Sales Commission on Sold vs Completed Revenue: How a 16-Person Home Services Company Caught $224,000 of Installed Work Posing as Sales

Every sales commission on sold vs completed revenue question comes down to one thing: which date, and which person, does your software credit when a job is done? A 16-person home services company learned how big that gap can be while setting up a monthly commission plan. One team member's August total in the commission report read $224,000. It looked like a monster sales month. It was not. It was installation work that person completed, not sales they closed.

The company caught it while the plan was still being validated, which is the best possible time. Here is what the plan looks like, how the mix-up happened, and the checks that keep sales credit pointed at the right person.

The Plan: Two Fields, Two Rates

The company runs on ServiceTitan and pays commission monthly. The structure is deliberately simple, with two ways to earn on a job, both calculated on the job subtotal:

• 2% of the subtotal when a technician is recorded as the tech-generated lead, meaning the tech spotted the opportunity and handed it off
• 6% of the subtotal when an employee is recorded as the person who sold the job

On a $5,000 job, a tech who finds the lead earns $100 and the salesperson who closes it earns $300. Everyone enrolled can open the plan and see the line items behind each number. Sixteen employees were invited to the app on day one, with room to add more later.

The logic is sensible. It pays a smaller slice to the technician who plants the seed and a bigger slice to the person who turns it into a signed job. If you want to see how a similar tech-lead rate plays out, we covered how an HVAC and plumbing company found about $52K in tech-sourced sales its report showed as zero. The lesson there and here is the same: the rate is the easy part. The attribution is where plans break.

The Problem: A Report That Counted Installed Work

When the team looked at the first numbers, the report was pulling completed or installed revenue instead of sold-by revenue. That single choice changed everything. One person's August figure of $224,000 represented jobs that person installed, not jobs they sold.

Do the math on what was riding on that number. At the 6% sold-by rate, $224,000 is $13,440 of commission. If the plan had paid on installed revenue, that money would have gone to whoever the report happened to credit, not to the salesperson who earned it. That is a mistake measured in thousands of dollars in a single month, and it came from one wrong field in one report.

Why Sales Commission on Sold vs Completed Revenue Gets Mixed Up

The confusion is not carelessness. Sold and completed are two different events that happen on two different days, often for two different people.

Sold revenue is credited the day the customer says yes. The person on the job record as the seller owns it. Completed revenue is credited when the work is finished and invoiced. On an install, that could be days or weeks later, and the person doing the work is frequently someone other than the salesperson.

When a report is built around completion, it naturally lists the crew that finished the work. When a commission plan is built around the sale, it needs the person who closed it. Put the wrong report behind the right plan and the numbers look plausible while paying the wrong people. That is why a number can look great and still be wrong.

The Fix: One Report That Shows Both Fields

The company's answer was to stop trusting the existing report and build a new one. It combines the sold-by field and the tech-generated-lead data side by side so every job can be checked against the plan. ShareWillow was given reporting access to build it, and a walkthrough video follows once the corrected numbers populate.

The principle is worth copying. Before you trust a commission report, ask what date and what person it is actually grouping by. If you cannot answer in one sentence, you are not ready to pay on it. We saw a similar trap in a $622 repair that was quietly absorbing a $1,300 sale, where credit landed on the wrong line and nobody noticed until a person reviewed the job by hand.

Rules That Keep Credit Clean

ServiceTitan tracks the salesperson who sold the job separately from the technician-generated-lead checkbox and the technician's name. That separation is useful, but it only works if the fields are filled in consistently. The company set a few simple rules:

• Every revenue-bearing sold job has a salesperson. If it earned money, someone is on the job as the seller
• Tech-generated leads are flagged. The checkbox and the technician's name both get recorded
• One field per person on a job. A technician who both generates and closes a lead is entered in one field, not both
• Maintenance and $0 warranty jobs are excluded. They are not sales and should never produce commission

None of these rules require new software. They require a habit, and a person assigned to check it. In this company, one person reviews revenue-bearing sold jobs to confirm each one has a salesperson assigned, and another prepares a report to check whether sold-by information is being recorded accurately.

Avoiding Double-Counting

The owner raised a risk that is easy to miss. What happens when a technician generates a lead and then also closes it? If the plan pays 2% for the lead and 6% for the sale, the same technician could be paid on the same job twice.

The agreed answer is to use one attribution field or the other for that employee, never both. The tech earns on the job once, at the rate that matches what they actually did. It is a small rule that prevents a very real leak, and it is the kind of detail that is much cheaper to settle before launch than after the first payroll cycle. For a broader design view, our guide on HVAC commission pay explains how to structure rates so double-counting is hard to do by accident.

The Username Problem Nobody Expects

One more wrinkle surfaced. In ServiceTitan, a person's username can differ between the mobile app and the office account. A job entered in the field under one name and in the office under another can split credit between what looks like two people. The fix is dull but effective: confirm that every employee maps to one identity in the commission plan, and spot-check a handful of jobs after each month closes.

What to Check Before You Pay a Single Commission

• Which event is the report grouped by? Sold date and completed date are not interchangeable
• Which person is credited? The seller, the installer, and the lead source can all be different people
• Do all revenue jobs have a seller? Blank fields are the most common cause of missing or misplaced credit
• Are non-sales jobs excluded? Maintenance and $0 warranty work should not pay out
• Is anyone paid twice on one job? Decide in advance how a tech who both finds and closes is handled
• Do a few real jobs match by hand? Pick five from last month and trace them from the report to the paycheck

Payout timing matters here too. If you are deciding between paying on the sale and paying once the work is done, read when to pay technician commission before you lock the plan. And if you want commission reports that keep sold and completed revenue separate automatically, see ShareWillow's product features.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should sales commission be paid on sold revenue or completed revenue?

It depends on what behavior you want to reward. Paying on sold revenue rewards the person who closes the deal the moment it happens. Paying on completed revenue ties the payout to finished, invoiced work. Many companies pay the seller on sold revenue and the installer on completed revenue, so each person is rewarded for their own part of the job.

How do I know if my commission report is counting the wrong revenue?

Look for a number that seems too good, especially for someone who spends more time on installs than sales. Then trace three or four of that person's jobs back to the job record and check who is listed as the seller. If the report lists installers instead of sellers, it is grouping by completion.

Can a technician earn both a lead commission and a sales commission on the same job?

They can, but most companies choose one or the other to avoid double-counting. This company records the employee in one attribution field, either tech-generated lead at 2% or sold by at 6%, so they are paid once for the role they actually played.

Related reading

• Technician Lead Generation Bonus: How an HVAC and Plumbing Company Found $52K in Tech-Sourced Sales Its Report Showed as Zero
• The $622 Repair That Was Quietly Absorbing a $1,300 Sale
• The $28,448 Sale That Almost Paid the Wrong Technician
• When to Pay Technician Commission: Completed Date vs. Paid Date, and the $6,600 in Open Balances That Forced the Question