Dynamically changing sales commissions

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10127508-B1
Application number	US-201514595932-A
Country	US
Kind code	B1
Filing date	Jan 13, 2015
Priority date	Jan 13, 2015
Publication date	Nov 13, 2018
Grant date	Nov 13, 2018

Abstract

A salesperson may be paid commissions for products sold from the inventory of a merchant. In some examples, the commissions for different products may be determined and changed dynamically, throughout the course of a business day, in response to changing sales rates and inventory conditions. Specifically, commissions may be changed to increase the sales rates of certain products over others. As an example, it may be desired to increase the sales rates of products having relatively high inventory counts and/or that are nearing the expiration of their shelf lives. The changing commission amounts are published or advertised to the salespersons throughout the day so that the salespersons can see which products will produce the highest commissions. The commissions may be paid electronically, immediately or soon after the transactions in which the commissions were earned.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A system comprising:
a merchant application installed for configuring a merchant device as a point-of-sale (POS) terminal, the merchant application configuring the POS terminal to transmit transaction information associated with a plurality of POS transactions that occur during a business day to a payment processing service, the transaction information indicating at least how many items of each product of an inventory of a merchant are sold throughout the business day; and
one or more servers associated with the payment processing service, the one or more servers comprising:
one or more processors; and
one or more computer-readable media storing instructions executable by the one or more processors, wherein the instructions program the one or more processors to perform actions comprising:
storing inventory information for multiple products that are stocked by the merchant, the inventory information including inventory counts of the products, an inventory count of a product indicating how many items of the product are in stock, the inventory information additionally indicating a shelf life of each product and an age of each product;
receiving, from the merchant application, the transaction information;
determining sales rates of the multiple products based at least in part on the transaction information;
determining sale priorities of the multiple products, a sale priority of a product being based at least in part on the inventory count of the product, the sales rate of the product, the shelf life of the product, and the age of the product;
determining amounts of sales commissions to be paid by the merchant to a salesperson for selling the products, wherein the sales commission for each product is determined as a function of the sale priority of the product;
updating the inventory counts throughout the business day based at least in part on the transaction information to generate updated inventory counts, the updated inventory counts indicating how many items of each product are currently in stock;
updating the sale priorities throughout the business day based at least in part on the updated inventory counts;
updating the amounts of the sales commissions throughout the business day based at least in part on the updated sale priorities to generate updated amounts of sales commissions; and
transmitting the updated amounts of the sales commissions to the merchant application, wherein the merchant application is configured to present the updated amounts of the sales commission to the salesperson of the merchant throughout the business day to influence the sales rates of the products throughout the business day.

2. The system of claim 1 , the sale priority of each product being further based at least in part on one or more of:
a profit margin for the product;
a demand for the product;
a value of the product;
a projected appreciation or depreciation in the value of the product;
a carrying cost of the product;
an estimated time to obsolescence of the product;
an inventory space used to store the product;
a wholesale availability of the product; or
a lead-time to acquire the product.

3. The system of claim 1 , wherein:
the actions further comprise determining a sales rate of a particular product based at least in part on the transaction information;
determining the sale priority of a particular product comprises determining that the age of the particular product will exceed the shelf life of the particular product at the sales rate of the particular product; and
the actions further comprise increasing the amount of the commission for the particular product in response to determining that the age of the particular product will exceed the shelf life of the particular product at the sales rate.

4. The system of claim 1 , wherein:
an individual commission is associated with a POS transaction conducted by the salesperson during a work shift; and
the actions further comprise initiating an electronic funds transfer of the commission to the salesperson during the work shift.

5. The system of claim 1 , wherein:
an individual commission is associated with a POS transaction conducted by the salesperson during a first work shift; and
the actions further comprise initiating an electronic funds transfer of the commission to the salesperson before a second work shift of the salesperson, wherein the second work shift is the next work shift of the salesperson after the first work shift.

6. A method, comprising:
determining, by one or more servers associated with a payment processing service, amounts of commissions for multiple products that are stocked by a merchant, the commission amount for each product being based at least in part on an inventory count of the product, the inventory count of the product indicating how many items of the product are in stock;
receiving, from a merchant application executable via a merchant device associated with the merchant, transaction information for a plurality of sale transactions that occur during a time period, the transaction information indicating how many items of each product are sold throughout the time period;
repeatedly updating, by the one or more servers, the inventory counts throughout the time period based at least in part on the transaction information to generate updated inventory counts;
repeatedly updating, by the one or more servers, the commission amounts throughout the time period based at least in part on the updated inventory counts to generate updated commission amounts; and
offering, via a presentation output by the merchant application via the merchant device, the updated commission amounts to a salesperson as incentive for selling the products.

7. The method of claim 6 , wherein:
one of the sales transactions is for one of the products; and
the method further comprises paying an updated commission amount of the updated commission amounts for said one of the products.

8. The method of claim 6 , wherein:
one of the sales transactions is for one of the products and occurs at a transaction time; and
the method further comprises paying an updated commission amount of the updated commission amounts for said one of the products within an hour of the transaction time.

9. The method of claim 6 , one or more of the sale transactions being associated with a respective product, the method further comprising initiating an electronic fund transfer of an updated commission amount of the updated commission amounts for the respective product to an account associated with the salesperson.

10. The method of claim 6 , one or more of the sale transactions being associated with a respective product, the method further comprising transferring an updated commission amount of the updated commission amounts for the respective product to the salesperson using debit card information of the salesperson.

11. The method of claim 6 , one or more of the sale transactions being associated with a respective product, the method further comprising initiating a separate electronic funds transfer of an updated commission amount of the updated commission amounts to an account associated with the salesperson for each sale transaction of the plurality of sale transactions.

12. The method of claim 6 , further comprising:
determining a current sales rate of a particular product based at least in part on the transaction information;
determining that a particular product will exceed a shelf life of the particular product at a current sales rate of the particular product; and
updating the commission amounts based at least in part on increasing the commission amount for the particular product in response t

Assignees

• Square Inc

Inventors

• Hollis Caroline
• Nathoo Amir
• Brady James Colin
• Dunn Connor H

Classifications

• G06Q10/087

  Inventory or stock management, e.g. order filling, procurement or balancing against orders · CPC title

• G06Q10/06313 Primary

  Resource planning in a project environment · CPC title

• G06Q10/06398 Primary

  Performance of employee with respect to a job function · CPC title

• G06Q10/1057

  Benefits or employee welfare, e.g. insurance, holiday or retirement packages · CPC title

• G06Q30/06

  Buying, selling or leasing transactions · CPC title