Plan lifecycle and versions
Understanding this is what lets you change a plan without losing the ability to explain past payouts.
Plan status
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
draft | Created, never activated. Pays nobody. Makes nobody billable. |
active | Has an active version. Paying. |
retired | Deactivated. Stops paying, stops billing. Reversible. |
There is no archived plan status and no destructive delete for a plan that has paid anyone.
retired is the terminal state, and it is visible and reversible on purpose.
A draft plan can be soft-deleted; a plan that has ever been active cannot.
Version status
Every plan holds versions:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
draft | Being edited. Not paying. |
active | The version currently paying. |
superseded | A newer version was activated. Kept forever. |
Exactly one version is active at a time.
Changing a plan that is already paying
You cannot edit a live plan's rules in place. A plan that is currently paying is locked, and its rules are not editable while it is active. To change them, take it out of service first:
- Open the plan and choose Deactivate — "Pause payouts from this plan". Lokom warns you
that "Its rules become inaccessible until you reactivate it — they're preserved, not
deleted." The plan moves to
retired. - Choose Reactivate — "Bring this plan back as a draft to review and publish". The plan
comes back as a
draft, with every rule intact. - Edit the rules, then Activate again.
Between step 1 and step 3 the role has no active plan, so reps stop accruing on the open period. Lokom says this plainly when you deactivate: "Recipients on this plan will have no active plan — they stop accruing commissions on the open period." Do the edit in one sitting.
If you do not, the Plans list keeps saying so on that role's row until you fix it — see below.
How Lokom tells you a role has nobody being paid
A role with pay set up (an OTE or an OTV) and no active plan is a role where Lokom is doing nothing: every deal that closes on it earns no commission. The Plans list flags that on the role's own row, and keeps flagging it. There is no dismiss button.
The line names how long it has been true and what to do next:
Unpaid for 2 periods — nobody on this role has earned commission since Jul 22. Finish the draft to start paying this role.
It gets more prominent the longer it lasts. Nothing for the first period, a caution mark once a pay period has passed, and an amber bar down the row's left edge from the second period on. It is never styled as an error, because nothing is broken — the plan is just unfinished.
Where it points depends on what you already have. If a draft exists on that role, it tells you to finish it; the row itself opens that draft. If there is no draft, it tells you to create a plan, and the row's + Create plan button is right there.
Four cases stay quiet, on purpose:
- The role has an active plan. Nothing to say.
- The role has no OTE and no OTV. It is not a commissioned role, so no plan is missing.
- Nobody is in the role yet. The line still appears, but stays neutral — no money is accruing for anyone.
- You deactivated the plan on purpose. Lokom already warned you at the time and you chose it, so it states the fact neutrally instead of raising an alarm.
The banner at the top of the page is deliberately narrower: it names only the roles where a pay period has already passed with a real person in the role.
If you want to try a variation without touching the paying plan at all, use Duplicate instead — "Copy rules, SPIFFs and targets". That gives you a separate draft plan holding a copy of every rule, and the original keeps paying. You will need to sort out which of the two is assigned to the role before activating the copy.
Why old versions stick around
Superseded versions are never deleted, which is what makes historical payouts explicable: a March statement references the version that was active in March, not the plan as it looks today. Change your rate in July and March still explains itself.
Activating
From the plan, choose Activate. That single action:
- Makes the draft version active and supersedes the previous one.
- Sets the plan to
activeif it was a draft. - Makes every participant in the role billable.
That last point is the one to know. Activation is the moment free stops being free, and on a free account activating for a third rep is what triggers the upgrade prompt. → Billable reps
Draft plans cost nothing
A draft plan cannot run a calculation, so it has no operational value and Lokom does not charge for it — no time limit, no grace period, no auto-promotion. You pay when you publish.
On Free this is still bounded by the tier's own limits — 2 plans, 5 rules, 100 deals — so drafting is free but not unlimited. → Plans and pricing
Retiring
Deactivating retires the plan. It stops paying, its reps stop being billable, and every statement it produced stays intact and explicable.
Reactivating is possible — which is also a billing event, since it makes those reps billable again.