DiveOps works out staff commission from your day-to-day records — published trip sheets, sign-offs and payments — and shows its working. You review and approve each amount on Finance → Commissions; approved amounts flow into payroll.
When you'd use this
- Setting the standard commission rates your centre pays.
- Reviewing and approving what each instructor or guide is owed.
- Checking why a suggested amount is what it is.
- Spotting anything where the money on file no longer matches reality.
Setting the default rates
Settings → Commissions holds two centre-wide defaults:
- Default course commission rate (%) — the share of a course or dive booking value an instructor earns, unless that person has their own rate on their Team profile.
- Default retail commission rate (%) — applied to shop sales unless the salesperson has their own retail rate.
To pay one person differently, open them on Team and set their rate on the Commission card. Leave blank to use the centre default. Press Save in the bar at the bottom.
How an amount is worked out
Commission is always worked out on the dive-menu price as it stood when the booking was made — never on what the customer actually paid. A discount, an agent's net rate or an add-on (like a room) changes what the customer pays, not what your staff earn; and if you raise a menu price later, bookings already sold keep the price they were sold at. The customer must still have fully paid their own bill before commission is released.
- Courses: the instructor who owns the group earns the course rate on the course's menu price. A co-taught course splits by the percentages set on the group.
- Activities and packs (fun diving and similar): pay follows the published trip sheets. Each day's dives are credited to the guide who led that day's group, so a pack guided by two people over two days splits between them automatically. When two guides shared one outing, set an Add staff split on that outing group (Dive Groups → Activities) — each is then paid for that group's dives only, at their own rate.
- Dive counts are capped at what the service sells: a one-dive service placed on a two-dive boat counts as one dive, so a split between guides stays fair and "of" figures read honestly ("1 of 1", not "2 of 1").
Expand an entry (the arrow on the left) to see How this was worked out — one line per trip-sheet day, with the site, the guide, the dives and that day's slice of the pay. The lines always add up to exactly what each person is due.
The same "how it was worked out" panel appears on the booking's own page, but pay figures are for finance roles only: someone with booking or dive-group access (e.g. reception) sees who guided which day and how many dives, but not the money — the amounts show only to team members with commission access.
Approving commission
- Open Finance → Commissions. The To review tab lists everything waiting.
- Click Approve on an entry. The pop-up shows two checks: Signed off and Paid in full.
- If both are green, one click confirms it.
- If either check isn't met — or you change an amount — you must give a reason (tap a quick-reason button to fill it in one press, or type your own). The reason is kept forever on the entry's history.
- Approving starts a 10-second Undo window in case of a slip.
Approved amounts appear in that pay period's payroll. Paying the period locks them onto payslips.
Approve several at once
When several entries are ready, the To review tab shows an Approve all ready button with a count. It approves — in one step — every entry that is both Signed off and Paid in full (the same two checks as the single Approve), each into the open pay period covering its date. Entries that still need review, a payment, a guide, or a changed amount are left exactly as they were.
- After confirming, you'll see how many were approved and how many were skipped. An entry is skipped if there's no open pay period covering its date — open one in Payroll and click again.
- Very large batches are approved up to a few hundred at a time; if some are left, the button reappears with the new count — just click it again.
- Anything approved this way can still be reopened individually afterwards.
Auto-approve (optional)
Once you trust how commission is worked out, you can let it approve itself. Tick Auto-approve ready commission at the top of the Commissions screen and choose a settling time (default 24 hours).
- Overnight, DiveOps approves every entry that is signed off and paid in full and has been unchanged for that settling time — into the open pay period for its date. The settling time is your safety margin: if you sign a group off and then realise it was wrong, undo it within that window and it was never auto-approved.
- It only ever touches clean entries. Anything still needing review, a payment, or a guide is left for you.
- If ready pay has no open pay period, nothing is approved and an alert appears in your error log so you know to open the period.
- You can still approve, reopen, or reassign any entry yourself at any time. Turn it off whenever you like.
