Assign Effective Dates for Plans

Learning Objectives

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

• Use effective dates to manage plan assignments.
  
• Maintain data accuracy during plan transitions.
  

Sales commission plans are essential for ensuring fair and accurate payouts across a variety of scenarios—whether it’s launching temporary incentives, setting up standard plans for new hires, or discontinuing plans for departing reps. Managing these plans effectively requires precision, and that’s where plan effective dates come in. They determine exactly when calculations for commission statements for users start or stop, ensuring clean data and effortless transitions.

Cloud Kicks wants to motivate its team by introducing a quarterly bonus plan starting January 1, 2025, and ending March 31, 2025. The plan offers a 10% bonus on deals exceeding $100,000. After March 31, this bonus plan will no longer apply, and the team reverts to their standard commission plan. Salesforce Admin Linda, carefully studies this requirement, and prepares to create and configure the plan in Spiff, ensuring it’s ready to be assigned to his team.

Linda starts by assigning the new bonus plan to Candace, who's officially part of the Corporate Sales team.

Assign Plan Effective Dates for Single Users

Assigning plan effective dates for a single user is similar to the process you followed for teams in the previous unit. Here are the steps.

1. Click Admin and select Users.
   
2. Click the user’s profile to open their profile page.
   
3. In the Plan Assignments section, turn on Edit to enable editing.
   
4. Click Add Plan Assignment.
   
5. Select Q1 2025 Corporate Bonus Plan which is the new bonus plan.
   
6. Set Effective As of to January 1, 2025 and Effective Until to March 31, 2025.
   
7. Save your work.
   

Linda has now successfully assigned the bonus plan to Candace, with effective dates, ensuring she’s eligible for the 10% bonus on high-value deals during the specified period. With this setup, Candace’s commission statements reflect the bonus plan, while maintaining accuracy for other plans. Her bonus plan is separate from her corporate sales commission statement, and is only available during the specified period.

Assign Plan Effective Dates for Multiple Users

Assigning plan effective dates for many users within the same plan is just as simple as for a single user. This approach is particularly helpful when you’re onboarding a group of reps, managing plan transitions, or updating commission eligibility for an entire team. By setting effective dates for multiple users at once, you ensure consistent application of the plan rules and save valuable time.

Here’s how to set plan effective dates for multiple users.

1. In the navigation bar, click Plans.
   
2. Select the plan for which you want to assign the effective dates. This step opens the Plans page.
   
3. Click Edit to enable editing mode.
   
4. Locate the Effective As Of and Effective Until columns next to each user.
   
5. Use the date selector to modify the values in these columns for the relevant users.
   
6. Save your work.
   

Congratulations! You now know how to easily update effective dates for multiple users within a single plan, ensuring accuracy and efficiency in your commission calculations.

Assign Plan Effective Dates for Multiple Users Across Teams

Managing plan effective dates for multiple users across teams doesn’t have to be complicated. Spiff simplifies the process with the Plan Assignments page, which provides a centralized view of all users, their assigned plans, and the associated effective dates. This page makes it easy to manage changes across various plans in one go.

Here’s how to assign plan effective dates for multiple users across teams.

1. Click Admin and select Users.
   
2. Click the Plan Assignments tab. This page displays a centralized list of users, their assigned plans, and the Effective As Of and Effective Until dates.
   
3. Turn on Edit to enter edit mode.
   
4. Update the Effective As Of and Effective Until fields for each user.
   
5. Save your work.
   

In this unit, you learned how to manage commission plans effectively by setting plan effective dates to ensure fair payouts, maintain data integrity, and adapt to business changes. In the next unit, learn how to assign plans to individuals, teams, or multiple groups to streamline sales incentives.