Manage Salesforce Spiff Plans

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Archive and unarchive plans to keep your workspace organized and manage plan visibility.
  
• Manage effective dates of plans to ensure accurate commission calculations.
  
• Handle hidden plans to prepare and test new plans without affecting reps.
  

Manage your Salesforce Spiff plans to maintain an organized and efficient commission system. As commission plans evolve and old versions become outdated, it’s important to manage these plans effectively to ensure that only relevant and current plans are visible and active. Proper plan management helps simplify your workflow, prevents clutter, and ensures that your commission calculations remain accurate and up to date.

Archive Plans

Commission plans typically undergo revisions at least once a year. As a result, older versions can clutter your Plans tab in Designer, making it difficult to navigate and manage active plans. Archiving is an effective way to manage this issue without permanently deleting valuable data.

To archive a plan:

1. Navigate to Designer .
   
2. While on the Plans tab, click the three-dot icon next to the plan you want to archive.
   
3. Select Archive Plan.
   

The archived plan will appear under Archived Plans at the bottom of the left panel in Designer. To unarchive a plan, repeat the same process and select Unarchive Plan.

Impact of Archiving

Here are some things to keep in mind when archiving plans.

• Visibility: Archiving a plan hides it from view on the Plans tab in Designer and the Plans page on the core platform. If reps are still assigned to an unarchived plan, the plans and rules remain visible on their statements unless effective dates are updated
  
• Effective dates: To stop commissions from being calculated, ensure that effective dates are set for the reps before archiving the plan.
  
• Unarchiving: A plan must be unarchived to change effective dates or modify plan assignments.
  

Effective Plan Dating

To ensure that commissions are calculated accurately for the appropriate periods and that plan assignments reflect the correct timeframes, you need effective dates.

How to set effective dates on the Plans page:

1. Navigate to the Plans page.
   
2. Select the plan you want to update.
   
3. In the Effective Date columns, use the clickable date selector to modify the start and end dates.
   

How to set effective dates on the Plan Assignment table:

1. Navigate to the Plan Assignment Table (Admin | Users).
   
2. In the Effective Date columns, use the clickable date selector to modify the start and end dates.
   

How to set effective dates on the User Profile:

1. Go to Admin | Users.
   
2. Click on the appropriate user.
   
3. In the Plan Assignments section, click the Edit toggle.
   
4. Use the clickable date selector to modify the start and end dates.
   

Why Effective Dates Are Important

Effective dates define the precise periods during which a plan is active, preventing outdated or incorrect commissions from appearing on rep statements. This level of precision is essential for maintaining clean and accurate data, as it aligns commission calculations with the intended timeframes.

Without effective dates, you risk erroneous calculations and discrepancies in financial reporting, especially when plans or team assignments change throughout the year. By setting and managing effective dates, you ensure that commissions are only computed for relevant periods. This contributes to overall consistency and accuracy in your commission system, helping to prevent issues related to outdated or incorrect commission data.

Hidden Plans

The Hidden Plans feature in Salesforce Spiff allows administrators to create and manage plans that aren't visible to regular users. This feature is useful for scenarios such as preparing new plans or testing rules without impacting the general user experience.

When you create a new plan, it’s automatically set to Hidden Plan status. These hidden plans can be used for internal purposes, such as generating reports or experimenting with new rules. Reps won’t see or receive commissions from these plans, and they’re only visible to Salesforce Spiff Finance and Admin users. An icon identifies hidden plans.

When you are ready to make a hidden plan visible to reps, simply toggle the Hidden Plan toggle off. This action immediately makes the plan accessible to all reps assigned to it, effective from the relevant statement periods.

Wrap-Up

In this introduction to Spiff plans, you’ve learned to create and assign users to plans, navigate the Plans tab, use the Plans Page for comprehensive management, and update plan assignment settings for individual and bulk modifications. You can also now manage plans through archiving, hidden plans, and effective dating. With this comprehensive knowledge, you’re well-prepared for Salesforce Spiff to maintain a streamlined and effective commission management process.