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How to Track Recruiter Commissions and Placement Fees
A contingency placement fee only becomes your commission after a chain of events you don't control: the candidate starts, your agency invoices, the client pays on net-30 or net-60 terms, and the payment lands inside a commission run. Then a guarantee period sits over the whole thing — if the candidate falls off inside 30, 60, or 90 days, the fee is refunded or credited and your commission comes back out of a future check.
Recruiters lose track not because the math is hard but because the timeline is long and the failure points are quiet: an invoice the client never paid, a split recalculated in finance, a fall-off deducted twice. This page covers the mechanics worth tracking on every placement — and how a commission tracker like PayoutVerify handles the recruiting-specific parts.
Why placement fees are hard to verify
On most contingency desks, the fee isn't earned when the offer is signed. It's invoiced at the start date, and your commission is contingent on the client actually paying — often net-30 or net-60 from invoice. Add a start date two to four weeks after offer acceptance, and there's routinely a gap of two months or more between "placement made" and "commission paid."
By the time the money shows up, you've closed other deals, the statement line reads "INV-2241 — Acme Corp" instead of the candidate's name, and the split math was done by someone in finance who wasn't on the deal. Verifying it requires records from the day the deal closed — which is exactly what most recruiters don't keep.
The six dates that matter on a perm placement
Every downstream commission question traces back to one of these dates. Log them when the offer is accepted, not later:
- Offer accepted — the deal exists; lock in the fee percentage, the salary basis, and your split.
- Start date — usually triggers the invoice and starts the guarantee clock.
- Invoice date and terms — net-30 from a March 3 invoice means client payment is due April 2; your commission usually follows in the next commission run after that.
- Client payment date — the real trigger on most plans. If the client drags to net-90, your commission drags with it.
- Commission run — the statement where your line should appear.
- Guarantee expiry — the day the placement stops being clawback-eligible.
Guarantee periods and fall-offs: the clawback problem
Most client agreements carry a guarantee: if the candidate leaves or is terminated within 30, 60, or 90 days of starting, the client gets a refund, a credit, or a free replacement search. When that happens, the commission you were paid on the deal typically gets clawed back on a later statement.
Example: say you place a controller at a $140,000 base on a 22% contingency fee — a $30,800 fee to the agency. Your plan pays you 40% of the fee, so $12,320. The candidate resigns on day 47 of a 90-day guarantee. If the client takes a refund, that $12,320 comes back out of a future commission run. If the client takes a replacement instead, what happens to your commission varies by plan — read yours.
When a clawback hits, verify three things: the amount equals what you were originally paid on that deal (your share, not the full fee); any split partner was clawed proportionally; and it isn't deducted again on the next statement. A clawback that can't be matched to an original payment is the one to question. If you're a W-2 employee and a deduction looks wrong, be aware that state wage-payment laws exist — check your comp plan and talk to a professional.
Splits between recruiter and account manager
On split desks, the fee divides between the recruiter who worked the candidate and the account manager or BD who owns the client — sometimes an even split, sometimes negotiated per deal, sometimes with a house cut off the top. The failure mode is quiet: the statement applies the default split when this particular deal had a negotiated one. The fix is boring and effective — record the agreed split percentage the day the deal closes, and check the statement against that record, not against memory.
Contract placements: weekly spread, not lump sums
Contract and temp placements pay differently. Your commission is a share of the margin spread — bill rate minus pay rate minus burden — paid weekly or monthly for the life of the assignment. Instead of one lump sum, you're owed a stream of small payments, so a missed week is easy to overlook and a mid-assignment rate change silently shrinks every payment after it.
Treat each expected week like its own mini-placement: expected amount, expected date, running total against the assignment end date. It's the same shape as renewal commissions, which PayoutVerify tracks as their own scheduled expected payments — log each period of contract spread as its own expected payment, and a skipped week surfaces as an overdue item instead of quietly disappearing.
What to log on every placement
Whether you use an app or a spreadsheet, the minimum record per placement is:
- Candidate, client, and role
- Fee basis: salary × fee percentage (perm) or spread per hour × expected hours (contract)
- Your split percentage and who is on the other side of it
- Start date, invoice date, and client payment terms
- Guarantee length and its exact expiry date
- Expected commission in dollars and the date it should appear on a statement
Where a commission tracker fits
This is the record PayoutVerify builds from a short deal entry: a recruiting rate pack pre-fills editable defaults, and the app computes the expected payout and pay-by date from your comp profile. When your commission statement arrives — PDF, photo, or CSV — it matches each line to a placement with a plain-English reason recorded, flags short payments with the exact dollar delta, nudges you at 7 and 21 days past due, and ties any clawback back to the original deal so you can check it against what you were actually paid. The free tier covers up to 15 active deals and one statement upload a month, and CSV export is free on every plan.
Questions
How is a recruiter's placement fee calculated?
On a contingency search, the fee is a percentage of the candidate's first-year base salary (sometimes total compensation), set in the agreement between the agency and the client. Example: a 22% fee on a $140,000 base is a $30,800 fee to the agency. Your personal commission is then your comp plan's share of that fee, after any splits and house cut.
When do recruiters actually get paid commission on a placement?
On most contingency plans, commission is paid only after the client pays the invoice, which is typically issued at the candidate's start date on net-30 or net-60 terms. That makes the realistic pay-by date the invoice date plus payment terms plus your agency's commission-run lag — often well after the start date. Check your comp plan, since some agencies pay earlier and claw back if the client never pays.
What is a fall-off in recruiting?
A fall-off is when a placed candidate quits or is terminated during the guarantee period — commonly 30, 60, or 90 days from the start date. Depending on the client agreement, the agency then owes the client a refund, a credit, or a free replacement search. Under most comp plans, the commission you were paid on that placement is clawed back on a later statement.
Can my agency claw back commission after a fall-off?
Most recruiting comp plans allow clawbacks for fall-offs inside the guarantee period, so the starting point is the exact language in your comp plan or contractor agreement. If you're a W-2 employee, be aware that state wage-payment laws exist as well. When a clawback amount looks wrong, verify it against what you were originally paid on that specific deal, and consult a professional — this isn't legal advice.
How do I track contract placements versus perm placements?
A perm placement is one expected lump sum tied to an invoice date, payment terms, and a guarantee expiry. A contract placement is a stream of payments — your share of the weekly margin spread for the length of the assignment — so you need an expected amount per period and a check that each one lands. In a tracker like PayoutVerify, log each period as its own expected payment, the same way it tracks renewal commissions as scheduled expected payments, so a missed week shows up as overdue instead of going unnoticed.
Stop verifying by memory
PayoutVerify logs what you sold, reads the statements you already receive, and flags every payment that comes up short, missing, or clawed back. Free tier forever — no card, and CSV export is never paywalled.