Recruitment Desk Splits and Shared Commission: Paying BD and Resourcing Fairly

The single biggest source of commission disputes inside UK recruitment agencies isn't the percentage paid out — it's who gets credited when a placement involves more than one consultant. A 360 desk that occasionally hands a candidate to a colleague, or a properly split 180 desk where a BD consultant wins the role and a resourcer fills it, both create the same question: how do you carve the fee fairly without arguing about it every month?

This guide sets out the common recruitment desk split commission models used in UK agencies, the attribution rules that prevent the worst rows, and the practical setup that makes splits payable through PAYE without finance losing a week to reconciliation.

TL;DR

A recruitment desk split commission is the share of placement fee paid when two or more consultants contribute to filling a role — typically a Business Development (BD) consultant who wins the vacancy and a resourcer (or 180 consultant) who sources the candidate. The most common UK splits are 50/50 for symmetric BD/resourcing pairings, 60/40 or 70/30 weighted toward BD on harder-to-win roles, and tiered shares on contract margin. Disputes are almost always caused by missing written attribution rules, not bad intent — agencies that publish a one-page split policy covering candidate ownership, repeat business, and edge cases see disputes drop sharply. The tax treatment is unchanged: each consultant's share is taxable pay through PAYE under the normal Income Tax (PAYE) Regulations 2003, per HMRC's CWG2 employer guide.

What is a 360, 180 and split desk in UK recruitment?

A 360 desk means one consultant does the lot — wins the client, takes the brief, sources candidates, manages the process, closes the deal. They keep 100% of the commission on placements they own.

A 180 desk (sometimes called a split desk) divides the work in two. A BD or client-facing consultant wins and manages the vacancy; a resourcer (also called a delivery consultant, sourcer, or candidate manager) finds, screens, and submits candidates. Each consultant only does half the cycle, and the fee is shared.

A hybrid or split deal happens when a normally-360 consultant brings in a colleague for one placement — for instance, a niche search that needs someone with specialist candidate access. The two consultants split that single fee even though they otherwise run their own desks.

Which model an agency uses is usually a function of fee size and complexity. Search and exec firms placing £25k+ fees lean towards 180 specialisation because the work is heavier; high-volume contract or temp desks often stay 360 with occasional splits. There is no "right" answer — but whichever you use, the commission scheme has to match.

How should commission be split between BD and resourcer?

There are three honest ways to think about a BD/resourcer split: equal value, weighted to the harder side of that desk, or weighted to the scarcer skill in that market. Below are the patterns we see most often in UK agencies running on Commit.

Split	Typical use case	Why it works
50/50 BD / Resourcer	Mature 180 desks where both sides are skilled and roles flow reliably	Symmetric; easiest to administer; avoids "who worked harder" arguments
60/40 BD / Resourcer	Markets where winning the vacancy is the bottleneck (mid-market perm)	Rewards the scarcer activity — getting the role on
40/60 BD / Resourcer	Candidate-short markets (senior tech, healthcare, niche engineering)	Rewards the scarcer activity — finding the person
70/30 on first placement, 50/50 thereafter	New client accounts	BD takes more on the deal that proved the relationship; equalises once the account is live
Tiered on contract margin	Contract / temp desks	BD and resourcer each get a percentage of weekly margin; auto-adjusts to deal quality

The split percentages matter less than the consistency. A consultant who knows they'll always get 40% on their resourced placements can plan around that. A consultant whose split is renegotiated per deal will burn out arguing about it.

The percentage isn't what causes disputes. Ambiguity about who counts as contributing is.

Why do desk splits create so many commission disputes?

Walk into the back office of any growing recruitment agency at month-end and the row is almost always the same: two consultants both believe they're owed a share of the same placement. One of them registered the candidate. The other took the brief. A third made the call that got the offer accepted. The fee is £18,000. Who's getting what?

The failure mode is rarely greed — it's that the agency never wrote down the attribution rules. Without them, every edge case becomes a negotiation, every negotiation becomes a precedent, and within six months "the rules" are whatever the loudest biller remembers from the last argument.

The common flashpoints:

• Candidate ownership conflicts. Consultant A registered the candidate eighteen months ago for a different role. Consultant B placed them this month. Who owns the placement?
• Cross-team placements. A perm consultant's candidate ends up on a contract booking with the contract desk. Both teams want the fee.
• Repeat business. The BD who won the account three years ago has left. Does the resourcer who's been filling roles ever since now keep the BD share, or does it pass to whichever new BD is "managing" the account?
• Multi-resourcer placements. Two resourcers both submitted candidates; the second one's candidate got placed but the first one did the initial screen.
• "Hot" candidate flips. Resourcer registers a candidate Monday. Different consultant gets a new vacancy Wednesday that fits perfectly. Is that a split?

