Clawbacks and recoveries

Returns, clawbacks and corrections can take back more commission than a participant has left to be paid. Bitta Commission handles this with recovery policies: the excess negative amount becomes a recoverable debt, which later settlements recover from the participant's future commission, within the limits you set. Write-offs, legal holds and manager overrides are recorded with reasons and hashes.

This page describes what the app records and applies. Whether and how you may recover commission from an employee or agent is a decision for your finance, HR and legal owners under the laws and contracts that apply to you.

How a negative balance arises

When a return or correction reduces an earning, the negative delta first offsets the participant's current eligible balance. Two cases follow:

The eligible balance covers it. Nothing else happens. The next settlement simply pays less.
The negative delta exceeds the eligible balance. If an active recovery policy applies, only the shortfall moves from Eligible to the Recoverable bucket, once per participant. Without an active policy, the negative balance stays eligible, and settlement lines with a negative net are Carried Forward to offset later earnings.

See Returns and corrections for how the negative delta is created.

Before you start

Plan which rule should apply to which plan versions, and agree the limits with your finance and HR owners.
Give recovery actions only to the finance users who should decide them. The Bitta Commission Participant permission set cannot set legal holds. See Roles and permissions.

Step 1: Set up recovery policies

Open Commission Recovery Policies and add a policy.

Field	What it does
Plan Code / Plan Version No.	The plan version the policy applies to. A blank identity is the company default policy. A plan version policy wins over the default.
Recovery Method	Net Against Future Eligible, Limit Per Settlement, Write Off or Manual Review.
Settlement Limit Percent	For Limit Per Settlement, the maximum share of a settlement payable that may go to recovery.
Maximum Per Settlement Amount	An absolute cap on recovery in one settlement. Zero means no cap.
Respect Protected Pay	Limits recovery so that the remaining payable never falls below the participant version's protected pay amount.
Write-Off Days	For Write Off, the number of open days after which the balance is written off. Zero disables the age rule.
Write-Off Threshold Amount	For Write Off, the amount at or below which the balance is written off. Zero disables the threshold rule.
Termination Handling	What happens to an open balance when the participant is terminated: Continue Recovery, Write Off or Manual Review.
Status	Only Active policies move excess negative deltas to Recoverable.

What each method does

Method	Effect at settlement
Net Against Future Eligible	Recovers the open debt from the participant's next payables, subject to the caps and protected pay.
Limit Per Settlement	Recovers at most the limit percent of each payable, and at most the maximum amount.
Write Off	Does not net the debt against pay. The debt stays open until the write-off policy writes it off.
Manual Review	Recovers only after a manager clears the review with Manager Override.

Step 2: Settle as usual

When you refresh a settlement, the app calculates the recovery for each participant with open recoverable debt and shows it as the line's Recovery Amount. Net Amount is what is paid after recovery. When the settlement is frozen, the recovery is recorded exactly once as a recovery application. A line whose payable is fully used for recovery settles the recovery without any payment. Remaining debt is recovered from the next settlement.

Debt is recovered only from the same participant's commission, and only in the same currency. Foreign-currency debt is not netted from a local-currency payable. See Settlements and pay groups.

Step 3: Monitor and act on open debt

Open Commission Recoveries to see one line per participant and currency:

Field	What it shows
Participant Status	Termination handling applies to terminated participants.
Recoverable Amount	The open debt future settlements can recover.
Total Recoverable, Recovered, Written Off Amount	The history of the debt.
Eligible Amount	The participant's current eligible balance.
Recovery Method	The method that applies, including any participant override.
Legal Hold	Whether recovery is blocked.
Manager Override Percent	An approved share of each payable applied to recovery.
First Open Date / Days Open	Used by the write-off age rule.

Actions:

Write Off moves part or all of the open balance to the Written Off bucket with a reason code. The amount must be positive and within the open balance.
Set or Clear Legal Hold blocks or allows recovery for the participant, with a reason. A held balance stays visible as open debt. A legal hold outranks any method override.
Manager Override approves a share of each settlement payable (0 to 100 percent) for recovery, replaces the policy limit, and clears manual review. The approver and reason are recorded.
Apply Write-Off Policy writes off every balance that meets the policy's age, threshold or termination rule as of the work date. Balances on legal hold are skipped.
Settlement Applications opens Commission Recovery Applications.
Recovery Plans opens Commission Recovery Plans, the per-participant record of holds, overrides, manual review and any method override.

WARNING

A write-off cannot be undone by editing. It is an append-only balance movement with its own evidence. Agree write-off rules with your finance owner before you use Apply Write-Off Policy.

Recovery evidence

Commission Recovery Applications is the append-only record of every recovery and write-off: the kind (applied at settlement or written off), when, the payable before recovery, the amount applied, the recoverable balance before and after, the limit percent and method that applied, the reason, and a tamper-evident Entry Hash.

Accounting for recoveries

Recovered commission uses a recoverable (receivable) account: the Recoverable Account No. on the account mapping, or the default on Commission Posting Setup. The settlement's accounting proposal posts the recovery pair so that each line's liability equals the net paid. See Accounting and posting.

Troubleshooting

A negative balance did not move to Recoverable. Check that an Active recovery policy covers the plan version or that a company default exists.
Nothing was recovered. Check for a legal hold, the Write Off or Manual Review method, protected pay, or a currency mismatch.
BAA-COR-RECOVERY-OVER. The recovery or write-off exceeds the open recoverable balance.
BAA-ACC-RECOVERABLE-ACCOUNT. Set a recoverable account on the account mapping or in the posting setup.