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2025 Product and full-stack

A commissions engine that pays people right

A fragile commission spreadsheet, rebuilt into an engine people can trust.

Domain logicCorrectnessPayments

A pay period

Job 4181
$18,400 × 8%
$1,472
Job 4207
$12,900 × 8%
$1,032
Earned this period
$2,504
money in
Paid out to date
$0
money out

The problem

Commissions ran on a fragile, hand-maintained spreadsheet. It was error-prone and hard to audit, duplicate payouts slipped through, and no one could fully trust the numbers on their check.

The idea

Treat payroll math as code you can test. One engine pulls the source data and computes rep and manager pay the same way every time, so every number is reproducible and auditable, and a check is never a mystery.

What I built

  • A pure, dependency-free commission engine with the whole payout model under test.
  • A pipeline that pulls the source report, maps and de-duplicates it, and computes cleanly.
  • An admin flow to review, adjust, run payroll, and post to a draw ledger.
  • A self-service view so each person can see exactly how their own pay was built.

Impact

  • Ten pay periods run and 300+ jobs processed, for 14 salespeople and 5 project managers.
  • Eliminated duplicate commission payouts and raised accuracy across the board.
  • Reps can see exactly how their own pay was built, deal by deal.

Craig Howell

Say hello. I like meeting people who build things.

© 2026 Craig Howell.