Compensation Templates

This article was developed to describe how to add or edit Compensation Templates, the types of templates, and their role in an Enrollment Plan within the Forth CRM. This article is divided into the following sections:

• Overview
• Add New or Edit an Existing Template
• Template Types
• Payee Selection

Overview

Compensation Templates, also referred to as “Comp Templates” or “Fee Splits,” allow you to define how participants get paid on files. You can specify up to seven (7) payees per compensation template. Companies can have multiple compensation templates that you can use depending on the qualifications of the particular file being submitted.

A Compensation Template needs to be created before it can be set to appear on an enrollment plan (click here for more information about Enrollment Plans). Even if an account is not splitting any fees or working with a compatible gateway, a compensation template should still be created, even if it is left blank.

The reason for this is that a blank compensation template indicates that account splitting is not needed - nothing is going to escrow, and nothing is being split.

For example, if the payment processor is taking the customer's money and dumping it into the company's account - like for most of our Student Loan file type clients, a "Blank" Template can be used.

If there is an escrow account (Debt Settlement File Type), or a portion of the money being collected needs to be given to someone, not the company (i.e., an affiliate company or legal company split of fees), then a completed compensation template needs to be used.

NOTE: Payees should be already created before you begin working on a compensation template. Payees are always the responsibility of the client; Forth does not update this information for them.

Add New or Edit an Existing Template

To create/edit a Compensation Template, navigate to the Admin Tab > Companies > Edit the applicable company (usually the parent company), and then click Compensation Templates from the Navigation bar (see below).

NOTE: While there are three types of compensation templates, we will only be covering the “Flat Amortization” as this is the one primarily used.

If you are editing an existing Compensation Template, select it from the dropdown menu on the navigation bar in the upper left corner (see the red highlighted image below).

To create a New Compensation Template, click Create New Template (see green highlight in the navigation bar above) and complete the following fields:

1. Template Name - Enter a concise name describing the type of template. We highly recommend that you use a unique name for this.

2. Template Type - Flat Amortization, Variable Amortization, or Formula Based. This gives you different options for how the transaction amount will be scheduled and calculated. For our example, choose Flat Amortization. Click here for more information on the types of templates.

3. Available For - This sets who the compensation template is for - whether the template will be available to contacts only assigned to "This Company" or if it will be available to contacts under "All Companies". You may have a global template setup so that it can be used by anyone, or if you manage a group of affiliates who each need to have their fees split differently, you would set up individual templates for each.

Once done, click the green “Save Template” button (see above).

Once loaded, the page should look something like the image below (Click on the image to see a larger-scale version):

Each compensation template can have up to seven (7) Payees, and you are able to set how much of each Fee the payee is to obtain from the Enrollment Plan. It is recommended to have the applicable enrollment plan on a separate screen so you know which fee is which during the setup.

NOTE: The values put on this screen are completely dependent on what you tell us. We do not decide what is keyed here except for specific scenarios. For example, we do not split Veritas/Legal fees; 100% of all Veritas/Legal fees are to go to Veritas/Legal Payees directly, and these fee splits are to be handled on their side.

For each Payee, select Credit, Transfer, or Transfer Credit. This is normally left as Credit. (If applicable Choose 'Credit' if you will be paying the payee with a standard ACH Credit. Choose 'Transfer' if you wish to debit the payee as part of the schedule. Choose Transfer Credit if you wish to pay a payee from the previous 'Transfer' or ACH debit to the payee)

In the dropdown menu to its right, select the pre-defined payee in the CRM that is to be assigned here. For example, in the screenshot below, we selected a Test Payee as Payee 1 and Veritas Legal as Payee 2.

The boxes below the payees define what percentage or fixed dollar amount is to be received or debited from the payee, based on each fee. Fee 1 - 7 corresponds with the ordering in your plan configuration.

• The first box represents the percentage of a particular fee.
• The second box represents a fixed dollar amount of the particular fee.
• The third box is a subtraction from the fee. This would be used in combination with the percentage. For example... 100% less $20 from the fee. If the total fee was $100.00 the resulting amount would be $80.00

These need to be keyed in based on the splits requested by the client. The only fees that do not need to be noted here are processing fees, they can remain blank as the CRM should already be taking these into account. Please note that each Fee should total up to 100% of the fee total (it should not exceed or be less than the fee’s total amount)

Using our previous screenshot example, if the associated Enrollment Plan had been set up as such:

Then we should key in the Compensation Template to match:

100% of Fee 1 (enrollment fee) goes to the company and 100% of the Legal Fees are to go to Veritas in this example. Likewise, the two processing fees (Fee 4 and Fee 7) do not need to be accounted for as the CRM already understands these fees need to come out for processing.

Template Types

Flat Amortization - Sets simple calculations for each fee split. 

Variable Amortization - Similar to the Fixed Amortization template, you are able to set fee splits based on the payment number of a fee.

Formula Based - This allows you to enter formulas that are used to calculate the portion of the payment going to the payee. You are able to use document tags as part of the calculations. Below is a list of tags available for use with formula-based comp templates.

• {FEE_AMOUNT} - Amount of an individual payment attributed to a Fee. 

• {NUM_DEBTS} - Count of enrolled debts 

• {SETTLEMENT_AMOUNT} - Settlement offer amount. (*Can only be used on Settlement Scheduler)

• {TOTALDEBT} - Total amount for enrolled debts

• {FEE_TOTAL} - Total amount of Fee

• {NUMPAYMENTS} - Count of payments

• {FEE_LENGTH} - Total fee length per enrollment plan

• {PAYMENTNUM} - Populate Payment number (i.e. will populate an integer based on what payment number the com template is splitting. 

• {PAID} - Amount paid to the payee up to the point of the next iteration.

• {PAYMENT} - Amount of an individual payment (transaction)

Payee Selection

When setting up compensation templates and selecting the payees on the template, you are able to select a specific Payee or have the payee assigned based on its relationship to the contact. 

But, what if you wanted the credit to go to the payee of the assigned company, law firm, or a user's payee? These are options you will find when setting up the Payee on a compensation template. You may do this if as a company operating with affiliates. In this case, you will want a template setup that always includes credits for the parent company and then credits for the company assigned to the contact.

In the example below we have a single fee setup with an 80/20 split. For Payee 1 we have chosen "Example 1" as the Payee, this means credit transactions will always be created for this payee. For Payee 2 we have selected "--Assigned Company". This means credits will be scheduled for the default payee of the assigned company when saving the template onto a contact.

With the example client below, the credits will be scheduled so that the payee "Example 1" is getting a 20% split of the fee and the payee for "Partner Example" will have credits scheduled for 80% of the fee.  

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