How to Use Compensation Templates

This article describes 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, or “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 for information about Enrollment Plans). Even if an account is not splitting fees or working with a compatible gateway, a compensation template should still be created, even if it is blank.

This is because a blank compensation template indicates that account splitting is unnecessary - nothing will 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 and not to a company (e.g., an affiliate company or legal company split of fees), then a completed compensation template needs to be used.

Add New or Edit an Existing Template

To create/edit a Compensation Template, navigate to the Admin Tab, click on Companies, select an existing company fron the table, or click "Add Company", and then click Edit from the Navigation Bar.  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 cover the “Flat Amortization” as this is 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, go to the Navigation Bar and click Create New Template (see purple highlight above) and complete the following fields:

1. Template Name - Enter a concise name describing the template type. 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 available to contacts under "All Companies". You may have a global template set up 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.

4. RAM Fee Split ID (if applicable) - Enter the RAM Fee Split ID number here.

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

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

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

NOTE: Values on this screen completely depend 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, Transfer Credit, or if applicable, RAM Fee. This is normally left as Credit. (If applicable, choose 'Credit' if you will pay 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 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 the percentage or fixed dollar amount to be received or debited from the payee based on each fee. Fees 1 - 7 correspond to 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 not noted here are processing fees; they can remain blank as the CRM should already consider these. 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:

In this example, 100% of Fee 1 (enrollment fee) goes to the company, and 100% of the Legal Fees are to go to Veritas. 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 can set fee splits based on a fee's payment number.

Formula-Based - This allows you to enter formulas to calculate the payment portion to the payee. You can also 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 can 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? You will find these options when setting up the Payee on a compensation template. You may do this 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.

The example below shows a single fee setup with an 80/20 split. For Payee 1, we chose "Example 1" as the Payee, which 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" gets a 20% split of the fee, and the payee for "Partner Example" (see highlighted area below) will have credits scheduled for 80%.

Logging of Compensation Template Creation and Editing

Admins can now log any creation or update to a Compensation Template in the system log of the associated account. This allows users to track when a comp template was created or modified, who made the changes, and maintain an audit trail using the comp template ID for reference.

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