Create a Commission Invoice Format for Planning that Streamlines Your Workflow

Commission invoice format for Planning

In this tutorial we will show you how to prepare and circulate a real estate commission invoice The purpose of the commission invoice is to alert the attorneys on a transaction prior to closing how much commission is payable to your firm for your involvement in the deal either as a listing agent or? As a buyer's agent you will usually receive the requests for the commission invoice around two or three days prior to the closing Customarily, when you receive the request it will come from either one of the attorneys or one of the paralegals or assistants working on behalf of either the buyer's attorney or the sellers attorney The request is usually very time-sensitive for whatever reason the attorneys usually don't ask for it while in advance instead they hysterically demand it in some cases the same day or the same afternoon when they send out the request But fortunately it's not a difficult task so even if it is a short notice, it shouldn't be a problem for you to prepare it now We're looking at a template for a commission invoice. This would vary by firm. But the truth is there really is no required format for this in some cases real estate brokers really just send an email However, it is more professional to prepare an actual document and send that to both attorneys as well as your your counterpart if there's another broker working on the transaction So you may be asking or thinking where do we find the Commission info for the deal? Well, the commission information for a transaction has been known well in advance well before hopefully you actually proceeded to transact and put the deal in contract so the way to remind yourself of what the Commission amount would be is to look at the deal sheet for the transaction now here we have a section of a deal sheet and it is for illustrative purposes only. So it's a fictitious address Everything is just made up, but we've put this here to show you exactly where you would find the commission information So let us assume that in this deal. We are the listing agent on the deal so we've actually prepared and sent out this deal sheet probably a few months ago and the commission information is listed usually towards the bottom. So in this case the total commission is 6% and the split is 3% to the listing broker which would be us and 3% to the co broker which would be the buyer's agent from another firm So we know that the commission is 3% and we also know that the purchase price is six hundred and eighty-five thousand so well open up excel or take out a calculator Well put 685,000 We'll put three percent and we will just do the calculation So the total commission here is twenty thousand five hundred and fifty dollars So you would open up the template and you would start filling the sentence. So the Commission is three percent and As per our calculation, it's twenty thousand five hundred and fifty dollars so you would fill this in twenty five fifty You would obviously put the date so whatever that might be and here you would fill in the seller's attorney and the buyers attorney so we're just gonna make make these up so we're gonna call this Smith Jones Okay, maybe that's the sellers attorney buyer's attorney will say her name is Sheila Richards So you would have this information from the deal sheet and Just to remind you. This is only a part of the deal sheets So there's another section at the top which has the buyers info the sellers info and the attorneys for both sides So you put that in now, the address is obviously important. So in this case again, it's fictitious 203 East 25th Street Apartment 4C so in the address we would fill in 203 East 25th Street Apartment 4C Presumably, we have the city of course in New York. In this case and just gonna make up the ZIP code in the interest of time So let's say the zip code is 1 0 0 2 1 Now the name of the seller and the buyer again will be in the deal sheet. So let's just make it up again, John Smith and the buyer is Leslie Alexander and the final thing we need to do is fill out the sale price The sale price is six hundred and eighty five thousand. So we'll put that in here and Just quickly review it to make sure that it's complete Looks like it's complete so we would go ahead and save this as a PDF So to pick the file format as PDF and it's usually nice to professionally name the commission invoice. So in this case you could put the date We could put the firm in this case is home dax real estate and then we would put the address two or three East 25th Street Apartment 4C Okay, so we'll go ahead and click export and that should that should save it down as a PDF now the next step is to go into your inbox and Iideally you have the email open which is from the attorney or paralegal asking for the Commission invoice so you would reply all to that email you would make sure that the other broker is copied if if you'd like technically you don't really need to include them but in many cases the broker on the other side will continue to ask you to send the commission invoice So an easy way to prevent that is just to copy them on the invoice and that way they know you've sent it so here we would we would actually go ahead and upload the document. So, you know in this case I'm not going to do it, but you would just drag and drop the PDF into this screen and you'd have the attachment and then of course, you know you would put in the unit or the address 203 25th Street Apartment 4C Matthew and John in this case. I had just filled that in previously, but it's meant to be the names of the attorneys so if we do it correctly, let's just say it's Smith Jones LLP, let's say the contacts name is Eddie over at that firm. So Eddie and Sheila, so we'll put Eddie and Sheila Again, I haven't attached the document just because this is a tutorial but make sure you attach the commission invoice and make sure again that you copy both attorneys easiest ways to just reply all and once you've done that you go ahead and click send and that should be the end of the process Now looking ahead, once you sent the commission invoice you're probably a few days out from the closing. So at this point you'll want to remind yourself to coordinate the walkthrough with the buyer and the seller So if you're the listing agent, you know, you have the key So you do need to provide access. If you're the buyer's agent you would reach to the listing agent and asked when you could be accommodated for the walkthrough After the walkthrough, you have the closing and it's usually on the same day or in some rare instances. It's the next day We hope that was helpful. If you have any questions, give us a shout. Leave us a comment