Anatomy of a commission
From GCI to net, in exact order.
Almost every commission argument gets settled on the same screen: you open the closing in the Sales Book and look at «Commission breakdown». The full waterfall is there, figure by figure. This lesson is how to read it.
One example sale for the whole course
You sell a $400,000 property at a 3% commission. The GCI — the gross commission the transaction generates for your brokerage — is $12,000. That is the number that enters the split; the property price only measures volume.
The order matters, and it never changes
- «Total GCI»: the full $12,000. Everything else comes out of this.
- «Agent split»: their level's percentage. At 70/30 that is $8,400 to the agent and $3,600 to the brokerage.
- «Broker fee»: what the brokerage charges per closing, on top of the split. That is lesson 04.
- «Supervisor» and «Lead owner»: two optional cuts taken from the agent's ALREADY NET commission. That is lesson 03.
- «Net agent» and «Brokerage total»: the two totals that close the account.
Nothing has to be reconstructed by hand. And the level it was calculated with is written above, under «Level at closing»: if the agent moved up afterwards, this sale keeps the one it had.
What the waterfall does NOT do
It does not guess. Every figure comes from a rule that was in place when the brokerage confirmed the closing, and it was frozen right there. If a number surprises you, the answer is in that day's configuration, not in a calculation that shifted later.
And if something genuinely needs fixing, there is «Correct commission breakdown»: you adjust the GCI, the split, the fee, or the percentages, and the net agent and brokerage recompute themselves. There is a «Reason for the adjustment» field and it is optional. Use it anyway: six months from now, that line is you explaining yourself to yourself.