CaptivateIQ in San Francisco offers their flagship sales commission management product designed to enable companies to manage and tailor mission critical sales incentive compensation programs for their workforce.
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Xactly Commission Expense Accounting
Score 7.6 out of 10
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Xactly Commission Expense Accounting™ (CEA) delivers a commission expense management solution—with full capitalization and amortization capabilities—that lets companies monitor performance obligations and ensure compliance with ASC 606 and IFRS 15 standards. Their Intelligent Revenue Platform enables Xactly to align planning, performance, and prediction functions into one platform.
Spiff is supposed to be similar. i chose Captivate because of several reasons: 1-Pricing was much cheaper. 2-it looked a bit easier to implement back then to me
I have used Xactly in the past, and it was a good tool. I would say they are both very similar, don't really have a strong opinion because they did the same thing. CaptiveIQ does do a better job breaking down commission payouts and future payouts for multi-year deals. So …
Xactly wasn't able to even finish our setup, whereas CIQ finished our setup in a month b/c their system was so much easier to use. With Xactly we had to purchase PS hours anytime any change was needed, I am able to update CIQ myself.
We selected CaptivateIQ because they were more receptive and they provided us with all our needs. The other provider was a previous vendor and they still had alot of restrictions that CaptivateIQ did not have.
Xactly is very difficult to navigate and too complicated. It is more of a hassle than a tool. It is something that we would only access when absolutely necessary.
In terms of setting up special incentive programs, it might be better to have those paid out directly. Sometimes the system needs to be manually updated if for say a special service is sold to a pre-existing company. On our end we have to create "new customers" to reflect these new structures of incentives. It still works on CIQ, but it would be helpful for something on the site to allow us to modify this directly.
CEA is well suited for small and rapidly growing companies where manually calculating commissions expense for ASC606 is not an option due to a lack of internal resources. CEA is less appropriate for larger companies that have the resources and likely a person, or people, who only focus on commissions.
Employee Self-Service: CapIQ include self-service portals for employees. This allows them to access their compensation details, track their performance, and understand how their pay is structured.
Error reduction - Manual calculation of incentives and bonuses is prone to errors, especially in organizations with complex compensation structures involving multiple variables, such as sales targets, performance metrics, and different payout rates. These errors can result in underpayments, overpayments, or discrepancies in compensation, which can lead to dissatisfaction among employees.
Real-Time Updates: In dynamic environments, compensation plans may change frequently due to shifts in business goals or market conditions. Compensation incentive software can quickly adapt to these changes, ensuring that compensation calculations remain accurate even as plans are updated. CapIQ allowed me to track my incentives live.
Reporting is challenging. Even exporting payouts requires selecting a date, so if I want a full year of payouts for the entire team, I have to run 12 reports and combine the data. They have a reporting function, but it also requires a significant setup, and I have yet to figure out how to combine data from all of our plans with different columns.
Tracking down changes from prior periods can be tricky. This usually happens due to user error (whoops - admin set up something not quite right), but it might be nice to easily see what changed or why there is an increase or decrease from a prior period impacting the current payout.
I give this rating because I think that this works really well, and it helps our teams see things faster and we are able to keep up with pay outs, I give Captivate a 10/10 because I love the format and how quickly we are able to see the payouts
We used support during our initial setup regarding statment errors. They were quick and concise to respond and help us solve our issues regarding this. They also directed us to the office hours that enabled us to learn of new features and upcoming announcements.
Go into implementation knowing how you will handle churn, if there are claw backs, treatment for every type of commission payment (i.e. new business, renewals, etc.) and know your average customer life. You'll also want details by customer for as far back as you can go (within reason).
Spiff is super sleek and a top contender, honestly, though the price point difference between Captivate and Spiff took Spiff off the table quickly for us. Sales Cookie: we used it for a bit as Captivate didn't have a Hubspot integration, but we quickly outgrew the software and needed a more complex solution. Xactly just doesn't have a great user experience and level of customization needed for our plans. All of this to say, Captivate absolutely wins every time on value for cost and functionality compared to other solutions we have vetted.