Correcting who is paid after a group has run
If a finished trip or course ends up on the wrong person — a guide swapped at the last minute, or a booking put on the wrong instructor — you can move the pay to the right person, without undoing anything. The money moves (it is never created or lost) and every screen — Commissions, the Planner and payslips — updates together.
The Reassign box lets you give the pay to one person, or split it between several by percentage: pick a person, then Add a guide to split and set each share (they must total 100%). If the pay was already approved, reassigning reopens it for you to approve again; already-paid pay must be reversed on the Paid tab first.
- A course — expand the entry on To review and use Reassign instructor to make one person the sole instructor of the whole group.
- A fun trip — expand the entry; in How this was worked out, each outing has a Reassign button, and Reassign all to… moves every outing on that booking to one person at once. (If your centre records fun trips on a published trip sheet, change the guide on the trip sheet instead — the pay follows automatically.)
- You can also reassign from the Planner: open History → Completed and reassign a finished outing or cohort there.
Reassigning a whole outing moves everyone who was on it, because a trip has one guide.
Once a commission has been approved you can still correct it. On the Reviewed tab, expand the entry and use Reassign: it reopens the pay, moves it to the right person, and sends it back to To review for you to approve again. Because a trip has one guide and a course has one instructor, this reopens everyone who shared that outing or cohort, so they can be approved again with the new person. Commission that has already been paid is locked. To change a paid amount, use Reverse on the Paid tab first, then correct it.
The Held tab
Held is pay that's waiting on a trip. A record shows here when a diver's trip sheet isn't published yet, or they were taken off the boat. Nothing is lost. Publish their trip sheet with them on it and the pay moves back to To review on its own. If it's a future or unpaid booking, just leave it — it will move over when the trip actually happens. The tab only appears when something is held, and if wages you expected seem to be missing, check here first.
Reopening an approved commission
- Reopen (on the Reviewed tab) puts an approved commission back into review with the same people and the same split it was approved with. Reopening never recalculates anything by itself. (If an amount was manually overridden at approval, the row returns showing its standard suggested figure — the override and its reason stay on the entry's history.)
- A reopened commission is also protected from automatic recalculation: day-to-day changes elsewhere (payments, trip sheets, group edits) won't alter it while it sits in review.
- If the group's instructor split has changed since the amounts were set — or the booking has been cancelled — the reopened row shows a Split changed since flag with a Recalculate button. Pressing it asks you to confirm, then re-works the commission from the current setup. Or simply approve the restored amounts if they're still right — the choice is always yours, never automatic.
- Commission that has already been paid can't be reopened — use Reverse on the Paid tab instead, which claws it back on the next pay run.
Tracking unused dives (packs)
Every multi-dive booking's dive wallet — "4 of 10 used · 6 left", counted from published trip sheets — shows on the Activities tab of Dive Groups, next to the diver's name and on their booking. A diver stays in the pool there until every dive is used, so nobody's remaining dives can quietly fall out of sight. (This replaced the old "Open packs" panel on the trip sheet.)
What your team sees
Each team member's My Pay page shows a My commission so far card — a live list of what they've earned from published trip sheets, before payroll. If a trip they guided is missing, the day's trip sheet is what to check: it is the record pay is worked out from.
Tips
- 🟢 Publish trip sheets promptly — publishing is what turns a day's diving into evidence for pay.
- 🟢 Rate changes only affect future, unpaid periods. A paid payslip is frozen.
- One-off bonuses aren't set here — add them on the person's Team profile Bonuses card.
Troubleshooting
- A guide's pay looks wrong on an activity → the day's trip sheet may still be a draft, or the diver isn't placed in a group on it. Fix the sheet; the amount updates itself.
- The approve pop-up demands a reason → the entry isn't Signed off or isn't Paid in full, or you changed the amount; the typed reason is your audit trail for approving it anyway.
- A guide says a trip is missing from their My Pay card → check that day's published trip sheet has them as the group's guide.
- There's no Reassign button on a fun trip → your centre records that trip on a published trip sheet, so change the guide on the trip sheet itself (the pay follows), or the commission is already approved or paid — reopen or reverse it first.