Help Centre › Money

Commission

Decide what each vet earns on the work they do — by grouping your price list, grouping your vets, and filling in the table where the two meet.

Commission is set up once and then mostly left alone. You sort your price list into a handful of commission groups, sort your vets into vet groups, and fill in a small table saying what each combination earns.

The point of the groups is that you never have to touch individual items. A practice with six thousand items still only has a dozen or two categories, and it is the categories you assign.

Who can do this

Commission is Admin only — it is what your colleagues get paid, and nobody else can open these screens or see the rates.

Note

Setting this up does not change a single invoice. Commission is worked out from what has already been charged; it never alters what a client pays.

Starting from the standard setup#

Settings›Commission

The Commission menu. Before anything is set up it offers to build a standard arrangement for you.

If you have never set commission up, the menu offers to do most of it for you. Use the standard setup creates six commission groups — Consultations & procedures, Surgery, Medication & consumables, Laboratory & imaging, Food & retail and No commission — and points each of your price list categories at whichever one fits.

It does not put any rates in. That part is yours: a rate invented for you is a rate somebody would eventually be paid.

It recognises the category names FastVet ships with. If you have renamed your categories or added your own, those are left for you — the message afterwards says how many still need assigning, and they are listed under Price List Categories.

Tip

Take the standard setup even if it is not quite how you work. Renaming a group or moving a category is a couple of clicks, and starting from something is much faster than starting from nothing.

What the menu tells you#

Once something is configured, the Commission menu stops offering to build it and starts telling you whether it will actually pay anything. Three numbers matter:

Items in no commission group. Those items earn nothing at all. A handful is normal — cremation fees, deposits. Hundreds means a category has not been assigned.
Vets in no vet group. That vet earns nothing, no matter what they do.
Combinations with no rate. Every square of the rate table needs a number, so any still blank are work that will earn nothing.

Careful

These warnings are the whole safety net. Commission that is set up wrong does not look broken — it looks like a small number. If the menu is telling you something is unassigned, deal with it before you pay anybody.

Step 1 — commission groups#

Settings›Commission›Commission Groups

The commission groups. Just a name and a count — what each band pays is set later, on the rate table.

A commission group is a band of price list items that all earn commission the same way. This screen is only two columns, and deliberately so:

Column	What it means
Group	What you call it. It labels a row of the rate table.
Items	How many price list items currently land in this band. Follow it to check a band is not empty, or not quietly swallowing half the catalogue.

Group items by what they are — Medication, Surgery, Laboratory — rather than by what they pay. What they pay comes later, and a band named after a rate is a band you have to rename the first time the rate changes.

Tip

Make a band for the things nobody earns on — cremation, deposits, disposal fees. Calling it No commission and paying it 0 is much clearer six months later than leaving those items unassigned, which looks like something you forgot.

You cannot delete a group while individual price list items have been pinned to it — the message tells you how many. Its rates and category assignments are removed with it.

Step 2 — vet groups#

Settings›Commission›Vet Groups

Vet groups, with the list of who is in each underneath.

The same idea for people. If every vet in your practice earns the same, one group is all you need — call it whatever you like and put everybody in it.

Underneath the groups is the list of your vets with a dropdown each. Only users with the Doctor role appear: commission follows the vet recorded on the consultation, so somebody who never treats a patient has nothing to earn on.

Changes here save as you make them — there is no Save button for the assignment list.

Careful

A vet left on Not in a group earns nothing. The row is highlighted so it is hard to miss, and the Commission menu counts them for you.

Step 3 — the rate table#

Settings›Commission›Rates

The rate table. Item bands down the side, vet bands across the top, and a number in every box.

This is where the two halves meet. Your commission groups run down the side, your vet groups across the top, and each box is what a vet in that band earns on an item in that band.

Each row picks its own unit, in the row header: % of sale, or a fixed amount per item. That is a property of what was sold rather than of who sold it — medication might pay a percentage while food pays a flat fee — so it is chosen once for the whole row and every box in that row is then a plain number.

Careful

Every box needs a number, including the zeros. Nothing is assumed and nothing is inherited: a box left empty means nobody has said what that combination earns, so it earns nothing. The screen will not save while any box is blank, it tells you how many are left, and it highlights them so you can find them.

