Q for those of you that earn commission at work?

[Purplebeadedwhatnot]

Are you able to verify yourselves whether something has gone through so that you earn commission on that sale, or do you have to rely upon the honesty of your boss to tell you that you have earned commission?

My workplace is the latter and unfortunately due to several recent events I am starting to doubt whether my boss is entirely honest with those of us that work in the sales section.

My partner gets a breakdown which is updated daily on their intranet system and then a PDF is sent of exactly what items earned commission and what didn't. (Differing amounts of commison on different products and sometimes deals fall through after the first stage).
I've probably made it sound more complicated than it is but it's basically an excel spreadsheet that is updated at the end of every day.

I pay commission. Based on sales. Both I and the employee can go onto a secondary system and print a report for their sales for the month. I then calculate their commission based on a % of their sales.

I put this data on a excel spreadsheet monthly and send it to them and the MD quarterly. Really easy.

Ask for a summary of how it is calculated.

I have asked my boss if I can see the sales sheets each day and have been told no.

We get X amount per sale that we do, but I am feeling that we are told that some sales do not go through when they actually do.

Purple -I work for a sales company in a relevant area of the business.

It is good practice in most reputable sales companies for them to give you access to a report or whatever to provide complete transparency on sales.

If you do suspect that they are not being honest with you then they are probably breaching the terms of your contract and / or making an 'unlawful deduction' from your salary. I suppose the question for you is do you want to stay somewhere if you don't trust them? Do you have other options? Do you want to kick up a stink?

In theory of course everyone should stand up for their rights, but if you really need the job and there aren't lots of other options, tread carefully in how you raise this because ending up in a tribunal trying on this will be stressful and difficult when at the moment you're suspicious but don't have a clear idea of what the hell they are playing at.