Free template
Staff Payout Tracker Template
Working out what a distributed team is owed, without doing it from memory at 11pm on the last day of the month. Handles mixed compensation models, advances and partial payments.
Only approved work counts towards what is payable. That is deliberate: work that has not passed review is not yet owed, and paying for it early is how you end up paying twice.
What is in it
| Column | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Person | Who this row is about. The per-person summary matches on this exactly, so keep the spelling consistent. |
| Period | Which pay period it belongs to. Useful for filtering later. |
| Work item | What was done, or what the advance was for. |
| Compensation model | Per unit, per hour, per task, or a period rate. |
| Quantity and Rate | Whatever the model measures. Earned multiplies them. |
| Earned | Calculated. Leave the formula alone. |
| Approved | Yes or No. Only Yes counts towards what is payable. |
| Entry type | Earning or Advance. An advance is cash paid early, not new cost. |
| Paid | What has actually been paid against this row. Partial amounts are fine. |
The arithmetic
Already in the file. Here so you can check it rather than take it on trust.
Approved earnings
Sum of Earned where Approved is Yes and Entry type is Earning
Advances taken
Sum of Paid where Entry type is Advance
Payable
Approved earnings - Advances taken
Balance owed
Payable - Paid
How to use it
An advance is cash, not cost
When somebody takes money early, that is not new labour cost. It is cash leaving the business against work that will be done, and it reduces what you owe them later. Giving advances their own entry type keeps them out of the earnings figure, which is why the sheet gets the answer right where a single running total would not.
Approved and paid are different columns for a reason
Approved earnings are what you owe. Paid is what has left. The gap between them is real money that somebody is waiting for, and it deserves to be visible rather than implied.
Mixed models are normal
A writer per piece, a specialist by the hour, a coordinator on a monthly retainer. All three can appear in the same period. Set the model per row rather than trying to convert everyone into hours, which is precision without accuracy.
Let people see their own row
Most of the questions an owner answers by hand each month are somebody wanting to know what they are owed. A per-person view that both sides read removes the question and the argument at the same time.
Where a spreadsheet stops
- You cannot show it to the team. A sheet with everyone's earnings on it is not something you can share with any one of them, so the transparency that would help most is exactly what a shared spreadsheet prevents.
- Rate changes rewrite the past. Edit a rate and every historical row recalculates. Last quarter's payouts silently change.
- Corrections are destructive. Fixing a mistake means editing the row, which erases the fact that there was a mistake.
- Nothing links it to the work. The sheet says a piece of work was approved. It cannot show you the work, the review, or who approved it.
How Bikabo does this
Payouts that build themselves.
Every row here is somebody recording what happened after it happened, which means the sheet is only as current as the last time anybody updated it. On the day people are expecting to be paid, that is exactly when it is least current.
Bikabo builds the same figures from work that has already been approved, deducts advances automatically, records partial payments against a running balance, and lets each person see their own position without asking. Approving a payout and paying it stay separate events.