How does the software generate a commission disbursement authorization?

The CDA is built from the approved transaction and the agent's assigned plan. Sale price and commission inputs produce the gross, then team splits, franchise fees, referral fees, and deductions apply in order. The result is an itemized authorization naming each party and amount, issued under the broker who approved it and stored with the file.

What if an agent is on a 100 percent desk fee plan?

Desk fee plans are a standard plan type. The agent keeps the commission on each side, and the brokerage revenue comes from the recurring desk fee plus any per-transaction or percent-of-GCI fees you attach. Those fees still appear on the disbursement authorization, so the deduction is visible to the agent at closing rather than billed later.

Do client-paid broker fees get split with the agent?

Not unless you set them up that way. Client-paid broker fees are treated as separate additive brokerage revenue rather than part of the commission pool being split. That keeps company dollar accurate and keeps the agent's split calculated on the commission it applies to. The fee still appears as its own line on the authorization.

Will commission data support year-end 1099 reporting?

Yes. Every payout is tied to an agent, a transaction, and a date, which is what year-end reporting needs. You can pull totals per agent for the year, including revenue share and overlay payments, and reconcile them against the disbursement authorizations that produced them. Confirm final filings with your accountant before they go out.

Commission automation

Real Estate Commission Management Software and CDA Automation

Real estate commission management software should bend to your plans, not the other way around. Traditional splits, graduated tiers, caps, 100 percent desk fee, flat fee per side, and salaried agents all run on the same engine. Build the plan once, assign it to an agent, and every closing calculates the same way at every price point.

Then comes the part that eats Fridays. Brokerage360 AI produces a commission disbursement authorization for every closing, itemized by party, showing the split, the cap credit, the franchise fee, the referral fee, and each deduction on its face. Title receives a clean document. Your agent sees the math. You keep an auditable record of what was authorized.

Every plan, calculated to the penny

Composable plans: traditional splits, graduated tiers, caps, 100% desk-fee, flat-fee, and salary
Team splits, franchise fees, referral fees, and per-transaction or %-of-GCI fees
Client-paid broker fees added as separate, additive brokerage revenue
Revenue-share and recruiting overlays paid to sponsors
Disbursement authorizations with an itemized, auditable breakdown per party

Composable plans: splits, graduated tiers, caps, and desk fees

Most brokerages do not run one plan. They run nine, plus exceptions. Plans here are composed from parts, so a graduated tier that steps from 60/40 to 80/20 at a GCI threshold, a cap that flips an agent to 100 percent for the rest of the anniversary year, and a monthly desk fee can coexist without a spreadsheet maintained by one person who cannot take vacation.

Traditional percentage splits, graduated tiers, caps, desk fee, flat fee, and salary are all supported plan types.
Cap progress accrues from closed GCI and rolls at the anniversary date you set for each agent.
Per-transaction fees and percent-of-GCI fees can be layered onto any plan.
Plan changes are versioned, so a file closed in March still calculates on the plan that was in force in March.
The same plan library serves every office, with office-level variations where you need them.

What is a commission disbursement authorization (CDA)?

A commission disbursement authorization is the document your brokerage sends title or escrow instructing exactly who gets paid what out of the commission at closing. It names each party, states each amount, and carries broker authorization. Done by hand, it is a retyped spreadsheet and a source of Friday phone calls. Generated from the transaction record, it is a byproduct of work already done.

Each CDA itemizes the brokerage share, agent share, team share, referral fee, and every deduction line by line.
The figures come from the approved transaction, so the CDA cannot drift from the file it was built on.
Authorization is recorded with the broker who issued it and the time it was issued.
Reissued or corrected authorizations keep the prior version in the audit trail rather than overwriting it.
Agents can see the breakdown behind their number instead of calling accounting to ask.

Team splits, franchise fees, referral fees, and client-paid broker fees

Real closings rarely split two ways. A team lead takes a share before the agent's split. The franchise takes its cut off the top. An outbound referral fee leaves before anyone is paid. Each of these is modeled as its own rule with its own order of operations, so the sequence is applied identically on every file rather than reconstructed from memory each time.

Client-paid broker fees work differently on purpose. They are added as separate additive brokerage revenue rather than folded into the commission being split, so company dollar reflects what the brokerage actually earned and the agent's split is calculated on the commission it belongs to. The distinction shows up as its own line on the disbursement authorization, and again in revenue reporting, where fee income sits beside split income instead of hiding inside it.

Team splits apply before or after the agent split, in the order your team agreement specifies.
Franchise fees can be taken as a percentage of GCI or a flat amount per side.
Inbound and outbound referral fees are tracked as their own line with the paying or receiving party named.
Client-paid broker fees post as additive brokerage revenue and appear separately in company dollar reporting.

Revenue share and recruiting overlays paid to sponsors

If you pay people for recruiting, the accounting gets harder fast. Sponsor relationships are stored on the agent record, and revenue-share or recruiting overlay amounts calculate from closed production on the rules you define. The payment is attributed to the closing that generated it, so a sponsor can see the source of every dollar and you can see the total cost of the program.

That total is the number most owners cannot produce on demand. Here it is a report: overlay expense by sponsor, by office, and by period, sitting next to the company dollar those same closings produced, with 1099 figures built from the same records at year end. If the program is working, the report shows it. If it is quietly costing more than the production it brought in, the report shows that early enough for you to change the rules.

Frequently asked questions

Yes. A plan can step an agent through graduated tiers as closed GCI accumulates and then flip to a post-cap arrangement once the cap is met. Cap progress tracks against the anniversary date you set per agent. Both behaviors run on the same file, so the tier and the cap never have to be reconciled by hand.

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