Commission statement

What it means

For a direct bill carrier, the statement explains the deposit that lands in your bank account. For agency bill business, the equivalent document (often called an account current) shows what you owe the carrier after keeping your commission. Either way, it is the carrier’s version of what happened in your book that month.

Formats vary widely. Some carriers send a PDF, some a CSV or Excel file, some only a page in their agent portal, and some deliver the data electronically into your agency management system. Column names and transaction codes differ from carrier to carrier, which is a large part of why checking statements takes time.

How it shows on a commission statement

Most statements carry the same core fields: insured name, policy number, effective date, transaction type (new business, renewal, endorsement, cancellation, audit), premium, commission rate and commission amount. Some carriers leave out the rate and show only the amount, so you have to divide commission by premium to see it. Many statements also include adjustments for earlier months, so not every line belongs to the current period.

Example

The total, $507.60, is what should arrive in the bank. Checking that the deposit matches the total is the first step, not the whole job.

Common mistakes to check

• Checking only the total against the deposit. A correct total can hide an underpaid line offset by an overpaid one.
• Trusting the rate column without comparing it to your commission schedule.
• Forgetting that a statement only lists what was paid. A renewal that was never paid leaves no line at all.
• Treating prior-period adjustments as current business, or missing that a line repeats one from last month.
• Not keeping the statements. If you raise a discrepancy months later, you’ll want the original.