A sales staff whose pay structure is heavily skewed in favor of commission payments, rather than salaries, will probably hound the accounting staff at month-end to see what their commission payments will be. This coincides to the time of the month when the accounting staff is trying to close the accounting books, and so increases their workload at the worst possible time of the month. But, by creating a linkage between the accounting database and a company's Internet site, it is now possible to shift this information directly to the Web page where the sales staff can view it at any time, and without involving the valuable time of the accounting staff.

There are two ways to post the commission information. One is to wait until all commission-related calculations have been completed at month-end, and then either manually "dump" the data into an HyperText Markup Language (HTML) format for posting to a Web page, or else run a batch program that does this automatically. Either approach will give the sales staff a complete set of information about their commissions. That said, this approach still requires some manual effort at month-end (even if only for a few minutes while a batch program runs).

An alternative approach is to create a direct interface between the accounting database and the Web page, so that commissions are updated constantly, including grand totals for each commission payment period. By using this approach, the accounting staff has virtually no work to do in conveying information to the sales staff. In addition, sales personnel can check their commissions at any time of the month and call the accounting staff with any concerns right away. This is a great improvement, as problems can be spotted and fixed at once, rather than waiting until the crucial month-end closing period to correct them.

No matter which method you use for posting commission information, a password system will be needed, since this is highly personal payroll-related information. There should be a reminder program built into the system, so that the sales staff is forced to alter their passwords on a regular basis, thereby reducing the risk of outside access to this information.