A closing settles, a five-figure commission lands — and somehow far less reaches your account than the “3% of the sale price” you did the math on in your head. The brokerage took its split, a franchise fee came off the top, the transaction and E&O fees came out at the table, and if the lead was referred, a quarter was gone before you ever saw it. Your CRM tracked the lead all the way to the closing and then went quiet on the one question that pays your mortgage: what did this deal actually pay me?
This workbook is built around that question. It’s the money side of the business a lead CRM doesn’t touch — every closing netted down to real take-home, your annual cap tracked so you know the day the split stops, your pipeline forecast honestly, and the whole year rolled into a tax-ready picture you own.
See your real take-home on every closing
The Closings & Commission tab is the engine. Enter a sale price and your rate and it figures your gross commission — then it nets that the way your brokerage actually does: an off-the-top referral fee, your brokerage split, a franchise or royalty fee, and the flat per-deal fees, taken in the right order. The last column is your net commission — the money that really reaches you, before tax. GCI is the number agents brag about at the office; net commission is the number that pays the bills.
The cap, tracked as you go
Most modern brokerages cap the split: once you’ve paid in your annual cap, you keep 100% for the rest of the year. That cap is a running total across every closing, which is exactly the math a blank spreadsheet and a CRM get wrong. This workbook tracks it down the rows for you — the split comes out in full on your early deals, shrinks to a partial amount on the deal that reaches your cap, and is zero after. The deal that caps you out is the one that suddenly pays nearly the whole check, and the Dashboard shows you how close you are the whole way there.
A pipeline that forecasts the truth
The Deal Pipeline tab weights every deal you’re working by how likely its stage is to close — a signed contract under inspection counts for most of its commission, a fresh lead for almost none. Sum the weighted column and you have a realistic forecast of the commission coming, not a best-case fantasy you might spend before it’s earned.
Walk into tax time already sorted
You’re a 1099 business, and the business has costs and miles the split never touches. The Expenses tab is a Schedule-C log that flags how each category is treated and figures the deductible for you — half of a business meal, a client gift capped at $25, and a zero for the car costs the mileage rate already covers. The Mileage tab keeps the audit-ready log the IRS asks for and shows the standard mileage deduction you’ve earned. The Dashboard totals it into an estimated taxable profit and a suggested set-aside, so quarterly taxes stop being a scramble.
Set it up once, in your terms
On the Setup tab you enter your split model a single time — your commission rate, your split, your annual cap, any franchise fee and its cap, your per-deal fees, the year’s IRS mileage rate, your GCI goal, and a tax set-aside. Every other tab reads from there, so the whole workbook re-nets to your brokerage’s exact terms. Change brokerages and you change a few cells, not the whole file.
Try the free Commission-Split Calculator first
Want to see the idea before you buy? The free Commission-Split Calculator nets a single closing to your real take-home after the referral, the split, and the fees — right in your browser, no signup. This workbook is the whole year: it tracks your annual cap across every closing, forecasts your pipeline, and rolls it all into a tax-ready dashboard.
Own it, don’t rent it
A commission-tracking app charges you every month to rent your own numbers and keeps your history behind a login you’ll lose the day you stop paying. This is a workbook you buy once and keep — the structure you own, sitting between a blank spreadsheet you’d have to build from scratch and a monthly subscription you’d never stop paying. It works in Excel, Google Sheets, and LibreOffice, and it ships pre-loaded with a full worked example — a year of closings that caps out mid-season — so nothing starts blank; you clear the example and enter your own.
When the business grows past one agent — a team, a transaction coordinator, more moving parts than a file wants to hold — Ardent Seller is the living version of this kind of workbook, with your work, costs, and earnings tracked in one place and profit computed across the whole operation. There’s a free plan to start. The workbook is a great place to learn your numbers first.
A note on the numbers
Every figure in the examples is illustrative — brokerage splits, caps, franchise fees, and rates vary widely, so you enter your own from your Independent Contractor Agreement and your settlement statements. The IRS standard mileage rate changes every year, so you enter the current rate for your tax year. This is a business and tax-record reference, not licensed tax, accounting, or legal advice — a tax professional can confirm what applies to you. Not affiliated with or endorsed by any brokerage, franchise, association, the NAR, or the IRS.
