Getting started with Earnest
Earnest calculates sales commission for your team. You set up your comp plans once, add your people and import the deals they close, and Earnest works out what each rep and manager has earned. You check the numbers as drafts, publish them, and everyone gets a statement that shows exactly how their pay was worked out.
This page is the starting point. Find your role below and follow the links in order.
If you're setting up Earnest (admins)
Setup takes five steps, and the order matters. A team needs a plan to point at, a person needs a team, a deal needs a person, and a payout needs deals. Earnest shows the same five steps as a checklist inside the app, so you can follow along there too.
- Set up your organization. Sign up with your work email, confirm your company name and base currency, and meet the setup checklist.
- Create your first comp plan. A plan holds the rules: the commission rates, any accelerators, and whether it pays monthly or quarterly.
- Add your team. Create a team on that plan, give it titles with default quotas, and add your reps and managers with their on-target earnings (OTE) and base salary.
- Import your deals. Upload one month of closed deals so your first payout has real numbers in it.
- Run your first payout. Draft payouts for that month, check them, and publish when they're right. Nobody sees a payout until you publish it.
A few things worth knowing before you begin:
- You choose when people are emailed. Adding someone doesn't have to send them an invite. Untick Email a setup link now when you add them, and send it later with Send invite from their row menu on the People page. People who haven't signed in yet are still paid and reported on.
- Starter is free for up to 5 reps and managers. Admins never use a seat. See Billing and plans when you need more.
- Nothing you draft is final. Drafts can be regenerated or deleted as often as you like. Publishing is the step that makes a payout visible and fixed.
If you're a rep
Your admin creates your account. You'll get an email called "Welcome to Earnest — your account is ready". Click Set Password & Login, choose a password (or use Sign in with Google if your work email is a Google account), and you're in. The link works for 24 hours. If it has expired, see Signing in and your account.
Once you're signed in:
- Your dashboard shows your attainment, what you've earned so far this period, and the deals credited to you.
- Reading your commission statement explains each line of the statement you get when a payout is published.
- The earnings planner shows what you would earn at different levels of attainment, or what one more deal is worth to you.
If a published payout looks wrong, talk to your admin. If your organization has turned on disputes, you can also flag the payout from its page within your organization's dispute window.
If you're a manager
You sign in the same way as a rep. Your dashboard shows your own numbers and has extra tabs for your team: you can see how each report is tracking, mark their draft payouts as reviewed, submit adjustments for an admin to approve, model earnings for yourself or your whole team, and export your team's performance. Admins publish payouts and edit plans; managers can't.
Start with The manager's guide.
Where things live
Admins see this menu across the top of every page:
| Menu | What's there |
|---|---|
| Payouts | Draft, check, publish and export payouts. This is where you land after signing in. |
| Review | Adjustments waiting for approval, and disputes if they're turned on. |
| Organization | People, Teams, Plans and Scheduled Changes. |
| Data | Sales Data (your deals, and the upload for them) and Imports & API (API docs and your API key). |
| Insights | Analytics, Plan Simulator, and Audit Log when it's turned on. |
| Settings | Your organization's features, email, billing and data export. |
| Help | This help centre, in a new tab. |
At the top right, Profile opens your own account settings (password and notification emails), and Sign out signs you out. Click the Earnest logo at the top left to get to Admin Home, which shows your setup progress and a count of your people, teams and plans.
Reps and managers see Dashboard, Planner, Payouts, Settings and Help. Statements are under Payouts. Your password and email preferences are under Settings.
Common questions
What does it cost? Starter is free for up to 5 reps and managers. Paid plans start at $149 a month. Every feature is on every plan, and admins are always free. See Billing and plans.
Can I pay on something other than revenue? Yes. A plan can measure revenue, units (such as meetings booked), or a ratio such as revenue per head for a manager. See Comp plan reference.
Which currencies can I use? Your organization reports in one base currency, chosen from USD, EUR, GBP, SGD, JPY, CHF, AUD, CAD, INR and CNY. People can have their own quota and payout currencies. See Multi-currency.
What if a published payout is wrong? You can correct it. The difference is carried into a later payout, and the original stays on record. See Corrections and clawbacks.
Can I get my data out? Yes. Settings → Data downloads everything as a ZIP of CSV files. See Settings, notifications and your data.
Go deeper
- Glossary: every term Earnest uses, in plain English.
- Comp plan reference: tiers, caps, ramps and the three metric types.
- Payout pipeline reference: everything about drafting and publishing.
- Settings, notifications and your data: every setting and every email Earnest sends.