Where a combination genuinely earns no commission, type 0. It pays the same as leaving it blank would, but it records that you decided — which is the difference between a setup somebody can check and one they have to second-guess.

Note

Percentages are worked out on the line excluding VAT. VAT is collected for the revenue service, so paying a share of it would be paying a share of money that was never the practice's.

Tip

If every vet band earns the same on a row, type the same figure across it. That is quicker than it looks, and it leaves nothing implied for the next person to work out.

Step 4 — which items are in which band#

Settings›Commission›Price List Categories

Price list categories, each pointed at a commission group. Every item in a category follows it — including anything added later.

Items are not assigned one at a time. Each price list category points at a commission group, and every item in that category follows it — including items you add next year, which is the main reason it works this way. Nothing is quietly left out because somebody forgot to tag it.

A category with several subcategories can be expanded, and a subcategory pointed somewhere different from its parent. Anything left on Same as category just follows along, and the option says which group that is.

Note

A category with only one subcategory does not show it. Practices usually file a whole category under a single name like "General" to mean it has no subcategories at all, and a lone subcategory offers a choice that cannot mean anything — it can only agree with its parent or contradict it for no reason. Those items simply follow the category.

Rows are highlighted where items would still earn nothing, and the count at the top adds them all up.

Changes here are saved with the Save button.

When one item is different#

Price & Stock›Update Prices›Edit

Occasionally a single item does not belong with the rest of its category. Open it in the price list editor and there is a Commission card near the bottom.

It is set to follow the category by default, and that option names the group it will inherit, so you can see what you are overriding before you override it. Choosing a group here pins the item to it permanently — it will keep that group even if you later move it to a different category.

Note

The Commission card only appears once commission groups exist. If you have not set commission up, there is nothing to choose between and the card stays out of the way.

The option at the top of the list tells you what the item does if you leave it alone: Use the category setting names the band it inherits, or it reads No Commission if its category points nowhere and the item would earn nothing as things stand.

Tip

Use this sparingly. Every pinned item is one the category screens can no longer manage for you, and the category list shows a count of them per category so they do not get lost.

Protocols#

A protocol — a spay pack, a vaccination course — is billed as a single charge, and the items inside it are recorded on the patient's record and taken out of stock but are not charged for separately.

Commission follows the same rule. Put the protocol itself in a commission band, exactly as you would any other price list item, and it earns on the protocol charge. The items inside it never earn, even though most of them are ordinary catalogue items that do earn when sold on their own.

Note

This is not something you have to configure. It is how commission is worked out, and it is what stops one protocol paying twice — once for the charge and again for each item inside it.

If you rename a price list category#

Category assignments are matched on the category's name. Rename a category in the price list and its commission assignment no longer matches anything — the items move to whatever their new category says, which may be nothing at all.

The Price List Categories screen tells you when this has happened, in a section at the bottom listing the assignments that no longer match. Point the new category at the right group and remove the old rule.

Careful

This is the one thing here that can go wrong quietly. If you reorganise your price list categories, come back to this screen afterwards and check the bottom of it.

Setting it up, in order#

Open Settings › Commission and take the standard setup.
Commission Groups — check the bands it made are the ones you want, and rename or add any you need. Names only; nothing about money yet.
Vet Groups — rename the group it created if you like, add more if your vets earn differently, and put every vet in one.
Price List Categories — assign anything the standard setup left blank, and get the unassigned count at the top down to a number you are comfortable with.
Rates — pick % or fixed amount for each row, then put a number in every box. Use 0 for combinations that earn nothing. It will not let you save until none are left blank.
Back on the Commission menu, confirm it is no longer warning you about anything.
Run Commission — work out what the current month would pay, and read it before you build anything. It is the fastest check that the setup above is right.

Tip

The five tiles are numbered in the order above, and each one says at the top what it is for. If you come back to this in six months, following the numbers is enough.

Running commission for a month#

Settings›Commission›Run Commission

Run Commission. Working out what a month would pay changes nothing; building the run is the step that commits.

Once the setup is done, this is the screen you use every month. Pick the month, see what it would pay, and then build the run.

Those are two different buttons on purpose. Work out what August would pay calculates everything and stores nothing — press it as often as you like. Build the August run is the one that commits: it marks every invoice it covers as paid-commission-on, so no other run can ever pay them again.

