Comish vs Spreadsheets: Why I Stopped Tracking Commission in Excel

I'm a sales rep. For three years, I tracked every deal, every commission payment, and every tier threshold in a Google Sheet that grew into an absolute monster. Multiple tabs. Nested IF statements. Conditional formatting that broke every quarter when rates changed.

It worked. Barely. Until it didn't.

The Breaking Point

Q3 last year. I closed a $47,000 deal that pushed me from Tier 2 (8%) into Tier 3 (10%). Except my spreadsheet calculated the entire deal at 8% because I'd hardcoded the tier thresholds from the previous year. I didn't catch it until I got my paycheck and was $940 short.

HR fixed it eventually. But that was the moment I realized: I'm spending hours maintaining a system that still gets it wrong.

So I built Comish.

What Spreadsheets Get Wrong

Tiered calculations are a nightmare. Commission isn't flat. When you cross from Tier 1 to Tier 2 mid-quarter, part of your revenue gets paid at one rate and part at another. Building that logic in Excel requires nested formulas that break the moment your comp plan changes.

No real-time visibility. You log a deal, but you don't instantly see what it means for your paycheck. You have to scroll down, check which tier you're in, manually calculate. By the time you figure it out, you've lost momentum.

Quarter resets are manual. Every Q1, I'd spend an hour copying the template, updating thresholds, fixing broken references. That's time I could spend selling.

Multi-year deals get messy. Some companies pay different rates for 1-year vs 2-year contracts. Good luck building that into a spreadsheet without wanting to throw your laptop.

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	Spreadsheet	Comish
Tiered commission math	Complex formulas, easy to break	Automatic, always accurate
Real-time commission view	Manual calculation required	Instant after logging deal
Quarter rollover	Manual template copy	Automatic
Contract term multipliers	Extra columns and logic	Built-in 1yr/2yr rates
Comp plan changes	Update every formula	Change settings once
Export for taxes	Manual formatting	One-click PDF/CSV
Cost	Free	$5/month

When Spreadsheets Still Make Sense

I'm not going to pretend spreadsheets are useless. They're fine if:

• You have a simple flat-rate commission (10% of everything, no tiers)
• You close fewer than 5 deals per quarter
• You actually enjoy building and maintaining formulas
• Your comp plan never changes

But if you're at a company with tiered structures, accelerators, or different rates by contract length? Spreadsheets will fail you eventually. It's just a matter of when.

What I Built Instead

Comish does exactly what my spreadsheet was supposed to do, but without the maintenance headache:

• Tiered math that actually works. Set your tiers once. Every deal automatically calculates commission at the right rate, even when you cross thresholds mid-quarter.
• Instant visibility. Log a deal, immediately see your total commission, attainment percentage, and how far you are from the next tier.
• Contract term support. Different rates for 1-year vs 2-year deals? Built in.
• One-click exports. PDF reports and CSV downloads for tax season or checking your employer's math.

The Real Cost of Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets are "free" but they cost you something more valuable: time and accuracy.

Every hour you spend fixing formulas is an hour you're not prospecting. Every commission error you don't catch is money left on the table. Every quarter-end scramble to update your sheet is stress you don't need.

I built Comish because I was tired of being my own commission administrator. I wanted to log my deals and know what I'm getting paid. That's it.