Sales are an integral part of any business. Not knowing exactly how much a sales rep is making can directly affect the overall performance of sales. Now, most people who work in sales are tied with commission along with other monetary benefits. This is where effective sales compensation software will come in handy.
Getting your sales compensation right is a necessity, otherwise, you’ll be losing great employees. Further, a good sales compensation tool would do more than just simple commission calculations. It can also encourage the sales team to exceed their targets in order to earn more rewards.
Being an entrepreneur for the last 10 years, I’ve come across many solutions that are essential when running a business. My in-depth software review will help you pick the sales compensation tool that works for your business needs.
Let’s get started.
- What Is The Best Sales Compensation Software?
- 1. CaptivateIQ – Top Pick
- 2. Spiff – Best in Commission Management
- 3. Varicent – Excellent Incentive Compensation Management
- 4. Xactly – Most Intelligent Revenue Platform
- 5. Everstage – Sales Commission Software With Most Features
- 6. Compass – High-Quality Incentive Management
- 7. QuotaPath – Accurate Sales Commission Management
- 8. Performio – Powerful Sales Compensation Tool
- Wrapping Up
What Is The Best Sales Compensation Software?
Have a quick look at my top 3 picks: CaptivateIQ, Spiff, and Varicent.
   4.9 |   4.6 |   4.2 |
| Best overall. Leading software with customization and automation features. | Best for flexibility. Can handle large amounts of transactions with intuitive automation tools. | Feature-rich. Packed with excellent tools for reviewing and analyzing opportunities. |
| Try CaptivateIQ | Try Spiff | Try Varicent |
Keep reading for a more detailed review of the 7+ best commission management tools.
1. CaptivateIQ – Top Pick
Best Sales Compensation Software To Reach Sales Goals [Custom Price/Demo Available]
CaptivateIQ is the leading software when it comes to managing incentive programs. It is used by many renowned organizations globally. Further, it offers a SaaS platform that runs without any code – making the tool extremely flexible.
I picked this as my top choice because it empowers businesses through customization and offers incentive plan automation for smoother operations. When you’re using CapitivateIQ, you can easily calculate compensation irrespective of the team size, currency, and region.
Leaders need a clear image of the employees’ performance through compensation management. Similarly, your salesforce deserves timely and accurate payments of their work without back and forth bickering over the numbers. Through automation, you’ll always get accurate numbers without having to verify them.
Course-correcting your team will be possible once you are aware of the performances. Instead of worrying about the commission process, you can focus on other important aspects of your business.
Let’s look at some of the features that make CaptivateIQ my top pick.
- Sales Rep Portal: This allows sales agents to estimate their commissions, set target goals, and plan documents/agreements. Further, there are features such as dispute management, commission statements, and individual or salesperson’s performance reports.
- Management Portal: Here, line managers can check the outputs of all sales reps to ensure good performance. Moreover, you also get the option to check commission splits, manage, and assign quotas to your team.
- Administration: Admin features allow many exciting functions such as dispute resolution, compensation modeling ease of admin, compensation modeling design flexibility, compensation calculator and disbursement, sales hierarchy management, and a user-friendly dashboard.
Let’s take a look at some of the good features that set CapitivateIQ apart and some shortcomings that could affect your overall experience.
Pros And Cons Of CaptivateIQ
| Pros | Cons |
| Available demo version | Poor interface |
| Has compensation automation & accuracy | No freemium version |
| Has sales compensation plan creation | No free trial |
| Easy to use | |
| Has agile incentive strategy |
CaptivateIQ Pricing Plan
Prices are not mentioned on its website. However, CaptivateIQ provides custom pricing which means you’ll get the features and functions that are useful to you. You can request a demo to test this sales compensation software and see if it’s something you’ll be happy working with.
Try it out, it’s worth a shot.
2. Spiff – Best in Commission Management
Top-Tier Sales Compensation Tool [Custom Price/Demo]
Spiff is robust and easy to use which is a perfect combination. You can use this sales compensation solution to calculate commission payments for even 1000+ commissionable employees without any hassle. Having said that, it is equally good for small companies as well.
The features you receive for this tool are completely customized which improves the usability tenfold. It is also a perfect solution for companies that have sophisticated technology stacks. If you need help with the automation of sales compensation to improve overall business efficiency, Spiff is for you.
