Sales Commission Calculator
Commission plans are simple to describe and easy to get wrong. Pick the shape your plan uses — one flat rate, a tier table, or a quota with an accelerator above it — enter the period’s sales, and this works out what it pays. Split deals and a base salary are part of the same calculation, and every result comes with the band-by-band working, so you can check the number against your plan document rather than trusting it.
Commission plan
Booked revenue this commission is paid on.
Blank means the whole amount is yours.
Leave blank for a commission-only plan.
One rate on every dollar credited.
What it pays
Commission
$10,800.00
on $180,000.00 credited
Effective rate
6.00%
commission ÷ credited sales
Total earnings
$10,800.00
commission only
How it adds up
| Band | Sales in band | Rate | Commission |
|---|---|---|---|
| All credited sales | $180,000.00 | 6.00% | $10,800.00 |
An estimate of what a plan pays on these numbers — not payroll, tax, or legal advice, and not a statement of what you are owed. Real plans add clawbacks on refunds and churn, caps, draws against future commission, and rules about when a deal counts as booked. The plan document decides all of that; this page only does the arithmetic you give it.
Turn the quarter’s numbers into something presentable
Moda builds the QBR deck or the comp one-pager from the figures, on a canvas you can keep editing.
Try Moda free →Tiers are marginal, and assuming otherwise costs real money
When a plan says “4% up to $100k, 7% from $100k, 10% from $250k”, it almost always means each rate applies only to the sales inside its own band. Sell $150,000 and you earn 4% on the first $100,000 plus 7% on the next $50,000 — $7,500 — not 7% on the whole $150,000, which would be $10,500. The alternative reading, sometimes called a cliff plan, is rare because it creates absurd jumps: one extra dollar of sales at the boundary would pay an extra $3,000. This page always calculates marginally and shows you the bands, so if your plan genuinely is a cliff you will see immediately that the numbers do not match and can go back to the document.
The rate you are paid is never the rate in the table
On any plan with more than one rate, the useful figure is the effective rate: total commission divided by credited sales. It sits between the bands you touched, moves every time your number moves, and it is what you should use when you are forecasting, comparing an offer, or sanity-checking a payslip. A rep at $150,000 on the tier table above is on a 7% band but a 5% effective rate, and the gap between those two numbers is exactly the misunderstanding that makes people think they have been underpaid. It is shown as a headline figure here for that reason.
Split deals reduce the credit, not the rate
When a deal is shared — with an overlay specialist, a partner rep, or an SDR on a shared-credit model — what changes is how much of the sale is credited to you, not what percentage you are paid on it. So the split is applied first, and every rate, tier boundary and quota comparison then runs against the credited figure. That ordering matters on a tiered plan: a 50% split on a $200,000 deal credits $100,000, which may leave you in a lower band than the deal size suggests. Some plans instead credit the full amount to both reps for quota purposes and split only the payout; if yours does, enter the full sales figure and treat the result as the pre-split payout.
Attainment, accelerators, and where quota plans differ
A quota plan names the boundary rather than leaving it implicit: a base rate up to target, an accelerated rate on everything above it. Attainment — credited sales divided by quota — is the number the plan is discussed in, and the interesting cases are the edges. At exactly 100% attainment nothing has been earned at the accelerated rate yet, because a threshold is where the next rate starts, not where it applies retroactively. At 0% the commission is zero but a base salary is not, which is why total earnings and commission are shown as separate figures here. Leaving the accelerator blank models a plan that simply pays one rate all the way up.
What a calculator cannot know about your plan
This does the arithmetic and nothing else. Real compensation plans carry rules it has no way to see: clawbacks when a customer refunds or churns inside a window, caps on total payout, a draw that advances commission and recovers it later, quarterly versus annual reconciliation, and the definition of when a deal counts as booked — signature, invoice, or cash received. Any one of those can change the payment substantially. Treat the result as a check on your own maths, not as a statement of what you are owed, and read it alongside the plan document rather than instead of it.
Frequently asked questions
How do you calculate a tiered sales commission?
Split the credited sales across the bands the tier table defines and apply each band’s own rate to the portion that falls inside it, then add the results. With 4% up to $100k and 7% above it, sales of $150,000 earn 4% × $100,000 plus 7% × $50,000, which is $7,500. Reaching a tier never reprices the sales below it.
What happens at exactly the tier threshold?
A threshold is the point at which the next rate begins, so sales of exactly $100,000 against a “$100,000 and above” tier are entirely in the band below — the higher rate has nothing to apply to yet. The same rule is why hitting exactly 100% of quota earns no accelerator. This page follows that convention throughout, and the band table shows a zero amount in the tier you have just reached.
What is an accelerator?
A higher commission rate paid only on sales above quota, used to make over-performance worth chasing rather than banking for next quarter. Typical accelerators run between 1.5 and 2 times the base rate, sometimes with a second step at 150% attainment. Enter it here as the rate itself, not as a multiplier — a 5% base with a 1.8× accelerator is 9%.
Should I enter my annual salary or the salary for this period?
Whatever period the sales figure covers. If you are calculating a quarter’s commission, enter one quarter of the base salary so that total earnings is a real quarterly number. Mixing an annual base with a monthly commission produces a total that means nothing, which is the most common way this field gets misread.
Is this payroll advice?
No. It is arithmetic on the numbers you type, and it is not payroll, tax, employment, or legal advice. It does not model clawbacks, caps, draws, withholding, or the rules your plan uses to decide when a deal is booked. For a dispute about what you are actually owed, the plan document and your finance or HR team are the authority.
Does anything I type get sent anywhere?
No. Every calculation on this page runs in your browser, and no salary, quota or sales figure leaves the tab — there is no network request carrying them and nothing is stored between visits.