CS-03 · 2026
Commission reporting automation
Replacing an emailed spreadsheet with a governed, automated monthly delivery, and turning a hidden "history can change" problem into a decision for the business owner.
- 7
- Upstream data issues found in first validation
- Measured: each had been feeding incorrect inputs
- Source tablesOwned by two upstream teams
- Governed viewComputes total commission
- BI workbookBuilt on the view
- Monthly subscriptionFirst business day
- PayrollReceives the report
Each hop is governed and repeatable, with a runbook so the flow does not depend on one person.
The problem
Sales commissions reached the payroll function as a manually maintained spreadsheet, emailed each cycle. Manual spreadsheets are slow, error-prone and impossible to audit, and the people depending on the numbers had no trustworthy single source.
What I built
An automated, governed flow from operational source data to a scheduled delivery.
- A governed warehouse view that computes total commission from the relevant source tables.
- A BI workbook on top of that view, delivered to payroll as an automated monthly subscription on the first business day.
- An operator runbook, so the flow can be maintained by someone other than me.
My role
Owned the build end to end and ran the cross-functional coordination: the downstream payroll function and the upstream teams who owned the source tables. One of my cleanest examples of shipping a full solution rather than just a report.
Architecture and trade-offs
- Scoping with stakeholders. I agreed which commission cases to include, and excluded certain roles at the presentation layer so a separate existing report still saw the full dataset.
- Coordination over duplication. I worked with two other teams to create and mirror the required source tables, rather than duplicating that data myself.
- A governance question, surfaced. Because the view reads live source rows, edits made after a payout would retroactively change historical figures. Rather than silently picking a behaviour, I laid out three options for the business owner to decide between: freeze paid periods, take a monthly snapshot, or query as of a point in time.
Impact
- A recurring manual spreadsheet was replaced by an automated monthly delivery. Estimated: it removes the per-cycle manual preparation and emailing.
- The first validation pass surfaced seven concrete upstream source-data issues that had been feeding incorrect commission inputs. Measured. Fixing them directly improved payroll accuracy.
- A reusable governed view and runbook now exist where there used to be a one-off spreadsheet.
The hardest part
Not the SQL; the governance. Upstream amendments after payout can rewrite history, and the right move was to frame that as a decision for the business owner rather than a silent default. That is the difference between a report and a system someone can rely on for pay.
Skills shown
End-to-end solution delivery, data modeling, BI automation, cross-functional stakeholder management, governance design.