Many businesses follow compensation plans and calculate through Excel sheets or manual work. Both of these options are extremely time-consuming and can cost any business a lot of valuable time.
Spiff offers the following features (among many others):
- Sales features: To help businesses stay on top of employees’ performance, Spiff offers the creation of a sales commission plan, incentive modeling, agile incentive strategy, sales dashboard, sales analytics, and forecasting.
- Additional features: Some of the additional features include real-time calculations and updates, system activity logs for easy auditing, agreement management, and integrations to automate commissions-related data.
You can forget about plugging formulas into spreadsheets, automation for sales compensation is the future.
Burkhard Berger
Always keep a look out on the integrations that each software supports because depending on the software that you already use, these integrations can make your life all the more easier as you can share your data with each different platform.
Pros And Cons Of Spiff
| Pros | Cons |
| User friendly | Has availability issues |
| Good performance | No free trial |
| Allows for product scalability | No freemium version |
| Has incentive auditing |
Spiff Pricing Plan
Spiff doesn’t have a free trial to offer its potential users which is a big drawback. However, you can still get a demo account and use the tool to try out its exciting features. Once you’re sure about the software and its capabilities, you can get the tool for your business.
Custom pricing is beneficial for the most part. Since you won’t be using every single feature of this tool, paying just for what you need sounds like a great deal to me. Discuss your needs with the Spiff team and get the features that will help you reach your sales goals.
Don’t forget that using sales compensation software is a great way to boost your sales reps’ morale. Use features that help you achieve this as well.
3. Varicent – Excellent Incentive Compensation Management
Most Intelligent Incentive Management [Custom Price/Demo]
Varicent is truly the game plan for revenue growth. The planning feature that this software offers is great since it is designed to get better results so you can accomplish goals faster.
Varicent helps by offering a sales plan that is aligned with your expected revenue. Smarter goals and territory plans help in improving your potential to secure higher growth. Varicent Territory and Quota Planning solution is designed for businesses to accurately decide on quota plans for each sales rep.
If you can understand the underlying factors well, it could shape your revenues positively and enhance team performance – it’s exactly what Varicent does. You also have the ability to look back on opportunities that were missed with the help of Varicent Revenue Intelligence Workbench – a feature to help your operational efficiency and overall profits.
Now, let’s take a look at some of the special features that Varicent has to offer:
- Sales Performance Management: Without proper sales performance management, you will be lost in terms of generating leads and revenue.
- Incentive Compensation Management: Accurately calculate the sales commissions (even complex commissions) through an automated compensation process. Good commissions for sales reps mean more motivation to drive better business outcomes and work in favor of the business to meet company goals.
- In-person Training: No matter how tech-savvy you are, you still need the training to use new software to take advantage of all of its features and functionalities.
- Lead to Revenue: You also get the ability to focus on the entire customer life cycle through Varicent. This feature will add to your revenue multiple times since it focuses on lead generation and using marketing and sales methods to bring in more revenue for the business.
On that note, let’s head over to the pros and cons of Varicent.
Pros And Cons Of Varicent
| Pros | Cons |
| Simple but scalable tool | No free trial |
| Multiple languages supported | No freemium available |
| Ease of integration | Poor UI |
Varicent Pricing Plan
Just like other software on this list, Varicent has no pricing plan; rather, it uses a custom pricing model to provide users with bespoke sales compensation solutions. Book a demo with Varicent to learn more about the software.
4. Xactly – Most Intelligent Revenue Platform
User-Friendly Incentive Management Solution [Demo Available]
Xactly Corporation provides cloud-based sales compensation software to large enterprises for incentive management, revenue management, and performance management. Xactly’s main product Xactly Incent provides exceptional support to enterprises with the help of advanced features and functionalities.
Further, the software also uses compensation performance data to analyze and set the desired commission plan that can result in higher compensation ROI. Through proprietary pay and performance benchmarking data, companies can attract and retain the best talent in the market.
I loved the powerful integration that Xactly Incent offers. To improve your business workflow and operational efficiency, you can integrate Xactly with critical business systems such as HCM, ERP, and CRM (among many others). With these quality integrations, Xactly automation will work wonders for you.
Now, let’s take a look at some of the special features that Xactly has to offer:
- Custom Compensation Plan: Compensation plans can be different for different companies. Since no template can fit all organizations, Xactly allows creating and managing your own commission plan.
