Most field-service owners inherit their pay structure from wherever they used to work, or copy whatever a competitor down the street does. That's not necessarily wrong — but it means the choice is rarely made on purpose, and "which one is right for my crew" is a genuinely different question from "which one is normal."
What each structure actually optimizes for
Percentage commission ties pay directly to job value. A technician who lands or completes a bigger job earns more for that job, automatically — no separate decision needed. The tradeoff is that a technician's income varies job to job, which some people find motivating and others find stressful to plan around.
Flat rate pays the same amount per job regardless of price. It's simpler to explain, easier to predict on both sides, and removes any financial incentive to upsell a customer into a bigger job than they need. The tradeoff is that it doesn't reward a technician any more for a job that happened to be worth three times as much.
Percentage (40%): $150 job pays $60.00 · $500 job pays $200.00.
Flat rate ($75/job): $150 job pays $75.00 · $500 job pays $75.00.
On the smaller job, flat rate pays more. On the larger job, percentage pays far more.
The actual decision framework
Once you can see the divergence above, the real question is which side of it matches your business:
- How much does job value vary? A narrow range (most jobs land within a similar band) means the two structures produce similar results, so flat rate's simplicity has little real downside. A wide range means percentage rewards the technicians handling your bigger, harder jobs — flat rate would pay a technician the same for a quick $100 job and a demanding $600 one.
- Do you want to reduce upselling pressure? Percentage gives technicians a direct financial reason to sell a bigger job. That's fine if bigger jobs are genuinely better for the customer too — less fine if it risks a technician recommending more than someone actually needs. Flat rate removes that specific incentive entirely.
- How experienced is the crew? Newer technicians often prefer flat rate's predictability while they're still building speed and confidence. More experienced technicians who consistently land or complete bigger jobs tend to prefer percentage's uncapped upside.
When the answer is genuinely "both"
Flat rate and percentage aren't the only two options. A flat + percentage structure — a base amount per job plus a percentage on top — gives a technician the predictability of a guaranteed minimum with some of percentage's upside on bigger jobs. A tiered structure raises the percentage rate as job volume increases in a period, rewarding a busy month without changing anything about individual job pricing. Both are covered in full, with worked examples, in the commission calculation guide.
- Doing this by hand for one period: the free calculator handles the percentage + full-tip-passthrough case.
- Running this every pay period: the sheet template supports all four structures — including flat, percentage, flat + percentage, and tiered — set per technician.
- Would rather not touch the data entry: send us your job data and pay rules, and get a payroll-ready file back within 24 hours, whichever structure you use.