Skip to main content

The July 27th Telarus Tuesday call brought Telarus Software Developer, Daniel Vest to share some valuable information about commission reporting in the Agent Back Office. The entire recording can be found here.

Commission Reporting

telarus master agent commissions reporting For a small business with limited or no access to capital, timely receipt of commissions can be a matter of life and death.  As an independent agent, you have the freedom to build your business your way, and as fast or as slow as you would like.  You also have the ability to provide first class service to your customers by selling solutions that work best for them, drawing from a range of carriers’ solutions to meet their specific needs.  The downside of this freedom is that you are subject to the painfully slow payment cycles of the carriers.  On top of this, there is a risk that when the carriers do finally pay, they aren’t paying correctly, or that they will cut off your future residual for some unspecified reason.

At Telarus, we understand the frustrations and challenges of collecting commissions.  We live off of the same commission streams as you, and we likewise feel the pain when payments aren’t flowing as expected.  We have the commission assurance and payment process down to a science.  From the time you sign a new customer to the end of services for that customer, we have a series of 10 audits that we run to make sure you are getting paid the right amount, on time, every time or, if not, to triage the issue and get the carrier payments back on track.  These audits are performed every month, with every carrier.  On average, we open more than ten inquiries with carriers about commission payments for every one that an agent opens with us.

One distinct feature of our commissions’ process is our proprietary commission system.  Our commission system is uniquely flexible, allowing us to handle agent and subagent relationships and payments in ways other systems can’t support.  Further, with our system and technology team, we can modify and upgrade our system on our time and based on our own partner feedback, without being at the mercy of third party software companies catering to hundreds of customers in varying industries.  We perpetually seek agent input and run system updates and modifications to constantly improve the agent user experience.

Telarus understands how critical commission payment flow is to your business.  We know how challenging it is to work with the carriers, big and small, to make sure you are getting paid what you are due.  We have already built those relationships with the carriers and their finance teams.  We know what levers to pull, what inquiries to make and how to make them, and we have the right relationships with the carriers to help you rest easy knowing that you will be paid for your hard work.  So if you have questions or concerns, or you just want to understand more about our commissions’ process, contact your regional commission specialist on the Telarus team.  They can guide you through the commission process, and give you confidence and insight into how we make your commissions flow!  Trust us, if you have a question, I guarantee we have heard it before, and can answer it quickly, or we can speedily get to the right person to get it answered.

Here are the questions and answers from the Tuesday call:

Q&A

Q: Do partners have the ability at all to change or customize any of those headings, abbreviations or other information in the report?
A: We don’t have the ability to change on a one-off basis, but if there’s something there that you feel you we’d be a lot better served having different wording, please send that to us and we’ll consider changing that

Q: Telarus is  just reporting the information you get from the suppliers; there isn’t any customization that goes on the Telarus side for that product information, correct?
A: Yes, unless you’re talking about the “Service” column which is a section we do control.  Usually when we are displaying product information, we are showing the exact information the supplier gives us.

Q: What are some other interactive features of the report that allow the partner to interact with the information presented?
A: Hiding and showing data I think is mainly your form of customization. We’re certainly open to suggestions if there is something people would like to be able to interact with.

Q: Anything else you’d like to add about the usefulness of this tool or how partners should be doing some things in it that maybe they’re not?
A: I’d just advise partners to click and hover anytime they’re not quite certain what something does. There’s quite a bit of data there if you dig in a little.