- Transparent Method: Xactly’s compensations are transparent and free from any calculation errors. This helps create trust between company/HR and sales reps.
- Dashboards and Reporting: The dashboard of Xactly is designed to provide easy navigation and a lot of useful information such as tracking sales and compensation performance.
- 100% Mobile: Xactly is completely mobile and works from anywhere and any device. Sales reps can have real-time visibility and accessibility. They can view dashboards, workflows, and commission statements any time they want.
Let’s take a look at Xactly’s strengths and drawbacks.
Pros And Cons Of Xactly
| Pros | Cons |
| Comes with mobile access | Weak complex territory management |
| Has commission management | Poor customer support |
| Has auditing feature | |
| Equipped with organizational charting |
Xactly Pricing Plan
Xactly follows the quotation-based pricing model which is why there is no pre-planned pricing available. This sales compensation software is custom designed and differs from business to business. In order to learn more about Xactly’s Incent and how it can help achieve your compensation management goals, try the demo account.
You’ll not be wasting any time on plan administration – Xactly takes care of that for you. Book a demo with Xactly to learn more about the software.
5. Everstage – Sales Commission Software With Most Features
Excellent Incentive Calculation Tool [Try For Free]
Transparency and real-time visibility of performance allow quick management of work. Addressing bottlenecks is essential to avoid performance delays, Everstage’s intuitive UI and easy navigation improve the problem identification process.
All in all, renowned companies like Chargebee, Postman, HackerRank, Nitro, Yellow.ai, and Uniphor have placed their trust in Everstage for the incentive management process. This goes to show the effectiveness of this no-code platform.
Third-party applications such as Stripe, QuickBooks Online, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and MySQL can be used to import data as well.
Now, let’s take a look at some of the special features that Everstage has to offer:
- Web-based Solution: Being a cloud SaaS, Everstage has great mobility for managers and sales reps as well.
- Slack Integration: You’ll get every information you need directly to you on the popular workplace app, Slack.
- Analytics: Custom analytics and reports delivered based on smart AI sales forecasts.
Let’s take a look at Everstage’s strengths and drawbacks.
Pros And Cons Of Everstage
| Pros | Cons |
| Ease of use | Could improve on integrations |
| Exceptional customer support | Has room for more advanced features |
| Easy to configure and get started | |
| Has intuitive UI |
Everstage Pricing Plan
Unlike other software listed in this article, Everstage comes with a free account as well as a demo account. You can use the free version of the software to test out the available features. Book a demo with Everstage to learn more about the software.
Burkhard Berger
Always consider looking back to a software’s resource hub. This can provide valuable information on how you can maximize your use of a platform’s features or can speed up the roll-out process. If a software doesn’t have a resource hub available for customers, then that can be a sign that you’ll have to contact them directly in situations where you’re lost which can be less than ideal.
6. Compass – High-Quality Incentive Management
Top-Notch Commission Management Tool [Start With A Free Trial]
Compass is a modern sales compensation software that has already made a name for itself. In terms of commission management, your revenue teams will be able to use it to improve their overall performance. Further, you can motivate your sales team through this software since it provides an immersive incentives experience.
For managers, Compass is an amazing solution since it allows them to conduct quota attainment for their teams, assign multiple quotas, and handle payments (monthly, quarterly, and annually). Further, the gamification of analytics and graphs allow managers to check the team’s (support and sales team) performance, quota utilization, and profits.
Now, let’s take a look at some of the special features that Compass has to offer:
- Live Scorecards: You can track how well your team is performing, in real-time. Scorecards stem a healthy competition among the team members and everyone is motivated to give their 100%.
- Training: Compass provides in-person and live training to users to help them understand all the intricacies of this sales compensation software.
- Nudges: Nudges are a gentle reminder for your revenue teams to keep working hard to achieve their target goals. Nudges are timed perfectly in the form of push notifications.
Let’s take a look at Compass’s strengths and drawbacks.
Pros And Cons Of Compass
| Pros | Cons |
| Free trial available | Poor customer support |
| Has third-party integrations | Complicated functionalities |
| Gamified incentive management |
Compass Pricing Plan
Compass comes with 3 pricing plans:
- Starter Plan ($29.99/mo/user): For the first 100 users, the price is set at $29.99 per user per month.