Note

Building a run does not pay anybody. It works out the figures and records them; paying is still done through your payroll, off the sheet the run prints.

What counts as this month#

Under How commission is worked out there are three settings, and the first one decides more than it looks like it does.

Setting	What it means
Commission is earned when the invoice is paid in full	The usual choice. Work done in March that a client settles in June is June's commission — you pay on money that has actually arrived.
Commission is earned when the work is invoiced	Commission is due as soon as the work is billed, paid or not. Choose this if that is what you have always done, or if you are checking FastVet's figures against another system that counts a month that way.
Percentages apply to the amount excluding VAT	The default. VAT is collected on SARS's behalf, so it is not the practice's money to share out.
Paying commission from	Nothing settled before this date is ever picked up. It stops a first run reaching back through years of history.

Every run records which settings it was built on, and prints them at the top. Change a setting later and the runs you have already signed off still say what they were worked out on.

Careful

On the paid-in-full setting, “paid” means the invoice itself is covered — and money a client pays goes to their oldest unpaid invoice first. So a client who is behind can pay today’s bill in full and today’s bill still will not earn commission: the money went to what they owed from before. It catches up as the account clears, and nothing is lost — but it is why an invoice you watched somebody pay may not be on this month’s run.

Careful

You cannot change the basis once a run has been signed off. Two months worked out on two different definitions of a month, with nothing saying so, is how a payroll argument starts. Decide it before your first run.

Reading a run#

A run. One section per vet, one row per commission group — the sheet you pay off.

A run is one section per vet, and inside it one row per commission group, with what was sold, what it earned, and the rate that was applied. Printing it gives you a page per vet.

Usage is how many were billed — twenty callouts, nine cremations.
Income is what those came to, on whichever VAT basis the run was built on.
Expense is what they cost the practice, where the price list records a cost. It is shown for information; nothing is calculated from it.
Paid is Income times the rate. Check any row with a calculator and it will agree exactly.

Some rows deserve a second look. A line reading Not in a commission group is work that earned nobody anything because its price list category has never been assigned. A blank rate is a square of the rate table nobody has filled in. Both are set up rather than fixed here.

Tip

The button under each vet opens the individual invoices behind their figures — useful when somebody asks why a month is lower than they expected.

Draft, then signed off#

A new run is a draft. It already holds its invoices, so nothing else can pay them, but the figures are not final and you can still throw it away.

Read the draft, and deal with anything it is warning you about.
If something needs fixing in the setup, Discard the draft — every invoice it was holding goes straight back, and you can build the month again afterwards.
When you are happy, Sign this run off. The figures become final and the run becomes the record of what was paid.

Note

A signed-off run cannot be deleted or edited. If something turns out to be wrong after it is signed off, the correction appears on the next run rather than by rewriting this one — which is what makes an old run still worth showing somebody six months later.

Work that could not be paid on#

A run tells you what it could not pay commission on, and why. This is worth reading every month, because none of it is claimed by the run — fix any of it and the next run picks it up automatically.

No treating vet recorded on the consultation. Nobody was recorded as having done the work. Set the vet on the consultation and it will be paid next month.
The vet is not in a commission group. A setup gap — put them in a group under Vet Groups.

The run screen can list the individual invoices behind those numbers, so you can see exactly which consultations need attention.

Careful

Commission is worked out on consultations and dispenses only. Counter sales, hospital stays, boarding and grooming do not record which vet did the work, so nothing on them earns commission. The run says so on every page rather than quietly leaving them out.

When something is reversed after it was paid#

An invoice is paid in June, earns commission, and is reversed in July. The money has already gone out, so the next run puts a correction on that vet's section — a negative line handing back exactly what was paid, naming the invoice and the run it came from.

It hands back what actually went out, not what the same work would earn today. If a rate has changed in the meantime, the correction still matches the original payment.

Note

If the client later pays properly, the work becomes payable again and a later run picks it up. Nothing is lost either way.

Letting a vet see their own#

Everything above is Admin only. Let each vet see their own commission, in the settings panel, gives every vet a read-only screen showing their own figures and nobody else's.

They see signed-off runs only — a draft can still be discarded and rebuilt, and a figure somebody reads and then watches change is worse than one they wait a day for.

Who can do this

The screen shows the signed-in vet's own figures and cannot be pointed at a colleague. Turn the setting off if you would rather discuss earnings in person.