The Monthly Commission Close: Four Checks Every Carrier Statement Needs

Close the statement when you can trace each amount to its policy, producer and deposit.

Pick a day and age what is still open

BrokerLedger tells brokerages to reconcile every carrier every month, keep an aged list of what did not clear and log each difference with the policy, the expected amount and the statement amount. InsuranceYo splits the work into intake, match, investigate, resolve and close. It treats the oldest open item as a control field for that book. That field is not an industry statistic. Set a monthly deadline for reviewing every carrier file.

Check the statement against the book

Start with the policies you expected to see. A statement that totals cleanly can still omit a policy, and the total will not tell you that. The missing-policy check starts from the book instead of the rows the carrier printed. For the close, the question is narrower. Does every line on this statement point at a policy in the book you already keep?

Staff usually answer that from an export, not from a live link. CommissionScope takes the carrier file you upload, PDF, CSV or Excel, and the policy list you already exported. Direct sync with an agency management system is custom work, not part of this close.

Exact policy-number matches can move forward. A normalized, fuzzy or learned match stays for a person. An edit to an extracted field does not, by itself, accept the match.

Check the rate against the schedule

The second check is the percent. Many statements print a commission amount and a premium and leave the rate off the page. Divide the commission by the premium and compare that result with the schedule for that carrier, product and year. New business and renewal are often different rates. A dated rate change beats the default schedule for the term it names.

Suppose this line arrives. It is an example, not a carrier result.

The 12% rate may be the renewal rate, and the policy may be new. It may be a flat fee the schedule does not describe. It may be a short payment. The close does not guess. The line stays open until the schedule, or a written exception, explains the $36.

Check the producer against the policy

The third check is who gets paid. The producer code on the statement and the producer on the policy are allowed to differ. They are not allowed to differ in silence.

On the same example, the statement code is JRL and the policy record says the producer of record is A. Chen. Confirm whether JRL maps to A. Chen before approving the line. If it identifies someone else, resolve the assignment before payment.

CommissionScope calculates the split from the commission program the agency configured. It does not invent a house split. If the program and the policy disagree, the line waits.

Check the statement against the deposit

The fourth check is the bank. Add the lines, including chargebacks and other negative adjustments. The sum should equal the deposit that landed for that statement, or the deposit plus a documented timing difference you can name.

Suppose the statement lists $18,440 in lines and the deposit on the 12th is $18,392. Find the $48 before you close. It might be an omitted negative adjustment, a fee included only in the statement total or part of the payment still due. You do not post the batch while the $48 is "probably a fee."

If the 12th is deposit day, the 16th can be the day unmatched lines are listed, and the 20th can be the day the month stops accepting new "we will fix it later" notes. That calendar is a habit. No tool closes the month for you.

Count three numbers before you call it closed

At the end, count lines matched, lines unmatched and the oldest open item. InsuranceYo lists those as local control fields. They are not a published industry average.

For example, report "March direct bill, 412 lines, 397 matched, 15 open, oldest open item 40 days." Keep the 15 open lines on the aged list.

A payout file comes after that count, and only for lines a person has approved. CommissionScope writes a CSV and a branded PDF. It does not send a live bank payment.

Close checklist

• The carrier file is the file for this period, not last month's reprint.
• Every line matches a policy, or it is on the open list with an owner.
• Every rate was printed, or you divided commission by premium and compared it with the schedule.
• Every producer code maps to the producer on the policy.
• The line total equals the deposit, or the difference is written down with a reason.
• Matched, unmatched and the oldest open item are counted.
• No producer is paid from a line that is still open.

Bring one approved carrier statement to a guided pilot. You see which lines match, which rates drift and which rows still need a person before any payout file is produced.