These aren't theoretical. They happen every month in agencies of 10+ consultants. The cure is a published attribution policy and an audit trail, both of which we cover in our recruitment agency commission plans guide.

What attribution rules prevent the worst arguments?

A usable attribution policy answers five questions in writing, before any of them are tested in anger.

Write all five into a one-page policy, get every consultant to acknowledge it, and review it once a year. This single document does more to reduce commission disputes than any plan redesign — see also our broader piece on handling commission disputes.

How are split commission payments taxed in the UK?

Split commission is taxed exactly like normal commission. Whatever share a consultant earns is taxable employment income, subject to PAYE Income Tax and Class 1 National Insurance through payroll, in the period it is paid. There is no separate tax treatment for "shared" commission and no relief because two people earned it instead of one.

HMRC's CWG2 employer guide for 2025–26 confirms PAYE operates on "payments of PAYE income" — which includes commission, bonuses, and incentive payments to employees — under the Income Tax (PAYE) Regulations 2003. The general PAYE framework on GOV.UK likewise treats bonuses and commission as deductible from employee pay alongside salary.

In practice this means three things for finance:

1. Each consultant's share lands in their own payroll line in the month it's earned (or the month after, per the plan). Don't pay the lump sum to one consultant and ask them to settle internally — that creates a tax mess and an employment-status risk.
2. Employer NIC applies to each share, including the increased employer rate from April 2026 — see our note on the employer NIC change and commission cost.
3. Clawbacks and rebates apply to each consultant's share independently. If a candidate falls out in the rebate period, both BD and resourcer typically owe back their portion — covered in detail in recruitment commission clawback and rebate periods.

How do you set up desk splits in your commission system?

Whether you run Commit, a competitor, or (still) a spreadsheet, the mechanics are the same. The system needs to know, for every placement:

• The deal value (placement fee or contract margin)
• The owning BD consultant and their share
• The contributing resourcer(s) and their share(s)
• The default split for that desk plus any approved deviation
• The clawback rule that applies to each share

If any of those fields are missing on the deal record, the calculation can't run cleanly and someone will end up reconciling by hand. The fix is to make split fields mandatory at deal-close stage in your CRM or commission platform, so a placement literally cannot be marked won without naming both contributors and their shares.

When the month closes, each consultant's calculated share flows into payroll as a separate line — exporting cleanly into Xero or whichever payroll system you use. Reps see their own share, not the colleague's, but the audit trail shows the full split. That transparency is what kills shadow-accounting spreadsheets; the underlying problem and the cure are both covered in shadow accounting in sales teams.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a typical BD / resourcer commission split in UK recruitment?

The most common UK splits are 50/50 on mature 180 desks and 60/40 weighted to BD on markets where winning roles is the bottleneck. In candidate-short markets such as senior tech or specialist healthcare, the weighting often flips to 40/60 in favour of the resourcer because finding people is harder than finding vacancies. The right answer is whichever side is scarcer in your market — and whichever you can stick to without renegotiating per deal.

Should a 360 consultant get any share when another consultant helps fill their vacancy?

Yes, almost always. The standard practice is that the role-owner keeps the BD share (typically 50–70%) and the colleague who sourced the placed candidate takes the resourcing share. The point of having a published split policy is so that 360 consultants are willing to hand work over when they need to, without feeling they're giving the deal away. Without that policy, consultants hoard roles and fill rates drop.

Who owns a candidate when two consultants have worked with them?

The candidate is normally owned by the consultant who registered them most recently, for a defined window (usually 6 or 12 months) from last meaningful contact. After that window expires the candidate is "free" and the next consultant to place them earns the resourcer share. Without a written expiry, candidate ownership becomes permanent and resourcers hoard CVs they'll never place — which is exactly what an attribution policy is meant to prevent.

How is split commission reported through PAYE?

Each consultant's share of a split fee is reported as their own taxable employment income, through PAYE, in the period it is paid. HMRC's CWG2 guide confirms commission is treated as PAYE income alongside salary and bonuses. Don't pay the whole fee to the lead consultant and settle informally — pay each share on each consultant's payslip, with employer NIC applied separately to each share.

What happens to splits when the BD consultant leaves the agency?

Most UK agencies move account ownership to a new BD on departure, and the new BD takes the BD share on subsequent placements into that account. The leaver's contract will normally say they earn nothing on placements that complete after their notice period ends — see our piece on commission during notice period. What you must avoid is leaving the BD share in limbo: define in writing how ownership transfers, and update the CRM the day the BD leaves so the resourcer isn't paid against a vacant credit line.