3 Free Sales Commission Excel Templates (UK) + Upgrade Path

Most "free sales commission Excel template" pages hand you a single-tab grid with two columns and call it a plan. It works until the first accelerator, the first split deal, or the first clawback — and then someone spends a Friday night rebuilding formulas by hand. This guide gives you three real UK templates for three real situations, shows you the formula logic behind each, and — the part nobody writes honestly — tells you the exact point where a sales commission Excel template stops saving you time and starts costing you money.

TL;DR: which commission template do you need?

If you run a flat-rate scheme for under five reps, use the flat-rate template — one rate, one formula, done. If your plan has thresholds or accelerators, use the tiered template, which handles marginal rates so a rep isn't paid the top rate on their first pound. If you pay a base plus commission against a target, use the OTE split template to model on-target earnings and the 70/30 or 80/20 mix. All three are built in plain Excel/Google Sheets with no macros. All three break somewhere between 10 and 20 reps or the moment you add clawbacks, splits, and monthly reconciliation — at which point a spreadsheet becomes the risk, not the tool.

The three templates, compared

Each template is a starting point you'll adapt to your own rates. Here's how to choose:

Template	Best for	Handles	Where it breaks
Flat-rate	1–5 reps, single product, one commission rate	Revenue × rate, running totals	Any threshold, accelerator, or split
Tiered / accelerator	Reps paid different rates above targets	Marginal-rate bands, quota attainment %	Multi-currency, mid-period plan changes
OTE split (base + commission)	Salaried reps with a variable element	Base, OTE, on-target commission, 70/30 or 80/20 split	Clawbacks, ramping reps, payroll export

Use the calculator below to sanity-check the maths behind any of them before you commit a plan to a sheet.

Template 1: the flat-rate commission spreadsheet

The flat-rate template is the simplest honest commission model: every qualifying pound of revenue earns the same percentage. If a rep books £40,000 in a month at 5%, they earn £2,000. The sheet needs four columns — deal reference, close date, deal value, commission earned — and one formula (=deal_value*rate) plus a monthly SUM.

This template is genuinely fine for a small team selling one thing at one margin. Don't let anyone talk you into complexity you don't need. The failure mode isn't the maths — it's version control. The moment two people edit the same file, or a deal value gets corrected after commission is paid, you have no record of what changed or why. For a five-person team that's an annoyance; if you're already feeling it, our breakdown of the true cost of running commission on spreadsheets puts numbers on it.

Template 2: how do you build a tiered commission template in Excel?

A tiered commission template pays different rates at different levels of attainment — for example 4% up to quota, 6% from 100–120%, and 8% above that. The single mistake that quietly overpays reps is applying the top rate to all their revenue once they cross a threshold. You want marginal tiers, where each rate applies only to the revenue that falls inside its band, exactly like income tax bands.

In Excel, the clean way to do this is a small lookup table (attainment band, rate, band floor) and a SUMPRODUCT formula that multiplies the revenue in each band by that band's rate. Avoid nested IF statements more than two deep — they're where errors hide, and nobody can audit them six months later. If you want the design logic behind thresholds and accelerators before you build the sheet, read our guide to designing commission accelerators.

Template 3: the OTE split template (base + variable)

Most UK B2B sales roles aren't pure commission — they're a base salary plus a variable element, quoted as On-Target Earnings (OTE). The OTE split template models this. Take a rep on £60,000 OTE with a 70/30 split: that's £42,000 base and £18,000 of commission at 100% of quota. The template's job is to back-calculate the commission rate from the OTE and quota, then apply it to actual bookings.

Worked example: say that £18,000 on-target commission is earned against a £360,000 annual quota. The implied rate is 5% (£18,000 ÷ £360,000). A rep who books £300,000 for the year earns £15,000 in commission; one who books £420,000 earns £21,000 before any accelerator kicks in. The template should show base, quota, attainment %, and earned commission side by side so a rep can see how a number was reached. If you're setting split ratios and OTE from scratch, our piece on OTE and salary structures for UK sales covers what's actually normal here — and why US-style OTE multiples usually don't translate.

A commission template's real job isn't the calculation. It's showing the rep how the number was reached — so you're not litigating it at month-end.

What every UK commission template must get right on tax

Whichever template you use, remember the number it produces is gross. Sales commission counts as earnings and, per HMRC's Employment Income Manual (EIM64615), commission that counts as earnings from employment is always chargeable to tax as employment income. It runs through PAYE and National Insurance like salary — it is not a separate, lightly-taxed pot.

Don't build employer costs into the wrong cell either. On top of what the rep earns, the employer pays secondary (employer's) National Insurance. For the 2026 to 2027 tax year, HMRC sets the employer NIC rate at 15% on earnings above the secondary threshold of £96 per week (£5,000 per year), per the rates and thresholds for employers guidance. A £2,000 commission payment therefore costs the business roughly £2,300 once employer NIC is added — a figure that belongs in your forecast, not just the rep's payslip. We cover the full mechanics in how commission is taxed in the UK.

When should you stop using an Excel commission template?

Spreadsheets are the right tool right up until they aren't, and the tipping point is predictable. You've outgrown a template when any of the following becomes routine rather than rare:

The honest test isn't team size — it's error rate and dispute frequency. A disciplined operator can run 15 reps on a clean spreadsheet; a messy plan generates disputes at five. For a fuller comparison of the two approaches, see our spreadsheet vs commission software cost breakdown, and if calculation mistakes are your specific pain, why commission calculation errors happen.

What you lose in Excel that a platform gives you

The three things a spreadsheet cannot do well, no matter how good your formulas are, are a per-rep real-time view, a tamper-evident audit trail, and a clean handoff to payroll. Commit was built to close exactly that gap: reps see their live numbers, every change is logged, and approved commission exports straight into payroll — including a direct Xero commission integration so the figure your finance team pays is the figure your plan calculated. A template is a fine place to start. It's a poor place to stay once real money and real disputes are on the line.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is a free Excel commission template safe to use for real payroll?

Yes, for a small team with a simple, stable plan — provided you lock the formula cells, keep gross commission separate from employer costs, and maintain one master file with version history. It stops being safe once you have clawbacks, splits, or multiple editors, because there's no audit trail to reconstruct what changed.

How do I stop a tiered commission spreadsheet from overpaying?

Use marginal rate bands rather than cliff tiers, so each rate applies only to the revenue inside its band. Build the tiers as a lookup table with a SUMPRODUCT formula rather than deep nested IF statements, which are harder to audit and where overpayment errors typically hide.

Is sales commission taxed the same as salary in the UK?

Yes. According to HMRC's Employment Income Manual, commission that counts as earnings from employment is chargeable to tax as employment income, so it runs through PAYE and National Insurance like salary. Your template produces a gross figure; PAYE and NIC are then deducted through payroll.

What does commission actually cost the employer beyond what the rep earns?

On top of the rep's gross commission, the employer pays secondary National Insurance — 15% on earnings above the secondary threshold for the 2026 to 2027 tax year, per HMRC. A £2,000 commission payment costs roughly £2,300 once employer NIC is added, so build a separate "total employer cost" column into any template.

At what team size should I move off a commission spreadsheet?

There's no fixed headcount — it's driven by plan complexity and dispute frequency, not just size. If you're routinely handling clawbacks, splitting deals, or spending more than an afternoon on month-end reconciliation, you've outgrown the spreadsheet regardless of whether you have 5 reps or 25.