- Growth Plan ($19.99/mo/user): For the next 101 – 500 users, the price is set at $19.99 per user per month.
- Scale Plan ($9.99/mo/user): For the next 500+ users, the price is set at $9.99 per user per month.
It’s best to book a demo before committing to a paid plan to get a feel of what works best for you.
7. QuotaPath – Accurate Sales Commission Management
Economical Incentive Management Solution [Start With A Free Trial]
You can use QuotaPath for commission tracking, setting commission structures, quota management, payouts, incentive calculations, and much more through an effective system. One of the most exciting features that QuotaPath has is the ability to run simulations before new incentive compensation plans are published. These simulations help in checking the plan’s feasibility.
You can design, apply and manage your compensation programs based on your requirements and parameters. Higher accuracy and optimization of sales plans help businesses achieve better ROI and improve sales operations – QuotaPath exists to provide you with all these capabilities.
Here are some special features that this commission tracking software has to offer:
- Transparency: When employees trust you, they will work harder to achieve organizational goals and also bring in greater revenue as a result. Ultimately, transparency helps improve cross-functional alignment.
- Performance Management: With QuotaPath you can easily oversee the sales performance of your revenue team, identify bottlenecks, and improve overall operational efficiency.
- Sales Crediting: You can configure complex sales crediting which is the ability to link/credit every employee involved in the commission chain.
Pros And Cons Of QuotaPath
| Pros | Cons |
| Accurate compensation statements | Poor mobile user support |
| Reliable forecasting | Complicated dashboard |
| Has CRM integration |
QuotaPath Pricing Plan
- Free Plan: With the free plan, here’s everything you can do: build basic plans, track personal earnings & attainment, forecast earnings & attainment, productivity, inspiration & call prep, set personal goals, and integrate with your CRM.
- Startup ($30/month): Build official plans, track rep earnings & attainment, report on rep earnings & attainment, approve earnings & track discrepancies, select global currency options, and export Workspace earnings & attainment.
- Scale ($480/year): Create payout schedules, maintain ASC 606 compliance, build teams & manage members, create attainment leaderboards, distribute & verify compensation plans, flag deals, and override earnings.
Get the free plan until you identify the functionalities you need. This way, you make the most out of your investment.
8. Performio – Powerful Sales Compensation Tool
One-Stop Commission Management [Free Trial]
Performio provides seamless commission management that is error-free and properly managed. You can expect to scale better with Performio allowing you to adjust better with market changes and drive revenue.
Further, it is important to get the numbers you can be confident about. Performio offers AI-driven analytics and sales forecasts that are actionable and easily understandable.
You can spend your valuable time thinking about revenue generation and business expansion while automation takes care of your sales commissions.
Here are some useful features:
- Sales Tracking: Track using KPIs such as payment information, bonus, and commission. Further, you also get a custom dashboard and reports catered to your business.
- Complex Sales Process: This includes complex sales crediting and up to 99.8% accuracy along with timely compensation disbursements.
- Easy Onboarding: Being an enterprise-grade software, Performio is easy to start. With just a little training and help from the support team, you’ll begin working within a few weeks.
Pros And Cons Of Performio
| Pros | Cons |
| Equipped with an audit manager | Difficult to navigate |
| Has employee management | No free version |
| Has exceptional commission tracking |
Performio Pricing Plan
Performio does not have any free trial account or freemium version. However, you can use a demo account to test out the software.
This sales compensation tool runs on a monthly and yearly subscription, based on your preference you can choose any. The custom pricing model used by this software helps enterprises receive a customized version of the solution that can solve their problems effectively.
If you’re looking for a custom solution, request a demo and start managing sales compensation accurately.
Wrapping Up
There you go. This was my detailed expert review of the best sales compensation software for 2022.
CapitivateIQ takes the first place in my list due to the level of features, the quality of commission management, and the revenue management it provides. Usability, customer support, and user experience are the three things I consider when choosing the best sales compensation software.
If you’re looking for a highly customized solution, catered to your business’s needs, I recommend picking any from my top 3 picks (CaptivateIQ, Spiff, and Varicent). All of these 3 are bespoke sales commission solutions with great features.
On the other hand, if you’re interested in trying out a free solution first, try QuotaPath, it’s totally free and has some promising features. In the end, you should pick whatever works best for you and your business. Check out our software reviews to read more about other interesting solutions for your business needs.
