ABSS Books · Settings

Incentive schemes

Incentive schemes reward your sales team for the documents they create. Each scheme has a budget, a period, the document types it rewards and the people it applies to. Books works out what each person earns, keeps it inside the budget, and lets you mark it as paid out.

Who it's for: Admins and sales managers who run incentives for the sales team
Where to find it: SettingsIncentive schemes
What you need: A plan that includes incentives, and the Admin role or the Incentive permission on your role

Incentive schemes walkthrough

Coming soon

What you can do here

Create a scheme with a total budget, a period and the team members it rewards.
Reward one or more document types: Quotation, Sales Order, Delivery Challan, Invoice and Collection (Payment Received).
Pay a percentage or a fixed amount, on the whole document or only on chosen items or item groups.
Cap what one document type or one person can earn from the scheme.
Publish, pause, resume, end and continue a scheme.
Follow the budget used, by scheme, by document type and by person.
Settle what has been earned, one entry at a time or all at once.

Before you start

A plan that includes incentives: Incentive schemes is under Sales in Settings. It is listed only when your plan includes incentives.
The Admin role, or the Incentive permission: Admins can do everything here. Other users need the Incentive permission on their role: View to open the screen, Create to add a scheme, Edit to change, publish, pause, end or settle, and Delete to delete.
How to open Settings: Choose the Settings gear icon in the top bar. It opens All settings, where you pick Incentive schemes.
The people to reward: Each team member must already be a user in Books. Only users assigned to a scheme earn from it.
Items or item groups, if you reward by item: The Per Item and Per Item Group methods ask you to pick from your existing items and item groups.

Find your way around the screen

The screen opens on four summary tiles and three tabs.

Summary tiles: Total budget, Consumed, Remaining and Active schemes, across all your schemes.
Schemes: The list of schemes. Each row shows the scheme name with its document types, the Status, the Period, the Budget, the amount Consumed, and a Usage bar with the percentage used and the number of users. Choose a row to open Scheme Detail.
Incentive Logs: One entry for each earning: the user, the document, the scheme, the amount earned and its status.
Downline Team: One card for each person who has earned: Active schemes, Total earned, Settled, Pending and Settlement progress, highest earner first. Choose a card to open User Incentive Details, which lists that person's earnings scheme by scheme.

Create a scheme

A scheme is one form. You can save it as a Draft and publish it later, or publish it straight away.

Choose New Scheme
Go to Settings → Incentive schemes. The button is at the top right. A form titled New Incentive Scheme opens.
Enter the Scheme Name, Total Budget and Scheme Period
All three are required.
Add the document types to reward
Under Document Type Incentives, choose + Add Document Type and fill in the row. Add one row for each document type.
Assign the team members
Under Assign Users, pick the people in Team Members. Set a Per-User Budget Cap and an Alert Threshold if you want them.
Choose Save as Draft or Save & Publish
You return to the list, where the new scheme appears.

Scheme details

Scheme Name: Required. The name your team sees on their own profile.
Total Budget (₹): Required. The most the whole scheme can pay out.
Scheme Period: Required. The start and end dates. On a new scheme you cannot pick dates in the past. Earning happens only inside this period.

Document Type Incentives

Document Type: Required. Quotation, Sales Order, Delivery Challan, Invoice or Collection (Payment Received). Each type can be added once in a scheme.
Calc Method: Per Document Amount, Per Item or Per Item Group. It starts on Per Document Amount, which is the only method allowed for Collection (Payment Received).
Type: A percentage, shown as %, or a fixed amount, shown as your currency symbol. It starts on %.
Value: Required. The percentage or the amount. It cannot be negative.
Alloc. Budget: Optional. The part of the Total Budget this document type can use. The allocations of all document types together cannot be more than the Total Budget.
Items: Shown for Per Item. Pick at least one item.
Item Groups: Shown for Per Item Group. Pick at least one item group.

Calc Method	With Type %	With a fixed amount
Per Document Amount	That percentage of the document amount.	That amount for each document.
Per Item	That percentage of the amount of the chosen items on the document.	That amount for each unit of the chosen items on the document.
Per Item Group	That percentage of the amount of the items that belong to the chosen groups.	That amount for each unit of the items that belong to the chosen groups.

Assign Users

Team Members: The users who earn from this scheme. You can pick several. A scheme with nobody assigned pays nobody.
Per-User Budget Cap (₹): Optional. The most one person can earn from this scheme. It cannot be more than the Total Budget.
Alert Threshold (%): From 1 to 100. It starts at 80. When a document type with an Alloc. Budget reaches this share of its allocation, Scheme Detail shows a warning for it.

Save buttons

Save as Draft: Saves the scheme as a Draft. Nothing is earned until you publish it.
Save & Publish: Saves the scheme as Active. It starts earning as soon as the Scheme Period begins.

Publish, pause or end a scheme

A scheme's status decides whether it earns. You change it with the icons in the Action column of the Schemes list.

A scheme is published from Draft to Active and ends as Ended. An Active scheme can be paused and resumed.

Status	What it means	What you can do next
Draft	Saved but not published. Nothing is earned.	Publish it with the play icon, edit it or delete it.
Active	Earning, as long as today is inside the Scheme Period.	Pause it with the pause icon, end it with the stop icon, or edit it.
Paused	Earning has stopped for now.	Resume it with the play icon, end it with the stop icon, or edit it.
Ended	Earning has stopped. The scheme can no longer be edited.	Continue it with the reload icon, until the scheme's end date has passed.

