Pay plans your techs can read, and the office doesn't have to rebuild every payday.

Performance pay works when a tech can predict their paycheck. It fails when the rules live in the owner's head and a spreadsheet the office rebuilds every other Friday. Then every payday brings three questions, at least one of them angry, and the tech who sold the most starts wondering whether the shop down the road counts differently.

The fix isn't a fancier spreadsheet. It's rules written down once, applied the same way every time, and shown to the tech line by line as they earn.

The rule types

Every rule can be narrowed by job type, business unit, price book category, item kind (service, material, equipment) or specific price book items. A plan holds up to 40 rules, which is more than any plan we'd recommend.

A plan can also carry a guarantee: an hourly floor (hours worked times a rate) or a flat amount per period. If performance pay falls short, a guarantee line tops it up. It shows up on My pay as its own line, so the tech sees it rather than wondering why the total looks odd.

Sold, completed or collected

This is the choice that causes the most arguments, so TradesWork makes it explicit per rule:

• When sold: credited on the estimate's sold date. Motivates selling, but you're paying before the work is done or paid for.
• When the job is completed: credited on the invoice lines when the job closes. The most common choice for service work.
• As it's collected: credited in proportion to each successful payment. Half the invoice paid means half the commission released. Safest for cash flow, slowest for the tech.

Many shops mix them: memberships pay when sold, repairs when completed, large replacements as collected.

Revenue or gross profit

Paying on gross profit (price minus line cost) protects you from techs discounting their way to volume. It also depends on every line having a cost. TradesWork won't guess: if a matched line has no cost, the commission shows as Not paid until the office enters costs instead of $0 or a made-up number. Fix the cost, and the line pays.

Tiers, splits and who gets credit

Commission rules can have up to 10 tiers. The highest tier a tech reaches with their period total re-prices the whole period, so there's no cliff where the last $500 of sales pays more than the first $20,000.

Credit goes to the seller, the installer, or both. Seller credit comes from who sold the estimate, falling back to the techs on the job. Installer credit is split evenly or by time on the job. When a two-person install needs a different split, the office sets one in percentages that add to 100, with a reason kept on record.

Clawbacks, kept fair

Clawbacks are where performance pay plans lose trust. TradesWork keeps them narrow:

• Refund: reduces the pay on that invoice in proportion to the refund.
• Void: claws back in full.
• Canceled job: claws back in full.
• Canceled membership: claws back the pay earned on that membership.

They apply only within your clawback window after the pay was earned: 90 days by default, adjustable up to 365, or 0 to switch them off. Only commission, spiff and flat-rate lines can be clawed back, and never by more than was originally paid. Unpaid invoices and callbacks don't claw anything back; handle those with your collections process and coaching instead.

My pay: what the tech sees

The field app's My pay screen is the reason this feature exists. A tech sees today, this week and this period, split into pending and approved, grouped by job, with the payday date. Each line explains the rule and the math behind it, for example "5% of $4,200 = $210". The plan's rules are written out in plain words on the same screen. It works in English and Spanish, and shows the last synced numbers when there's no signal.

If something looks wrong, the tech taps Question this on a line or the whole period. That creates an office task naming the person and the job, without amounts, so it can sit in a shared queue. The office answers and closes it, and the answer appears in the tech's app. Every question and answer is on record.

Pay periods, approval and payroll

Pay periods follow your payroll calendar, one or two workweeks from an anchor date, with payday a set number of days after the period ends (5 by default).

1. 1

   Period ends

   Lines keep updating while the period is open, as jobs complete and payments come in.

2. 2

   Review

   Check each person's lines, add adjustments with a reason (they're append-only; a reversal is its own line), and resolve open questions.

3. 3

   Approve

   Allowed only after the period ends. Approval freezes a snapshot of the lines.

4. 4

   Export

   Approved pay goes into the payroll file as COMM, SPIFF, BONUS, GUAR and ADJ earnings. Marking the export sent sets the period to exported.

5. 5

   Late changes

   Anything that changes afterward lands in the next open period, flagged Late. Reopening needs a reason.

See timesheets and payroll for the export formats.

Common plan shapes by trade

These are patterns, not recommendations for your numbers:

• HVAC service: commission on completed repair revenue, a spiff per membership sold, a bonus at a monthly sold-revenue threshold during the shoulder season.
• HVAC replacement and comfort advisors: commission on gross profit, paid as collected, so financing and discounts are accounted for before anyone is paid.
• Plumbing and drain: flat rate per task for drain cleanings and water heater installs, plus commission on add-on sales like expansion tanks.
• Electrical: commission on panel and generator jobs credited to seller and installer, split by time on the job.

Designing a plan your techs will believe

A plan that pays well on paper and confuses everyone on payday does more harm than a simple one. Start simple, watch pay questions for two periods, then add the spiff you really need.