Setup wizard

Import from Excel

Move commission setup out of spreadsheets: load participants, plans and rates, quotas, opening balances, external settlements and open invoice commissions from Excel templates and check every row first.

updated: Oct 18, 2026applies-to: 1.2.0.0

If you keep participants, plans, quotas, opening balances or commission already paid outside Business Central in spreadsheets, Bitta Commission can load them through Commission Setup Imports instead of typing them into each page. You download a template, fill it in, import it, review the findings for every row and then apply it through the same governed services as the pages.

Before you start

You need the Bitta Commission Setup Administrator permission set for every import action.
The related records must exist: salespeople, vendors or employees for participant links, commission periods for quotas, reason codes and open periods for opening balances, and posted sales invoices for external settlements and open invoice commissions.
Imported plans become plans with a first Draft version. They still need validation, approval and publication.
PER-UNIT, BONUS, MANAGER-OVERRIDE, GUARANTEE and DRAW components need Advanced commission models to be on, and a target above zero needs Quotas and targets. See Optional modules.

You can also open the imports from the setup wizard with Advanced -> Import Setup from Excel.

Commission Setup Imports list with imports for participants, plans and rates, and quotas, their status and row counts — *Commission Setup Imports.*

What you can import

Workbook (sheet)	Columns	What Apply creates
Participants	Participant No., Name, Link Type, Link Code, Effective From, Effective To, Payout Channel	New participants linked to a salesperson, vendor or employee in this company.
Plans and rates (Plans and Rates)	Plan Code, Plan Name, Effective From, Effective To, Component Code, Component Name, Model, Basis, Weight %, Band From, Band To, Rate or Amount	New plans with a first Draft version, components and rate tables.
Quotas	Plan Code, Component Code, Participant No., Team Code, Period Code, Target	Targets on the calculation periods of a plan's Draft version.
Opening balances (Opening Balances)	Participant No., Amount, Posting Date, Reason Code, Description, Plan Code, Component Code	Manual corrections that bring in opening base amounts.
External settlements (External Settlements)	Invoice No., Participant No., Settled Date, Settled Amount, Reason Code, External Reference, Description	Records of commission already paid outside Business Central, applied to the invoice's pending commission.
Open invoice commissions (Open Invoice Commissions)	Participant No., Amount, Posting Date, Reason Code, Description, Plan Code, Component Code, Invoice No.	Opening balances that wait for their open invoice to be paid.

Each template also has an Instructions sheet that explains every column. The key rules:

Link Type is SALESPERSON, VENDOR or EMPLOYEE. Payout Channel is PAYROLL, ACCOUNTS PAYABLE (or AP) or MANUAL; blank uses accounts payable for vendors, payroll for employees and manual for salespeople.
Model is FLAT-RATE, PROGRESSIVE-TIER, TIERED-RATE, RETROACTIVE-TIER, FIXED-AMOUNT, PER-UNIT, BONUS, MANAGER-OVERRIDE, GUARANTEE or DRAW. Basis is NET-AMOUNT, GROSS-MARGIN, QUANTITY or DOCUMENT-COUNT; blank uses the model default.
The rows of one component form its rate table in row order. Bands start at 0, follow on without gaps and end with a blank Band To. The weights of a plan's commission components total 100.
For quotas, enter either a Participant No. or a Team Code, and the plan must have a Draft version with a calculation-period row for the target.
For opening balances, the posting date must lie in an open commission period, and the plan needs a published version covering that date. A blank plan uses the participant's single active plan assignment.
For external settlements, Invoice No. must match exactly one customer ledger entry. Leave Participant No. blank when every participant on the invoice was paid. Settled Amount is for reference: applying settles the invoice's pending commission whatever the amount. See Commission paid outside Business Central.
Open invoice commissions follow the opening balance rules, plus an Invoice No. that matches exactly one customer ledger entry, and a component whose payment policy waits for the invoice to be paid. Each balance becomes a manual correction that must be approved and processed before it can be released.
Dates use yyyy-mm-dd or your date format. Amounts and percentages are numbers without currency symbols. Codes are not case sensitive.

Import a workbook

Open Commission Setup Imports.
Choose Download Template and pick the workbook in Which setup workbook?.

