Falsche Provisionsberechnung – Verlorene Gebühren und Überzahlung von Beratern

Definition

Executive search firms commonly charge clients 20–30% of the placed executive’s annual remuneration as a fee, with variations for retained vs. contingent search, and may include staged payments and success bonuses.[2] Consultants then receive a commission calculated as a percentage of their individual or team billings, often with tiered or accelerators (e.g., 10% up to AUD 300k billings, 20% beyond that).[1][3][4] In many boutiques this logic is implemented in spreadsheets manually maintained by finance or management. Where fees include superannuation, sign-on bonuses, or variable components, manual capture of the billable base often excludes certain remuneration elements or misreads signed terms, leading to under-invoicing clients by 1–3% of the agreed fee. Conversely, consultants may be paid commission on gross invoice values that are later discounted, written off, or fall outside qualifying criteria (e.g., replacement guarantees, staged payments not yet collected), effectively overpaying commissions by 5–10% on those deals. For a senior executive recruiter with AUD 1–1.5 million in annual billings – consistent with high-end ERI compensation benchmarks[4] – a 2% client under-billing combined with a 5% overpayment on 20–30% of deals can conservatively generate revenue leakage and excess commission of AUD 15,000–40,000 per high-billing consultant per year. Across a 10–20 consultant firm, this logic-based loss easily scales to AUD 150,000–200,000 annually, driven by complex, non-automated commission rules and inconsistent capture of fee bases.

Why This Matters

The Pitch: Executive Search players in Australia 🇦🇺 waste AUD 50,000–200,000 per year on miscalculated commissions and missed fee uplifts. Automation of fee capture and commission calculation on every placement eliminates this leakage.

Affected Stakeholders

Managing Partner / CEO, CFO / Financial Controller, Executive Search Consultants, Finance / Billing Analysts

Related Business Risks