I'm a sales rep. Not a developer. Not a startup founder. Just a guy who got tired of not knowing what his paycheck would be until it hit his bank account.
This is the story of why I built Comish.
The Problem
Every sales rep I know has the same complaint: comp plans are complicated and nobody tells you what you're actually getting paid until it's too late to do anything about it.
My company uses tiered commission. First $375K at 6%, next tier at 8%, then 10%, then 12%. Sounds simple enough until you try to calculate what happens when a $50K deal pushes you from one tier to the next mid-quarter.
Part of that deal gets paid at the old rate. Part at the new rate. The math isn't hard, but it's tedious. And if you're tracking 15-20 deals per quarter across multiple tiers with different rates for 1-year vs 2-year contracts? Your spreadsheet becomes a nightmare.
The Spreadsheet Phase
Like every rep, I started with Excel. Built a beautiful sheet with color-coded tiers and conditional formatting. Even had a little progress bar toward my quarterly goal.
It lasted three months before the first major error. I'd hardcoded the tier thresholds from the previous year. Didn't notice until my paycheck was almost a thousand dollars short.
HR fixed it, but I realized something: I was spending hours every month maintaining a system that still failed me when it mattered.
Looking for Solutions
So I went looking for tools. What I found was either:
- Enterprise software (CaptivateIQ, Spiff, etc.) - Costs $30-50 per user per month, requires company buy-in, IT implementation, and months of setup. Great for companies, useless for individual reps.
- More spreadsheet templates - Same problems I already had, just with someone else's formatting.
- Nothing - Seriously, there was no tool built for individual reps who just want to track their own commission.
Every solution assumed you were a sales ops manager buying for a team. Nobody was building for the rep.
Building It Myself
I'm not a developer, but I know enough to be dangerous. Started learning to code on nights and weekends. Built the first version in a couple months—ugly as hell but functional.
The core logic was simple: set your tier thresholds once, log your deals, and let the math handle itself. No formulas to maintain. No quarterly template copying. Just accurate commission calculations.
I used it for a full quarter. Caught two errors in my company's commission statements that I would have missed with my spreadsheet. That's when I knew this thing had legs.
Why $5/Month
When I decided to share it, the pricing question came up immediately. Enterprise tools charge $30-50 per user. I could probably get away with $20.
But here's the thing: I built this because I was frustrated that nothing affordable existed. Charging $20/month would make me part of the same problem.
$5/month is the price of a fancy coffee. It's low enough that any rep can expense it (or just pay it without thinking). It's high enough to cover server costs and show that it's a real product, not some abandoned side project.
Sales reps shouldn't have to spend a fortune to know what they're getting paid.
What It Does (And Doesn't Do)
Comish is intentionally simple. It does a few things really well:
- Tiered commission calculations that actually work
- Different rates for 1-year vs 2-year contracts
- Quarterly goal tracking with attainment percentages
- PDF and CSV exports for taxes or checking your employer's math
- Separate mode for SDR/BDR activity-based comp
It doesn't integrate with Salesforce. It doesn't have team dashboards. It doesn't do forecasting or pipeline management. Those features would push the price up and the complexity through the roof.
This is a tool for tracking commission. That's it. And it does that job extremely well.
The Goal
I want every sales rep to know exactly what they're getting paid before their paycheck hits. Not approximately. Not "I think it's around X." The exact number.
When you close a deal, you should know immediately how much commission you just earned. When you're pushing at end of quarter, you should see in real-time how close you are to the next tier.
That's what Comish does. Nothing more, nothing less.
I still use Comish every day for my own deals. If you're a rep who's tired of spreadsheet hell, give it a try. 14-day free trial, no credit card required. And if it doesn't work for your comp plan, email me—I might just build the feature you need.