Commission splits and talent statements

Commission disputes rarely come from the rate. They come from what the rate applies to and when. Your management agreement with each talent should answer three questions before the first brand payment arrives:

• Who collects from the brand. Either your agency invoices the brand, receives the payment and pays the talent their share, or the talent invoices the brand, is paid directly and pays your agency its commission.
• Which amounts are commissionable. Usually the fee for the talent’s work. Many agreements leave out money the brand pays to cover costs, such as travel, production or paid media bought for the campaign.
• When commission is earned. Most agencies take commission when the brand’s payment is received, not when the invoice is sent, so the talent is never charged commission on money that never arrived.

When the talent is paid directly by the brand, the same arithmetic runs the other way: the talent reports each brand payment, and your commission on it is what the talent owes you. If a brand pays the talent $8,000.00 at 20%, the talent owes your agency $1,600.00 and keeps $6,400.00. Keep that $1,600.00 apart from what brands owe your agency: it is a different debt, from a different person, and it is never netted against anything your agency owes the talent.

Work out commission on each brand payment as it arrives: the payment times the rate is the commission, and the payment minus the commission is the talent’s share. A $12,000.00 fee paid in two halves at 20%:

Working per payment matters when a brand pays late or in part. If only the first half has arrived, the talent is owed $4,800.00, not a share of the whole fee. The payout date follows the payment too: here the management agreement says the talent is paid 15 days after the brand pays, so the first share is due Nov 4, 2026. Other agreements pay monthly, for example every brand payment received in October on the 15th of November.

Commission rarely comes out in whole cents. Revarden rounds half a cent up: half a cent goes to the commission, and the talent’s share is the rest of the brand payment. What you choose is where the rounding happens, on each agreement’s running total or on each brand payment on its own. Three brand payments of $2,333.35 at 15% show the difference:

On the running total, each payment’s commission is the commission on everything the brand has paid so far less the commission already counted, so the agreement’s commission is the rate times what the brand paid, to the cent: $1,050.01, 15% of $7,000.05. Payments are taken in the order the brand paid them, not the order they were recorded. Rounded on each payment, each commission is $350.00, $1,050.00 in all, one cent less.

We recommend the running total: a talent who checks the arithmetic finds your commission is exactly the rate times what the brand paid. Choose each brand payment when your spreadsheet has always rounded each payment’s commission on its own and you are moving your records in. Set it in Settings, under Payouts, before you set up talent payouts: agreements already set up keep their own rounding, and an Owner or Admin can change one on its Talent payout tab after seeing what moves.

Rates get renegotiated: a talent signs a longer term, or a manager takes on more work. Apply a new rate to brand payments received from the day it starts, keep every earlier payment at the rate it had, and write down why the rate changed. Here the rate moves from 20% to 15% on Jan 1, 2027:

The date that decides the rate is the day the brand paid, not the invoice date or the day the content went live. Never rework a statement you have already sent: if a rate was recorded wrong, record the correct one with the date it applies from and the reason, and let the next statement show the change.

Three things change what you pay out without changing the commission:

• An advance is money you paid the talent before the brand paid. It comes off their later shares.
• Expenses go both ways. A cost your agency paid for the talent, when the agreement allows it, comes off their share; a cost the talent paid that your agency owes back is added to what they are owed.
• A holdback keeps part of each share for a while, for example in case a brand disputes a deliverable. Held money is still owed to the talent; it just isn’t due until it is released.

One brand payment of $6,000.00 at 20%, for a talent who already had a $1,000.00 advance, with 10% of each share held for 30 days after the brand pays:

After this payout the talent is still owed $480.00, which becomes due on Nov 19, 2026. Say so on the statement, so the talent sees the held money is theirs.

A talent statement answers one question: of the money brands paid for my work, what did the agency keep, what did I get, and what am I still owed? A good one shows, for a month or any period:

• what the talent was owed at the start of the period;
• each brand payment, with its date, the agreement and the brand;
• the commission rate that applied and the commission;
• each advance, expense and holdback, and each release of held money;
• each payout, with the date it left your bank;
• what the talent is owed at the end, and how much of it is held.

To send statements that hold up:

1. Record every brand payment for the period first, with the date the money arrived.
2. Record each payout with the date it left your bank, not the date you approved it.
3. Choose the period, usually the month, and check the opening balance matches last period’s closing balance.
4. Print the statement or save it as a PDF and send it with the payout, so the talent can match it to their bank.
5. Keep a copy. A statement is a record of what was paid and owed; it is not a bank statement or a tax form.

Send one every month, even a month with no brand payments: a statement that says nothing arrived answers the question before the talent has to ask it, and it keeps each month’s closing balance the next one’s starting point. If a talent questions a line, the answer should be easy to find: the brand payment, the rate that applied and why it changed.

For year-end tax forms, see Paying talent and the 1099-NEC threshold.