Stress-test a plan
Plans → Stress Test models a plan across performance levels and tells you what it would pay — before anyone is paid by it. The screen describes itself the same way:
An advisory read on how a plan pays across performance levels — before any rep is paid. Never blocks activation.
It is the cheapest error-detection you get. A plan looks fine on the page; it looks different when you see what it pays at 150%.
Running one
- Go to Plans → Stress Test. Pick the plan under Plan to analyse.
- Click Analyze plan.
- Read the findings. The button becomes Re-analyze for later runs.
Selecting a plan does nothing on its own, and the screen says so:
Nothing runs until you click — selection alone never fires an analysis.
What it reports
Findings come back in three severities, counted across the top of the results:
3 anomalies · 0 warnings · 0 suggestions
- Anomalies — something looks genuinely off.
- Warnings — worth a look, not necessarily wrong.
- Suggestions — smaller nudges.
Above the findings, the run tells you what it was able to measure with. On a plan with no closed-deal history for its measure, that reads:
Simulated using your plan rules. New business bookings estimated from quota — no historical deal data available yet.
That line matters. Without deal history the run models attainment from your quota rather than replaying real deals, so read the numbers as shape rather than as a forecast. How is this calculated? expands the working.
Under the findings you also get a Payout simulation table — payout at 50%, 80%, 100%, 120%, 150% and 200% attainment, plus a single large deal sized at the P90 of the last 12 months — and a Payout curve across 0–200%.
What a finding looks like
A run on a plan paying 6% of new-business bookings, with no cap and a 1.5× accelerator that applies to the whole commission once a rep passes 110% attainment, returns three anomalies:
| Finding | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Plan pays above on-target variable | "At 100% attainment this plan pays €3,000, but on-target variable is €1,750 — a 71.4% gap." |
| Uncapped accelerator — unbounded payout | "This plan accelerates payout above target with no cap, so total pay has no ceiling." |
| Cliff at threshold — payout jumps sharply | "Payout jumps €1,680 at 110% attainment — from €3,270 at 109% to €4,950." |
Each finding names the number it is talking about, so you can take it to finance without re-deriving it.
The cliff comes from that whole-commission ladder. A percentage rule built in the rule builder multiplies band by band instead, so the same 1.5× band raises the rate from 110% without a jump, and this finding does not appear. → How a ladder pays
Testing a specific scenario
Test a specific scenario adds a row of your own to the simulation table. It takes an Attainment % and an optional Deal size, then Add scenario.
Use it for the question the standard rows do not cover — what this plan pays if the whole team lands at 130%, or if one rep closes a deal well above the usual size.
Dismissing a finding
Each finding card carries a ✕ (Dismiss insight) in its top-right corner. It opens a small confirmation with one choice:
☐ This is intentional — don't flag it again for this plan version.
Note: editing the plan will ask again.
- Leave it unticked and the finding goes for this run only. The results show a "n dismissed this run" count.
- Tick it and the finding stops being raised for this plan version — not forever. Editing the plan asks again, which is the point: a choice that was deliberate under one plan may not be under the next.
The tick-box is offered on anomalies and warnings. Suggestions can only be dismissed for the run.
Dismiss sparingly. What you wave past is not in front of whoever inherits this plan after you.
It never blocks you
The Stress Test is advisory by design. It will not stop you activating a plan — "Never blocks activation" is on the screen — and anomalies are not a failure state. Sometimes you know something the test does not.
But activating a plan with unexamined anomalies is how a comp plan quietly costs more than the team it pays for. Read them first.