A sales operation of any size is organised into teams, and salespeople are frequently paid partly on what they sell. This piece is about setting up sales teams and commissions in Odoo.
Sales teams: organising the sales operation
A sales team, in Odoo, is a way of organising the sales operation: a group within which sales is run. A business may have one sales team or several, perhaps divided by region, by product area, by customer type, by channel. Setting up sales teams means structuring the sales operation in Odoo to match how it is genuinely organised. Once teams are set up, the sales work, the pipeline, the leads, the activity, can be organised and seen by team, so each team's work is distinct and the sales operation as a whole is structured.
Why sales teams help
Setting up sales teams helps because it makes the sales operation manageable and visible by its genuine structure. Each team's pipeline can be seen, each team's performance measured, leads can be assigned within and across teams, and the sales operation is organised rather than an undifferentiated mass of salespeople and opportunities. For a business with more than a couple of salespeople, sales teams are how the sales operation is given structure in the system.
Commissions: rewarding salespeople on what they sell
Many businesses pay their salespeople partly on a commission: a reward based on what they sell. Setting up commissions in Odoo means establishing how that commission is determined, the basis on which salespeople earn it. The reason to set commissions up in the system, rather than calculating them separately by hand, is that the sales data, what each salesperson sold, lives in Odoo, so the commission, which is based on that data, can be determined from it within the connected system rather than as a separate manual exercise.
Setting commissions up to match your scheme
The practical work in setting up commissions is reflecting the business's genuine commission scheme. Businesses reward sales in different ways, a percentage of sales, tiered rates, a scheme based on particular targets or particular products, and setting up commissions means configuring Odoo to express the business's actual scheme, so that what salespeople earn is determined according to the genuine rules. A business should be clear about its commission scheme and set the system up to match it.
The connected advantage for commissions
The advantage of handling commissions in Odoo, connected to the sales data, is accuracy and effort. The commission is based on what was sold, and what was sold is in the system, so the commission can be determined from the actual sales data rather than from a separately maintained record that has to be reconciled. This is more accurate, the commission reflects the genuine sales, and less effort, the commission does not have to be worked out by hand from gathered figures. It is one more instance of the value of a connected system: the sales and the commission based on them are in one place.
The takeaway
Setting up sales teams in Odoo organises the sales operation into the teams it is genuinely divided into, by region, product area, customer type, or channel, so the sales work is structured and visible by team. Setting up commissions establishes how salespeople are rewarded on what they sell, configured to match the business's genuine commission scheme. Handling commissions in Odoo, connected to the sales data, makes them accurate and removes the effort of working them out separately by hand. For how we approach Odoo, see our ERP practice.