Commission Due Analysis Revisited
Data Analysis' Commission Due is for showcasing Invoices that have not been paid yet, i.e. do not appear on a Payment Entry. Excellent for diving into overdue commissions by Vendor, Rep, and Products.
In Desktop, click on Data Analysis in the Shortcuts panel and find Commission Due Analysis. Tried and true, the Commission Due Analysis cube has been around for quite a few years. Initially a way to capture Invoices that have not been paid (that do not appear on a Payment Entry), some more recent additions have added more default metrics and utility.
Similar exploration can also be found in Web by clicking on the Invoice Line Items listing, and choosing Unpaid Line Items from the View drop-down (top-left, next to the Actions and Reports menus).
Date Selection Criteria
When this cube is opened, the User is prompted to select a date range based on Invoice Date. As this cube only captures Invoices not appearing on a Payment, it is safe to pull a larger date range without worrying about getting overwhelmed with data. The default date range is January 1 last year to Today (the day you run the report). If your Agency enters future Invoices, feel free to adjust the dates to include those; or leave it as-is to just capture Invoices that have shipped.
The Default View
When opening the cube with the selected Invoice Date range, the initial view shows the list of Manufacturers with each ones’ Sales, Commission Due, and the corresponding Commission Rate. These metrics can be sorted (click on the Agg. value label) or expanded and rearranged to show the information for which Products commissions haven’t been paid yet or which Customers for which they haven’t been paid.
Due to Manufacturers’ differing payment schedules, like paying when they get paid or after fixed amount of time, it can be helpful to break-down the due amounts by Year, Quarter, and Month of the Invoice Date, using those Dimension found above the tables. Likewise, additional Dimensions for State/City and Sales Rep assigned to the Invoice can be brought down to further explorer and predict when commissions will be paid to the agency.
Comparing the Commission Payment Analysis cube, we can see some important distinctions, since this cube is focused on the opposite metric — Invoices that do appear on Payment Entries. Some of the distinctions include:
The date range selection is based on the Payment Date, when the Invoice appeared on a Payment regardless of how old the invoices is or when the products actually shipped.
Commission Due (total commission) and Commission Paid (amount the manufacturer has paid so far) columns. The difference between these two columns appears with partial payment on invoices, or when an invoice is carried over with no commissions paid yet.
Additional Metrics
In addition to the primary columns that show when the cube is first opened, it possible to also turn on the various Commission Split columns, for those rep agencies that pay out a portion of the commission income to their reps. The columns are Agency Split $ and Rate, Sales Rep Split $ and Rate, and column for Quantity (used to take a look at the Quantity Shipped from the Invoices).
Video
An oldy but a goody, the Commission Due Analysis video can be seen here:
This video does a nice, short (4min) overview of the cube, including views, dimension, and many of the options discussed above.
Additional Learning
Other videos, while not directly focused on the Commission Due Analysis cube, talk about Data Analysis and showcase some of the usage and examples of which to take advantage.
This last video, on the Commission Payment Analysis cube, gives a nice summary of what a Payment is and how it differs in date especially from Invoices recorded on it.