Publish and resume: Happen as soon as you choose the play icon. There is no confirmation.
Pause scheme?: Earning stops temporarily, and you can resume the scheme at any time. Choose Pause to confirm.
End this scheme?: Earning stops immediately. Choose End Scheme to confirm.
Continue this scheme?: Offered on an Ended scheme whose end date has not passed. The scheme becomes Active again and earns until its end date. Choose Continue to confirm.

Note: An Active scheme also stops earning by itself once its Scheme Period is over, and earns nothing before the period starts.

Change or delete a scheme

Use the edit and delete icons in the Action column. The edit icon is not shown on an Ended scheme.

To change it, choose the edit icon
The form opens as Edit Scheme. Either save button saves your changes, and the status stays as it was. Change the status from the list.
To delete it, choose the delete icon
Books asks Delete scheme? Choose Yes to delete it, or No to keep it.

Warning: Once a scheme has earnings, parts of it are locked. A document type with earnings shows a notice that its Calc Method and Document Type are locked, team members who have earned cannot be removed, and no budget can go below what has already been earned. A scheme with earnings that are not Cancelled cannot be deleted.

See how earnings are worked out

Books adds an entry to the Incentive Logs tab each time a document earns.

Who earns: The assigned team member who saves the document. If someone else edits the document later, the amount is worked out again but the earning stays with the first person.
When: Only while the scheme is Active and the date is inside the Scheme Period, and only for the document types in the scheme.
How much: The Value for that document type, worked out by its Calc Method and Type.
Limits: An earning is cut down to what is left of the Total Budget, of the document type's Alloc. Budget and of the Per-User Budget Cap. Once any of the three is used up, nothing more is earned against it.
Cancelled documents: If the document is cancelled or deleted, its Pending earning becomes Cancelled and no longer counts against the budget.

Earning status	What it means
Pending	Earned, not yet paid out. It counts as Consumed.
Settled	Marked as paid out. It cannot be changed or deleted.
Cancelled	The document was cancelled or deleted. It does not count as Consumed.

Track budget and earnings

Three places show how a scheme is doing.

Scheme Detail

Choose a scheme in the list, or its View details icon.

Header: The scheme name, its period and its status, with four tiles: Total budget, Consumed, Remaining and Users assigned.
Budget warning: A line for each document type that has reached the Alert Threshold of its Alloc. Budget.
Document-wise budget vs consumed: A bar for each document type: the amount earned against its Alloc. Budget, or against the Total Budget when it has no allocation.
User-wise consumption: A row for each person who has earned: Earned, Settled, Pending, a progress bar and a Settle action.

Incentive Logs

Filter by Scheme, Document Type and Status, then choose Apply Filters. Reset Filters clears them. The columns are User, Doc Type, Doc Number, Doc Amount, Scheme Name, Earned, Status and Action.

Downline Team

Choose a person's card to open User Incentive Details: Total earned, Settled, Pending and Schemes, then each scheme with its own earned, settled and pending amounts.

Settle earnings

Settling marks an earning as paid out. You can settle one earning, one person or a whole scheme.

What to settle	Where	What happens
One earning	Incentive Logs tab, the settle icon on a Pending row.	A window titled Settle Incentive shows the scheme, the user, the document type and the Settle Amount. Choose Settle.
One person in a scheme	Scheme Detail, Settle on that person's row under User-wise consumption.	Every Pending earning of that person in the scheme is settled.
A whole scheme	Settle All at the bottom of Scheme Detail, or on the Incentive Logs tab after you filter by Scheme.	Every Pending earning in the scheme is settled.

Warning: Settling cannot be undone, and a Settled entry cannot be deleted. Books only records that the incentive was paid out. It does not create a payment or a journal entry.

To remove an earning that should not count, use the delete icon on its row in the Incentive Logs tab. It is offered on every entry that is not Settled.

Where team members see their earnings

Team members do not need access to this screen to follow their own incentives.

Each person sees their own figures on My Profile, in the section See your incentive earnings: Total earned, Settled, Pending and Active schemes, then one row for each scheme. The card appears there once the person has at least one active scheme.

Rules to know

The rules behind this screen, in one place.

Topic	Rule
Who sees this	Admins, and users whose role has the Incentive permission, on a plan that includes incentives.
Budget checks	The Alloc. Budget of all document types together cannot be more than the Total Budget. The Per-User Budget Cap cannot be more than the Total Budget.
One row for each document type	A scheme needs at least one document type, and each type can be added only once.
Collection (Payment Received)	Supports only the Per Document Amount method.
More than one scheme	A person assigned to several Active schemes that cover the same document type earns from each of them.
Editing after earnings exist	On a document type that already has earnings, Document Type, Calc Method and the chosen items or item groups are locked, the row cannot be removed, and a change to its Type or Value is refused when you save.
Team members with earnings	A team member who has already earned from the scheme cannot be removed from it.
Lowering a budget	The Total Budget, an Alloc. Budget and the Per-User Budget Cap cannot be set below what has already been earned against them. A Per-User Budget Cap that has been used cannot be removed.
Ended schemes	Cannot be edited. They can be continued only until the scheme's end date has passed.
Deleting a scheme	Refused while the scheme has any earning that is not Cancelled. Pending entries can be deleted first on the Incentive Logs tab. Settled entries cannot, so a scheme with settled earnings stays.
Settling	Marks an earning as paid out and cannot be undone. Books does not create a payment or a journal entry for it.
Deleting an earning	A Pending or Cancelled entry can be deleted from the Incentive Logs tab. A Settled entry cannot.