A deduction that won't go in usually hits one of three walls: there's not enough commission left to take it from, the CDA was generated before the deduction was added, or the type was never set up. Here's how each one looks and what clears it.
Total Deduction Exceeds the Commission
Deductions come out of a share that already exists. When the brokerage's commission on a transaction is $0 — or an agent has been allocated 100% and nothing was left for the office — there's no balance for a broker deduction to reduce, and Pipeline stops the entry rather than record a negative payout.
Three ways forward, depending on what actually happened:
- The split is wrong. Go back to Step 2 — Broker / Agent Commission Disbursement and check the allocation. If the office really does keep a share, giving it one gives the deduction something to come out of.
- The money should come out before the split. Take it as an off-the-top deduction in Step 1 — Sale Info instead, which reduces the gross before anyone's share is calculated.
- The payment is real and there's genuinely no commission behind it. Record it as text in the Co-op Brokerage Commission & Special Instructions box — for example, “Pay $300 TC fee from [Brokerage] to [Coordinator] at closing.” It prints on the CDA above or below the payables. Written this way it instructs the closer, but it doesn't flow into your financial reports.
The Payee Field or Agent Dropdown Won't Appear
This one has a specific fingerprint: the CDA was generated first, and the deduction is being added on a later pass. When that happens the payee field can fail to appear, or the in-house agent list won't return a name no matter what you type.
To clear it:
- Open the transaction and find the CDA in the Financial Docs section.
- Click the [Gear] beside the CDA and delete it.
- Click [Manage Commissions] and enter the commissions again from the start, including the deduction this time.
The payee field behaves normally on a fresh entry. If it happens again on a transaction you've just re-created, send us the transaction name so we can look at that specific record.
The Deduction Type Isn't in the Dropdown
The dropdown offers the deduction types your office has set up, and nothing else — there's no way to type a new name on the transaction itself. A master admin adds it on the Deductions page in Admin / Settings under Financials, and it's available on the next commission entry.
If a deduction was added moments ago and still isn't showing, do a hard refresh so the browser stops serving the older version of the page.
Learn More
Deductions come out of the brokerage's share or an agent's share of a commission and get paid to someone else — an in-house teammate or an outside company.
See Deductions
Still Have Questions?
Email us at help@paperlesspipeline.com and we'll help.