this quarter. The owner remembers eight.

Both feel cheated. The relationship suffers more than the money does.

A process fixes that. It need not be heavy, but four things must be written down once and applied the same way every month, whoever is standing at the billing desk. Without them, a generous owner pays too much to loud claimants and too little to quiet, loyal ones.

Write the rule per product group, not per person. Emulsions may pay one rate and putty and primer another. Pipes and fittings differ from sanitaryware. Switches differ from cable and wire.

Margins differ, so rewards should too. Add a minimum bill value if tiny purchases are not worth paying on, such as a single roll of tape or a pack of wall plugs.

Keep a list of eligible influencers with a trade: plumber, electrician, painter or mason. Give each a code and a phone number. Note the date the arrangement began, and who agreed it. A plumber who joins in April should not earn on bills from March.

At the counter, the clerk selects the influencer code on the bill. A bill without a code earns nothing. That keeps claims honest and ends the quarterly argument about who sent whom.

At month end, pull the register of tagged bills and compute commission for each line from the rule. Then deduct returns and credit notes against those bills, even when a return arrives only in the following month.

Many shops count paid bills only. If the customer still owes, hold the commission until the receipt is posted. A contractor who buys on thirty days credit should not trigger a payout the dealer has not funded.

The accounts manager checks the register for oddities. Watch for one influencer on every bill in a week, a bill reversed after commission was paid, or a rate edited by hand.

The owner approves the total and signs the register page. Ask for a reason on anything that departs from the rule, because a clean trail protects the owner when a dispute arrives months later.

Pay by bank transfer or cheque, not from the till. The payment then leaves a record too, and the influencer receives it on a fixed day each month, so he stops dropping in to ask.

Send each plumber, electrician or painter a statement listing bill date, customer name, product group, bill value, returns, commission rate and amount. He can match it against his own notebook.

Let him query a line within a week. Corrections go into the next register as a separate line. Never edit quietly. A silent change is exactly what starts the next argument.

Begin with your three most active influencers. Rebuild last quarter’s statements by hand from old bills. See how far they sit from what you remembered.