The agency says you owe commission on six events
An email arrives from an agency's finance team with a statement listing events they say were booked through them and the commission due. Your finance manager checks it against the commission spreadsheet. Two events are not on your list at all. One has a different value because the agency calculated on the proposal, not the final invoice. Another was a repeat booking that the client says they made directly.
Working it out means going back through enquiry emails, proposals and invoices, some of them months old, and the person who handled the original enquiry may have left.
The agency link is lost between enquiry and invoice
When an enquiry comes in through an agency, its source is obvious that day. Once the booking is confirmed and handed to operations, the agency reference often lives only in the original email. By invoice time, nobody is looking at the source, and each agency has different rules about what they are paid on.
- Commissionable items differ by agency: room hire and catering, but not bar or accommodation, for example.
- Some calculate on the net invoice, some on the gross, some exclude cancellation charges.
- Repeat bookings may or may not count if the first was through an agency.
- Agencies send statements in their own format, on their own schedule.
Disputes, overpayments and strained relationships
When commission is tracked loosely, you either pay what the agency claims because checking is too hard, or you spend days arguing about each statement. Neither is good. Agencies are an important source of business, and a venue that is slow or unreliable on commission gets fewer referrals. Equally, paying on items your agreement excludes adds up over a year.
We do not interpret your agency agreements. You and your adviser decide what they mean. We make sure the terms you agree are applied the same way every time.
How we build commission tracking tied to the booking
- Each enquiry is tagged with its source at intake, including the agency and their reference, and the tag stays with the booking through to the invoice.
- Each agency's terms are held in a small rules table: rate, commissionable items, base (net or gross), treatment of cancellations and repeat bookings.
- When the final invoice is raised, commission is calculated line by line using that agency's rules and recorded as a liability against the booking.
- Monthly statements per agency are produced in a consistent format, listing the booking, their reference, the invoice and the commission.
- Agency statements received are compared with yours, and differences are listed with the reason so a person can resolve them.
- Commission payments are recorded in your accounts system so the liability clears when paid.
| Question | Answered by |
|---|---|
| Was this booking from an agency? | Source tag from the enquiry |
| Which items count? | That agency's rules table |
| How much is due? | Calculated from the final invoice lines |
| Why does their statement differ? | Line-by-line comparison with reasons |
What month end looks like
Finance produces agency statements from the system rather than a spreadsheet. When an agency sends its own, differences are listed with reasons, and most can be answered by forwarding the relevant line. The sales team can see which agencies actually bring confirmed business, not just enquiries.
When an agency changes its terms, one row changes, and bookings made before the change keep the old terms.
Signs your commission tracking needs work
- Your commission spreadsheet is updated after invoices go out, if at all.
- Agency statements regularly include events you cannot match.
- You are not sure whether you pay on items your agreement excludes.
- Repeat bookings from agency clients cause arguments.
- Nobody can say which agencies bring the most confirmed revenue.