Review, Approvals & Disputes
Admin → Review is where anything that needs a decision before it affects pay collects: adjustments submitted by managers, and disputes filed by reps. The nav badge shows the combined outstanding count.
Adjustment approvals
Who creates what
| Created by | Lands as |
|---|---|
| Admin (Admin → Payouts) | Approved immediately — it affects the next generation right away. |
| Manager (their dashboard → Adjustments) | Pending — it does nothing until an admin approves it. |
| Dispute resolution | Approved immediately, bypassing this queue. |
The statuses
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pending | Submitted, awaiting admin review. Excluded from every calculation. |
| Approved | Included in commission calculations from the next generation onward. |
| Rejected | Excluded permanently. The admin's comment is recorded. |
| Expired | Auto-closed after 14 days without review. |
Reviewing
Open Admin → Review, and approve or reject — individually or in bulk. A review comment is recorded either way, and the reviewing admin and timestamp are stored on the entry.
Approving an adjustment for a period whose draft already exists makes that draft stale: the draft was generated before the adjustment existed, so publishing it would freeze the adjustment out. Earnest holds the publish and asks you to regenerate first. See The Payout Pipeline.
The 14-day expiry
Adjustments left Pending for 14 days are automatically expired by a scheduled job, with the note "Auto-expired after 14 days without review."
Two things matter about this:
- Expiry is one-way. An expired adjustment cannot be reviewed back to approved. If it was legitimate, the manager must submit it again.
- Orgs that are billing-locked are skipped. If an admin could not sign in to review, their managers' submissions are not expired out from under them.
The manager's own Adjustments tab shows the status of everything they have submitted, and states the 14-day window directly.
Adjustment types and currency
| Type | Effect | Denominated in |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue Adjustment | Added to total revenue before commission is calculated, so it moves attainment and can cross tier thresholds. | The rep's quota currency. |
| Fixed Bonus | Added flat to the final payout, bypassing the commission math. | The rep's payout currency. |
Currency is stored explicitly on every adjustment — it is a live FX operand, not a label, so the engine converts it correctly at generation and at publish.
Disputes
Disputes are off by default. An admin enables them in Admin → Settings → Features. While off, the dispute UI is hidden from reps and managers, and the Review page shows only adjustments.
What a rep can dispute
| Rule | Detail |
|---|---|
| Published payouts only | A draft is still moving; there is nothing to dispute yet. |
| Inside the lookback window | 60 days from the period start by default. Outside it: "This payout period is historically closed and can no longer be disputed." |
| One active dispute per payout | A payout already Open or In Review cannot be disputed again. |
| A reason of 10–1,000 characters | The rep describes why they believe the payout is incorrect. |
The rep's UI uses the same window check as the server, so a dispute is never offered that would then be rejected.
The lookback window is an organization-level setting. It is not currently exposed in the admin UI — contact support if 60 days is not right for your business.
Filing a dispute notifies the org's admins.
The lifecycle
OPEN → IN_REVIEW → RESOLVED or REJECTED
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Open | Filed, not yet picked up. |
| In review | An admin has taken it on. |
| Resolved | Upheld — usually with an adjustment attached. |
| Rejected | Not upheld. The admin's comment explains why. |
Resolving
From Admin → Review, an admin resolves or rejects with a comment. Resolving can optionally attach an adjustment, which is created already approved — it does not pass back through the pending queue and is payable at the next generation.
That adjustment is a correcting entry: it posts forward into an open period and links back to the disputed payout, exactly like an amendment or a recompute correction. The disputed payout itself is never modified. See Corrections & Clawbacks.
A detail worth knowing if you work across currencies: a fixed bonus attached to a dispute resolution is denominated in the disputed payout's frozen payout currency, not the rep's current one — so resolving an old payout for a rep who has since changed currency pays in the currency the period was actually paid in. A revenue adjustment uses the rep's quota currency.
Managers and disputes
When disputes are enabled, managers get a Team Disputes tab showing disputes filed by their reports, limited to payouts inside the lookback window.
Frequently asked questions
Q: A manager says they submitted an adjustment but it never appeared on the payout. Check its status in Admin → Review. Pending adjustments are excluded from calculations, and anything left more than 14 days has been expired automatically.
Q: Can a rep dispute an activity rather than a whole payout? A dispute is filed against a payout and may reference a specific activity. The reason field is where the rep names the deal in question.
Q: Does acknowledging a statement waive the right to dispute? No. Acknowledgement only records that the rep saw the statement. The dispute window is unaffected.
Q: Can an admin correct something outside the dispute window? Yes. The lookback window constrains reps filing disputes; admin-initiated corrections ignore it.
Q: Why can't I approve an expired adjustment? Expiry is deliberately one-way, so a stale item cannot be silently revived into a live payout months later. Ask the manager to resubmit it against an open period.
Q: We turned disputes off. What happens to existing ones? Existing records are retained but the dispute surfaces are hidden. Turning the feature back on restores them.