Run your first payout

A payout is what one rep earns for one pay period. You run payouts one month at a time: Earnest calculates a draft for each rep, you check the drafts, then you publish them. Publishing sends each rep their statement and locks the numbers. Last, you export a file for payroll. Plan on about 20 minutes the first time.

Before you start

• You have a comp plan, your people are added, and the month's deals are imported. If not, see Create your first comp plan, Add your team and Import your deals.
• The month you want to pay has started. Earnest can't draft a month that hasn't begun.
• You are an admin. Only admins can run payouts.

Step 1: Open the month

1. Click Payouts in the admin navigation.
2. Use the month picker at the top right to choose the month you are paying (usually last month).
3. Scan the last column of the table. Most rows show an Adjust button. A row with a red button such as No position, Changed mid-period or No exchange rate can't be calculated. Click the red button to read why and follow its link to fix it. Earnest does not create a payout for that rep until you do.

Step 2: Create the drafts

4. Click Draft All Payouts (N). N is the number of reps who don't have a payout for the month yet.
5. A message such as "Generated 8 draft payouts" appears, and each rep's status changes from No Payout to DRAFT.

A draft is visible to admins only. Reps are not told about drafts and can't see them. If the message lists warnings (for example "Jane Doe: no commission plan assigned"), read them before you go on.

Step 3: Check the drafts

6. Click a rep's row. The commission breakdown opens: revenue, quota, attainment, the tier applied and the commission. The PDF button downloads a preview of their statement.

7. To add a bonus or a deduction, click Adjust on the rep's row, then fill in:

   • Adjustment Type: Fixed Bonus adds a flat amount to the payout. Revenue Adjustment changes the revenue counted, so the commission is recalculated through the plan.
   • Amount: a negative number is a deduction.
   • Reason: it appears on the rep's statement.

   Then click Add Adjustment.

8. After any change (an adjustment, newly imported deals, a fix to someone's position), click Regenerate Drafts (N), then Regenerate Drafts in the dialog. Every draft for the month is recalculated from the current data. A draft marked Out of date needs this step. If only a few reps changed, tick them and click Regenerate Selected (N) instead, so the other drafts and their manager reviews are left alone.

The month-wide buttons (Draft All, Publish All, Regenerate Drafts, Delete Drafts) always act on every rep for the month, even when you have filtered the table.

Step 4: Publish

9. Click Publish All (N). The Confirm Publish All dialog shows how many drafts you are publishing and their total, plus a short summary: reps with no draft, drafts a manager has reviewed, drafts that are $0, and any open disputes or pending adjustments for the month.
10. If some payouts look unusual, a yellow box lists them with a short reason, such as "$0 with activity" or "±50% vs last period". Click a name to open that payout. When you are satisfied, tick I've reviewed the flagged payouts above — publish anyway. If the month's total is more than 30% above or below last month's, the box says so instead; check the change is expected and tick I've reviewed this month's total — publish anyway. Each reason is explained in the anomaly scan.
11. Type PUBLISH in the box and click Confirm Publish. A message such as "Published 8 payouts" confirms it.

Publishing is final. A published payout can't be edited or unpublished. If you find a mistake later, the fix is posted to a later month (see Corrections and clawbacks).

What your reps receive

• An in-app notification, always.
• An email titled "Your March 2026 commission statement is ready" with their statement attached as a PDF. This is sent when Payout Email Notifications is on in Settings → Features (it is on by default), unless the rep has turned off payout statement emails in their own settings.
• The statement on their dashboard under Payouts, where they can download it again.

Step 5: Export for payroll

12. Click Export to Payroll.
13. Under Payroll System, pick Earnest (Default), Gusto, ADP or Rippling. Each one formats the columns for that system.
14. Check that Published payouts only is ticked. Once anything this month is published it starts ticked, so the file holds only final amounts. Unticked, the file also contains drafts and reps with no payout, and those amounts are not final.
15. Check the Column Preview, then click Download CSV.

The file covers the reps that match your current filters, across all pages of the table.

Check it worked

• The strip above the table shows Published equal to the number of reps you paid, and Draft at 0.
• Every row you paid shows PUBLISHED in the Status column.
• In the CSV, the Status column reads "Published" on every row.

Common problems

A rep shows $0. Click their row to see what was counted. The usual causes are deals that weren't imported, deals dated outside the month, or a position that doesn't cover the month. A row marked No rate means the rep has no commission rate: their OTE isn't above base salary, or there's no quota. Fix it in Edit Position on the People page. Then tick the rep and click Regenerate Selected. A rep with no sales at all is expected to get $0 (or their guaranteed draw). A $0 draft for a rep who did have sales is flagged "$0 with activity" when you publish.

Some drafts were held back when you published. Earnest publishes the rest and tells you why it held the others. The common one reads "…changed after generation. Regenerate drafts to recalculate, then publish again." Click Regenerate Drafts, then Publish All again. If manager payouts were held, publish their team's payouts first. If you see "Cannot publish payouts because there are preceding draft payouts in the current quarter. Please publish those first.", publish the earlier month first. Every hold is listed in Publish holds.

Reps on a quarterly plan are missing. Quarterly reps appear only in the last month of the quarter (March, June, September or December). Pick that month to draft and publish them.

Publish All asks about the month's total. If this month's total is more than 30% above or below last month's published total, the dialog says so ("This month's total is 35% above last month's published total."). Check the change is expected, for example new reps or a big month, then tick the acknowledgement and click Confirm Publish. If the dialog comes back after you confirm, the data changed while it was open; it shows the reason and the checkbox again.

Draft Selected says "No new drafts". Draft Selected only creates payouts that don't exist yet. To recalculate drafts you already have, tick them and use Regenerate Selected, or use Regenerate Drafts for the whole month.

The Draft All button is greyed out. Either the month hasn't started yet (a banner says so), or every rep already has a payout for the month.

Go deeper

• Payout pipeline reference: every button, check and hold in detail.
• Corrections and clawbacks: fixing a payout after it is published.
• Review, approvals and disputes: manager adjustments and rep disputes.
• Reading your commission statement: what your reps see.
• Glossary