The Charges Table

Before we go into how the commission is calculated within GRATIS, here is a brief recap of the different elements of the charges table.

The above shows a Day Delegate rate based on 20 people for 1 day.  The Published rate is £60.00 which has been offered to your client at the Negotiated rate £55.00 inclusive of tax. The commission is 12.00% payable on the tax-inclusive price (Comm Calc).

The Commission Calculation

Using the above example, the commission for this booking would work out to be £132.00 and if your business is VAT registered you must then charge the current VAT rate in addition to this value for a total commission paid by the venue of £158.40.

This is how to calculate:

Total Venue Charges: 

20 × £55.00 = £1,100

Commission:     

£1,100.00 × 0.12 (12%) = £132.00

Tax on Commission:

£132.00 × 0.20 (20%) = £26.40

Total Commission Paid by Venue

£132.00 + 26.40 = £158.40


The VAT added to the commission is done after the calculation of the commission itself.  Here’s how this would look in the Summary section of the charges table:

The Comm Calc drop-down for each charge line indicates if the commission should be calculated on the charges before or after the tax is added.  It does not indicate if tax should or should not be added to the commission.

However, if a venue indicates that they will only pay commission based on the ex tax (nett) rate  you would change the Comm Calc field to be Exc Tax.  In the example above, this would mean that the commission would be calculated as such.

Total Venue Charges: 

20 × £55.00 = £1,100.00

Ex Tax Venue Charges

£1,100.00 ÷ 1.2 = £916.67

Commission:     

£916.67 × 0.12 (12%) = £110.00

Tax on Commission:

£110.00 × 0.20 (20%) = £22.00

Total Commission Paid by Venue

£110.00 + £22.00 = £132.00



This is how you’d see this in the Summary section:


Suggested Language

I would suggest your team; when discussing commission with venues; state what you charge rather than ask what they pay eg.  ‘we charge xx% commission on the VAT inclusive rate plus tax’  Ensure they understand the ‘plus tax’ element is a given, the main thing for them to pin down is the percentage of commission and whether that is payable on the VAT inclusive or VAT exclusive rate.




Recording Agreed Commissions

There is a facility to record back up data for specific commission rates against a booking, use the Add Note feature for future reference.  This also appears when reconciling the charges for commission claim and client invoice purposes.


Non GBP Bookings

If the commission is due for an overseas booking, there is no need to add VAT on top of the calculation.  You can remove the VAT in a couple of places.

The Agent tab of the booking:


Commission Claims > Create Claims:

Click edit on the right and change the tax value to zero before updating.