Running a month
Import, calculate, review, approve. Each step commits to something specific, and one of them is irreversible.
1. Import the month's deals
See importing deals. Nothing is calculated until you ask for it, so an import is safe to redo.
2. Calculate
Calculating produces a run: statements, lines, and the full explanation behind every number. Runs are drafts. You can recalculate a period as many times as you like and each run supersedes the last.
Recalculating is deliberately safe. Draw balances, for instance, are only written when a period is approved, never from a draft run. Otherwise re-running a period under review would corrupt somebody's recovery balance invisibly, and you would find out three months later.
3. Review
The review screen breaks the total down by component and by kind, and both breakdowns must reconcile to the total. It flags outliers, names anyone paid nothing, and names any deal that was credited but earned nothing.
4. Approve
Approval is the point of no return, and the checklist in front of it is the last chance to catch a money-shaped hole. Some items block approval outright; others can be overridden with a typed reason, which is recorded against the period.
Approving freezes the numbers, publishes statements to the people they belong to, writes the draw ledger, and makes payroll export available. Approved is terminal. There is no reopen, because a statement somebody has already read cannot be quietly changed. Corrections go into a later period as an adjustment.
5. Statements go out
Each person is emailed their statement with a link that opens it without a password. Every decision not to send (no address, opted out, previously bounced) is recorded, because the question asked afterwards is always "was Dana told about June?" and the only acceptable answers are yes, or no and here is why.
6. Queries
A rep who disagrees with a number can raise a query from their statement without an account. It lands in a queue with the line they are disputing attached. Whatever you write back is shown to them word for word.
If they are right, the correction is an adjustment in a later period. The approved period does not change.
7. Export to payroll
Six formats, and the period is marked paid. AlgoSplit never moves money: the export is the deliverable, and your existing payroll system remains the thing that pays people.