Which setup workbook do you want to import? dialog on Commission Setup Imports offering Participants, Plans and rates, Quotas, Opening balances, External settlements and Open invoice commissions — *Step 2: pick the workbook.*

Fill in one record per row below the header row. Keep the sheet name and do not change, rename or reorder the header row.
Choose Import from Excel, pick the same workbook type and upload the file. The rows are staged, validated straight away, and Commission Setup Import opens. Nothing is created yet.
Review the counts in the Rows group: Rows, Valid Rows, Rows with Warnings, Rows with Errors, Applied Rows and Skipped Rows.
Review the Findings part. Each finding shows the Row (zero means the whole file), the Severity (an error blocks Apply; a warning only explains the row), a Code and a Message. The Rows part shows each row with its status and a summary.

Commission Setup Import card for a participants workbook with the row counts, the Result explaining that rows with errors block Apply, and the Findings and Rows parts — *Steps 5 and 6: review counts and findings on the import card.*

If any row has an error, correct the workbook and import it again. When no row has an error, choose Apply and confirm. Apply validates once more and refuses with BAA-SETUP-IMPORT-BLOCKED while errors remain.

To check a file with no risk of applying it, use Dry Run from Excel. A dry run validates only and can never be applied.

How it works

Existing records are not overwritten. A participant number that already exists is skipped with a warning; change it on the participant card. An existing plan code is an error; change existing plans in the plan editor. Targets of a published plan change only through a successor version.
Replays are safe. The import stores a fingerprint of the rows in Content Hash. Importing the same rows again returns the original import, and validating a file that was already applied reports BAA-SETUP-IMPORT-DUPLICATE-FILE. Nothing is applied twice.
Governed services. Apply creates records through the same services as the pages, including their validation. The import is kept as evidence and the apply is written to the audit trail.
No standard exclusions. Imported plans credit every line type. To leave out G/L account, item charge and fixed asset lines, choose Add Standard Exclusions on the component's credit rules while the version is Draft. See Customer agreements.

TIP

Start with two or three rows, apply them in a sandbox and check the created records before you load the full list.

Common findings

If the sheet name or header row does not match the template, the import stops at upload with BAA-SETUP-IMPORT-SHEET or BAA-SETUP-IMPORT-HEADER and nothing is staged. Download a fresh template and copy your data into it. The other codes appear as findings on the import card:

Code	What to do
BAA-SETUP-IMPORT-LINK	The salesperson, vendor or employee does not exist in this company.
BAA-SETUP-IMPORT-LINK-MAPPED	The salesperson is already mapped to a participant for these dates.
BAA-SETUP-IMPORT-BANDS	Rate rows must start at 0, have no gaps and end with a blank Band To.
BAA-SETUP-IMPORT-WEIGHT	The component weights of the plan must total 100.
BAA-SETUP-IMPORT-NOT-DRAFT	The plan has no Draft version. Create a successor version first.
BAA-SETUP-IMPORT-LIVE-PLAN	Publish the plan before importing opening balances.
BAA-SETUP-IMPORT-INVOICE	The invoice number matches no customer ledger entry, or more than one. A warning instead says the invoice is already closed, so the commission is released the next time Release Pending Eligibility runs.
BAA-SETUP-IMPORT-DEFERRED-POLICY	The component makes commission eligible as soon as the invoice is posted. Use a component whose payment policy waits for the invoice to be paid.
BAA-SETUP-IMPORT-DRY-RUN	Import the file again without Dry Run to apply it.

Other imports

Commission costs are imported on the Commission Costs page with Download Excel Template and Import from Excel, not here. See Commission costs.
Commission Settled Outside Business Central and Open Invoice Commission Balances also offer Import from Excel and Download Template for their workbooks. Commission Setup Imports opens both pages with External Settlements and Open Invoice Commission Balances.

Organization CSV imports

Positions, teams, team members and participant links can also be loaded as CSV files on Organization Import Batch, with one Import CSV action per record type. That import applies atomically: any failure rolls back the whole batch. See Sales hierarchies.

Other systems read commission data through the APIs, which are read-only except the insert-only commissionSourceEvents staging endpoint. See the API reference.

What's next

Switch on the modules your plans need: Optional modules.