Practitioner Commission

If your practitioners work as contractors on a percentage split, Daobook can calculate what you owe each one for any period — broken down by revenue category, with every dollar that was or wasn't included clearly listed.

This tutorial walks through setting up commission for one practitioner, the GST settings that matter when you're GST-registered, how to read the report, and the things worth knowing about how the math works.

As always, this is general guidance — chat to your accountant for advice specific to your circumstances.

Step 1: Open the Practitioner's Commission Section

Go to Settings → Team & Clinics → Team Members & Invites, click the practitioner you want to configure, and scroll to the Commission section. Click Edit to expand it.

The collapsed view shows a one-line summary of the current settings, so once a practitioner is configured you can see at a glance what's set without expanding the form.

The Commission section on a team member's profile, collapsed to a single summary line reading '55% appointments · ex-GST · net of discounts · GST on service fee (appointments)' with an Edit button on the right

Step 2: Turn On Commission

Tick Pay this practitioner commission. Until this is on, every commission report for this practitioner will show no payable. Use it to pause commission temporarily (e.g. while a practitioner is on extended leave) without losing your settings.

Step 3: Set Per-Category Rates

Daobook treats different types of revenue separately so you can pay different percentages on each.

Category	Typical content
Appointments	Consultations, treatments — the practitioner's clinical services
Products	Retail items: supplements, oils, books. Also covers product-type prescriptions (pre-made bottles dispensed in-clinic or sold via Empirical Health) — clinic owns the stock, so they're commissioned as sales
Herb Inventory	Loose herbs and pre-made formulas dispensed from clinic stock
Prescriptions	Custom herbal formulas written by the practitioner. In-clinic decoctions and empirical-channel custom formulas both sit here — they're the practitioner's IP
Fees & Charges	Late cancellation fees, no-show fees, surcharges
Gift Voucher Sales	Sale of vouchers (not the redemption — that flows through the appointment line when the voucher is used)
Other	Any line item not in the buckets above

The per-category commission rates grid in the form, with percentage inputs for each category — Appointments at 55%, Products at 10%, and other categories left blank

For each category, type the percentage the practitioner earns. Leave a category blank (or 0%) to exclude it — typical for Gift Voucher Sales, since voucher cash is held as a liability until the voucher is redeemed against a real service.

Use 0% if you want the category to appear on the report as "excluded" so the practitioner can see what wasn't paid out. Use blank if you don't pay commission on that category at all.

Step 4: Choose Your Policy Toggles

Two checkboxes affect how the commission base is calculated:

Include comp/goodwill credit redemptions in commission base — off by default. When a client pays an invoice using comp credit (a goodwill credit, not real cash), commission isn't usually paid because no cash came in. Tick if you want comp redemptions to count.
Subtract invoice discounts before calculating commission — on by default. When you discount an invoice, commission is paid on the discounted amount, so the practitioner shares in the discount. Untick if you want commission on the pre-discount amount (practitioner gets full commission, clinic absorbs the discount).

The two policy checkboxes — 'Include comp/goodwill credit redemptions in commission base' (unticked) and 'Subtract invoice discounts before calculating commission' (ticked)

Step 5: GST Treatment

The GST treatment block only appears if your clinic is GST-registered. Two settings live here, and the second one is where most owners need to think carefully.

5a: Practitioner's Base — ex-GST or inc-GST

This decides whether the commission percentage is applied to the GST-exclusive or GST-inclusive amount of each line item.

ex-GST amounts (default) — Commission is paid on the pre-GST portion of revenue. Use this when the practitioner is not GST-registered, or when you handle their GST remittance for them. Any GST collected belongs to the clinic and is excluded from the practitioner's payout.
inc-GST amounts (practitioner self-remits GST) — Commission is paid on the GST-inclusive amount. Use when the practitioner is GST-registered and remits their own GST to the ATO. They receive the gross figure and handle their own BAS.

For a TCM practice where most revenue is GST-free, the two options give the same answer for those categories — so the default is fine unless you have a specific reason to switch.

The GST treatment card at the top of the GST block, showing the ex-GST / inc-GST radio with 'ex-GST amounts' selected as the default

5b: GST on the Clinic's Service Fee

This is a separate taxable supply: when the clinic is GST-registered and charges its practitioners a facility/admin fee (the clinic's percentage cut of the revenue), that fee is itself a taxable supply from clinic to practitioner, and GST applies on top of it.

Worked example. Olivia is a contractor practitioner. She bills $730 in acupuncture services this week, split 55% Olivia / 45% clinic. Your 45% cut ($328.50) is a service fee from the clinic to Olivia — so on top of $328.50 you also charge $32.85 GST. Olivia's take-home is $730 − $361.35 = $368.65, not the simple 55% × $730 = $401.50.

