Two commission plans can have identical quota, identical tiers, and identical revenue, and still pay $45,000 apart. The difference is one field: whether crossing a threshold re-rates the whole quarter or only pays the revenue above it. Most comp documents never state which one they mean, and the ambiguity is usually discovered in the quarter it becomes expensive.
A quarterly accelerator rewards a rep for passing quota. The design question is what the higher rate applies to.
Under a retroactive structure, the rep's attainment selects one rate, and that rate is applied to everything they closed in the period. Reaching 125 percent means the top rate is paid on the full quarter, including the revenue that was booked while they were still at 40 percent.
Under a marginal structure, revenue is split into bands. Each band pays its own rate. The base rate applies up to quota, the accelerator applies only to the excess, and a rep who finishes at 125 percent is paid the top rate on the last quarter of their revenue only.
Both are legitimate. They are not interchangeable, and the gap between them grows with attainment.
A rep carries a $500,000 quarterly quota and closes $625,000, finishing at 125 percent. The plan pays 8 percent to quota, 12 percent from 100 to 125 percent, and 16 percent above 125 percent.
| Tier mode | How it resolves | Payout |
|---|---|---|
| Retroactive | Highest tier reached is 125 percent, so 16 percent applies to all $625,000 | $100,000 |
| Marginal | $500,000 at 8 percent, then $125,000 at 12 percent | $55,000 |
Same quota. Same tiers. Same closed revenue. An 82 percent difference in cost, decided by a field most plan documents do not mention.
The asymmetry is worth reading carefully. Under the retroactive structure the rep's last deal did not earn 16 percent, it earned 16 percent on the entire quarter. A $40,000 deal that tips a rep from 124 to 125 percent is worth far more than $6,400 to them, and far more than $6,400 to you.
Retroactive tiers buy motivation at the threshold. A rep sitting at 96 percent with a week left has an enormous reason to close one more deal, because that deal changes the rate on everything behind it. If the behaviour you are paying for is finishing the quarter rather than sandbagging into the next one, that cliff is the mechanism.
The cost is predictability. Payout becomes a step function of attainment, so accrual cannot be estimated linearly, and a single late deal can move the quarter's commission expense by tens of thousands. Teams with tight variable-cost budgets tend to find that unacceptable.
Marginal tiers invert both properties. Cost scales smoothly and forecasts cleanly, and no single deal creates a discontinuity. The accelerator still rewards overperformance, just proportionally rather than dramatically.
A frequent compromise is to make only the first accelerator retroactive and keep every band above it marginal. The rep gets one meaningful cliff at quota, which is the threshold the business actually cares about, and the tail stays affordable.
Four failure modes account for most of the pain, and all four are consequences of the retroactive structure rather than bugs.
A mid-period crossing produces a large positive adjustment. If commission is paid monthly but attainment is measured quarterly, a rep who crosses in the third month triggers a re-rate of the two months already paid. That correction lands on one statement. Finance should expect it rather than discover it.
A reversal re-rates the quarter downward. If a closed deal is later voided and attainment falls back under the threshold, the entire period drops to the lower rate. Under marginal tiers this claws back a slice; under retroactive tiers it claws back the difference on everything. Plans that are silent about reversals tend to resolve this argument in the rep's favour, at the company's expense.
Uncapped retroactive tiers can exceed deal economics. Because the rate applies to the full period, a high top tier can pay more than the gross margin on the revenue that triggered it. A cap expressed as a multiple of the rep's variable target bounds the exposure without changing the tier structure.
The rate is not the number the rep will quote. Reps model retroactive plans by effective rate, not tier rate. In the example above the effective rate is 16 percent, but the marginal value of the deal that crossed the line was far higher. Expect the plan to be discussed in those terms, and make sure the statement shows which tier was applied and why.
A quarterly accelerator is one rule. It measures closed-won revenue, tracks attainment against a quarterly quota, and carries three tiers. The tier mode field is what decides everything above: set it to retroactive and the highest tier reached applies to the whole quarter, set it to marginal and each band pays only its own slice.
Switching the same plan to marginal bands is a one-word change to tierMode, which is the point of keeping the structure in config rather than in a spreadsheet formula. Run both against a closed quarter before deciding: a dry run returns the payout each mode produces on your real deals, so the $45,000 question gets answered with your numbers instead of this page's.
This plan has one rule.
Pays a share of closed-won revenue, with the rate chosen by quarterly quota attainment. Runs on every closed deal, as it closes.
| Attainment | Pays |
|---|---|
| 0% to 100% | 8% of closed-won revenue |
| 100% to 125% | 12% of closed-won revenue |
| 125% and above | 16% of closed-won revenue |
Crossing a tier re-rates the whole quarter at the higher rate, not just the revenue above it.
This is the whole plan. Send it to POST /v1/plans and it is live; change a rate and re-send it to ship a revision.
curl -X POST https://api.compcode.ai/v1/plans \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $COMPCODE_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"name": "Accelerator Plan 2026",
"effectiveStart": "2026-01-01",
"config": {
"rules": [
{
"name": "Quarterly Accelerator",
"measure": "closed_won_revenue",
"executionPhase": "per_deal",
"attainmentPeriod": "quarterly",
"tierBy": "attainment",
"tierMode": "full_rate",
"tiers": [
{
"minThreshold": 0,
"rate": 0.08
},
{
"minThreshold": 1,
"rate": 0.12
},
{
"minThreshold": 1.25,
"rate": 0.16
}
]
}
]
}
}'Connect your CRM, create the plan with one call, and simulate before anyone gets paid.
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