How to Find & Collect Missed Commissions With an Agency Management System

Insurance agency commission software: the secret to identifying missed commissions and streamlining your agency’s commissions process.

Many life and health insurance agencies find commission management difficult. From processing them in a timely manner to projecting future commissions to tracking commissions for each agent, and more, there are a lot of moving parts. This makes it easy for missed commissions to slip through the cracks. 

This is compounded by the fact that searching for and correcting missed commissions is incredibly time-consuming and error-prone. Plus, a lot of agencies lack the technology to efficiently find missed commission payments from carriers. 

Thankfully, there’s technology available that addresses all of these concerns and streamlines their processes: an agency management system (AMS) that has commission processing capabilities.

Summary

After Open Enrollment, your big commission statements come in from carriers, and it’s time to ensure you’re being paid for all of your hard work. In this blog, we’ll talk about: 

• The data you should track to identify any missed commissions
• The reports you can use to determine whether you’ve been paid and if it was the amount you expected
• How AgencyBloc's Commissions+ solution can help you identify potentially thousands of dollars in missed and incorrect commissions–plus save valuable time on it (75-85% to be exact)

Step 1: Track the Necessary Policy & Commission Data to Find Missed Commissions

In order to identify missing commissions, you need two things: 

1. First, you need insurance agency commission software that provides fields to help you track all of your data. An AMS gives you the ability to do this all in one system, enabling you to prevent data silos, work efficiently and keep your book of business organized. 
2. Then, you need to track comprehensive policy and commission data.

Once you have the right AMS to support smooth commissions processing, track these important data points on your policy records to help you identify any future discrepancies:

• Effective date: When the commission payments are supposed to begin
• Premium amount (if applicable): How much commission payments are supposed to be
• Number of lives (if applicable): How much commission payments are supposed to be
• Commission frequency: How often you should expect the commission amount to be paid

These pieces of data, combined with Bill from Date (explained below), allow AgencyBloc's Commissions+ solution to quickly identify your agency’s missed commissions.

What is Bill from Date?

In AgencyBloc's Commissions+ solution, the premium period you are getting paid FOR is tracked in a field called “Bill from Date” (this is NOT the month you are getting paid IN–that is known as “Statement Date”).

Why is this important? With this, your agency is able to identify whether or not a carrier paid you, no matter when they did.

For example, you receive a March statement, but on that statement date were payments for January, February, and March (three different “Bill from Dates”). Since AgencyBloc's Commissions+ solution allows you to track both, you’re able to easily see what you have and have not been paid on.

Note: A Bill from Date is also known as “paid from date”, “premium due date,” “billed date,” and other terms–each of your carrier’s statements can differ. Also, if the carrier doesn’t provide this, you can still add it to statements in AgencyBloc (even in mass amounts!)

Step 2: Use Reports to Identify Missed or Inaccurate Commissions

Now, let’s get to the fun part—the reports in AgencyBloc's Commissions+ solution. We have a range of commission processing-related reports to choose from. The following two are the reports you want to use to find missed commissions.

Commission Not Received–Were you paid at all?

This is the #1 report our clients run. It tells you which policies you have not been paid on during a set time frame.

There are two options you can choose from while running this report:

• Statement Date. Using “Statement Date” will show you anything that’s missing that you entered during a specific period. For instance, you might say, “Show me anything that’s missing that I entered from September 2022 to December 2022.” AgencyBloc's Commissions+ solution will then only look at commission entries that you entered between those statement dates.
• Bill from Date. Using “Bill from Date” (what we recommend) will search through every commission entry ever entered and search those entries for the Bill from Date range you chose. For example, you might say, “Tell me if I ever got paid for entries between September 2022 and December 2022.” Our software will search all commission entries to identify these, even payments received for December that appeared on January’s statement.

Many agencies choose to run this report a few months “late” to give their carriers some time to catch up on payments. 

With these reports, you can also filter on a specific carrier, policy status, and more.

The reports will include policy data like...

• Policyholder name
• Number
• Carrier
• Status
• Effective date

...plus, the data you’re truly after, commission data:

• What was received (or if nothing was received or expected) broken out by month
• The last Bill from Date is recorded on a policy so you can quickly see if commissions were missed
  • For example, the report shows an amount received for September and October, but not November. But, there is a December date in this column indicating that the November payment from the carrier may have been missed.
• The data needed to reconcile these missed payments with the carrier—SSN, DOB, MBI, address, and phone number

Expected Commissions–Were you paid and was it the right amount?

Knowing if you were paid at all is one thing; ensuring it’s the correct amount is another. 

Along with the data needed to identify missed commissions, you will also want to enter the expected commission amount or use our projection tables. These tables allow you to create common rate structures and mass-assign them to policies based on different criteria.

With this data, it’s easy to identify which policies have missing commission dollars—looking at what came in compared to what you expected.

Protect Your Bottom Line With AgencyBloc's Commissions+ solution 

In short, AgencyBloc's Commissions+ solution can help you protect your revenue and save time by enabling you to strategically and seamlessly use your data to identify missed and/or inaccurate commissions. Once you’ve identified these missed commissions, you’re able to reconcile them with carriers and get what you’re owed.

In addition to streamlining commission processing for life and health insurance agencies, our software is an insurance CRM, giving you access to powerful features to convert prospects, nurture current clients, and empower your agents. 

If you’re looking for a way to easily identify missed commissions, it’s time to consider an industry-specific solution like AgencyBloc. One of the best ways to know if we’ll be the right fit is to speak one-on-one with someone on our team.

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"We have been able to recover over $69,000 in missing compensation with AgencyBloc."
—Becca D., United Producers Group
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This blog was originally published on March 4, 2021 and updated on February 14, 2023. 

Posted by Kelsey Rosauer on Tuesday, February 14, 2023 in Uncover Missed Carrier Commissions

1. commissions
2. data management
3. productivity