Tick Clinic charges GST on its service fee to the practitioner to switch this on. The category list then appears with Appointments pre-ticked.

The 'Clinic charges GST on its service fee to the practitioner' master checkbox unticked, with the helper copy below explaining the separate taxable supply from clinic to practitioner

5c: Which Categories Get the GST-on-Fee Treatment?

Tick each category where the clinic genuinely charges the practitioner a facility fee. Untick categories where the clinic owns the inventory and the practitioner is paid a sales commission instead — there's no service fee for the clinic to charge in that case.

Decision rule. If the practitioner is the legal supplier of the goods/service (the revenue is "theirs" and they pay the clinic for facilities), tick. If the clinic owns the stock and pays the practitioner a sales commission on the sale, untick.

Category	Typical setting for a TCM clinic
Appointments	Tick — the practitioner is the supplier; the clinic charges a facility fee
Products	Untick — clinic owns the inventory, the 1 − rate isn't a service fee
Herb Inventory	Untick — same as products
Prescriptions	Tick in most cases — only custom formulas land here, and the practitioner is paid for writing the formula as a service (product-type prescriptions count as Products, see above)
Fees & Charges	Tick if the practitioner is paid for these as their service; untick otherwise
Gift Voucher Sales	Untick — the clinic carries the voucher as a liability until redeemed
Other	Depends on the line type

The GST-on-fee category list revealed after ticking the master toggle, with Appointments checked and Products, Herb Inventory, Prescriptions, Fees, Gift Vouchers, and Other left unchecked

Why this matters: at a 10% practitioner rate, the implied "clinic service fee" is 90% — absurd for clinic-owned products. Ticking the wrong categories can crush the practitioner's commission to nearly nothing because the math will assume the clinic is charging an enormous facility fee that doesn't exist.

Step 6: Watch the Live Preview

As you change rates and toggles, the Per $100 of revenue, at the current settings table at the bottom of the form updates live. Each row shows what the practitioner and the clinic each receive per $100 of revenue in that category, with a small note about any GST on the clinic's fee.

Use this to sanity-check before saving. If a row looks wrong, your settings are wrong — adjust until each row reads what you'd expect.

The 'Per $100 of revenue, at the current settings' preview table — Appointments row at 55% showing $50.50 to practitioner and $49.50 to clinic with an 'incl. $4.50 GST on service fee' caption, and a Products row at 10% showing $10.00 to practitioner and $90.00 to clinic with no GST caption

Step 7: Save

Click Save Changes. The disclosure collapses and shows the new summary line — for the Olivia example it reads something like "55% appointments · ex-GST · net of discounts · GST on service fee (appointments)".

Step 8: Read the Commission Report

Go to Accounting Reports → Practitioner Commission. Pick the clinic, the practitioner, and the date range. The report has three parts:

The Accounting Reports landing page with a card grid of available reports, including a Practitioner Commission card alongside Profit & Loss, Itemised Revenue, and other reports

Header — total commission payable for the period, plus a settings string echoing the rates and toggles used to calculate it.
Included — every category that contributed to the payable, with revenue, rate, and commission per row.
Not Included — everything the report deliberately excluded: 0%-rate categories, comp redemptions, invoice discounts, GST portions (when commissioning ex-GST), and the GST on clinic service fee.

The "Not Included" panel is the report's most useful feature — it's the explicit answer to "why isn't this paying commission?" Every excluded dollar carries a reason.

A populated commission report — header shows the total commission payable with the settings string echoing the rates and toggles, the Included table on the left lists each category with revenue, rate, and commission, and the Not Included panel on the right shows excluded amounts each with a reason (in this case, a GST on clinic service fee deduction)

Click PDF at the top to export a hand-to-the-practitioner copy.

Tips

Rate changes affect history. Commission is computed from current rates against historical invoice data — changing a rate today also recalculates last month's report. Snapshotting payouts is on the roadmap; for now keep your own records of what you actually paid.
Multi-clinic practitioners. Rates are configured per practitioner per clinic — a practitioner working at two of your locations can be on 55% at one and 60% at the other.
Comp credit redemptions flow through to a normal appointment line on a different invoice — the practitioner still earns commission on the underlying service when a voucher or comp credit is used to settle the bill. The "comp redemption" exclusion only applies to the comp credit itself, not the service it paid for.
Margin column in the Included table is informational only. Commission is computed from the rates you set, not from margin. The column is there to highlight when costs are eating into a category's profitability.