Paying Roofing Sales Reps: The Complete Commission Guide

A rep walks into your office on a Friday afternoon with a printed spreadsheet. He has been doing the math on his phone for three weeks. He is convinced you owe him $14,200. You pull up QuickBooks and the production calendar and you get to $9,600. Neither of you is lying. You are using different definitions of the same words.

That conversation ends one of two ways. Either he walks out the door and signs with the competitor who poached him last month, or you write a check you cannot actually afford because you would rather overpay than lose him mid-season. Both outcomes are expensive. Both are avoidable.

Roofing sales commission is the single most emotionally charged number in your business. It is also the one most contractors handle the worst. We have watched seven-figure companies fall apart over a $2,000 commission dispute and we have watched scrappy two-rep outfits scale past thirty doors a week because the pay plan was clear, fair, and visible in real time.

This is the complete guide to paying roofing sales reps in 2026. Structures, splits, clawbacks, legal gotchas, state variation, and the exact way to design a plan that still works when you hire your eleventh rep.

Commission Disputes Are The Number One Morale Killer In Roofing Sales

Before we get into structures and percentages, understand what you are actually preventing. The top three reasons good roofing reps quit, in our experience, are not territory, not leads, and not the weather. They are:

1. They do not trust the commission math.
2. They cannot see what they have earned in real time.
3. Someone above them moved the goalposts after the deal was signed.

A rep who closes a $38,000 roof on a Tuesday wants to know, by Tuesday night, what that deal is worth to him. Not after the insurance supplement comes back. Not after the material invoice hits. Tuesday night. If he has to wait three weeks and then argue about it, he has already started looking for another shop.

You cannot fix this with a better spreadsheet. You fix it with a plan written in plain English, a system that shows reps their accrued commission live, and a set of rules that never change mid-deal. The rest of this guide is how to build that.

What Roofing Reps Actually Get Paid In 2026

Let's start with numbers, because every article on this topic dances around them. Here is what we see across hundreds of contractors right now, broken out by role and tenure.

Door knockers and setters (first year): $45,000 to $75,000 total earnings. Most are 100% commission or very low hourly plus commission. Top performers clear six figures in their first year in a storm market. Average setters in a retail market struggle to hit $50,000.

​Closers (first year): $65,000 to $110,000. Closers with two years of experience and a decent territory routinely clear $150,000. We have clients paying closers $250,000+ in hail markets. We also have clients whose "closers" are really part-time side hustlers making $22,000 because they run eight deals a year.

Senior closers and sales managers (3+ years): $130,000 to $300,000. A senior closer who runs his own book, self-generates half his leads, and manages one setter underneath him is the most valuable employee in most roofing companies. Pay them accordingly or someone else will.

CSRs and admin: $38,000 to $62,000 salary, sometimes with a small commission override (0.25% to 1% of company revenue) to keep them invested. More on CSR comp in section four.

If your numbers are wildly below these ranges, you have a retention problem whether you know it yet or not. If your numbers are wildly above, you either have a margin problem or you are an insurance restoration shop with a much higher ticket than retail.

The Four Commission Structures That Actually Work

There are only four commission structures worth using in roofing sales. Everything else is a variation on these.

1. Straight Commission

No salary, no draw, no base. Rep gets a percentage of revenue or gross profit on deals they close. Standard rates are 8% to 12% of net collected, or 35% to 50% of gross profit, depending on how leads are sourced.

Straight commission works when:

• Reps are 1099 (more on that later).
• Deal size is high enough that even slow weeks aren't catastrophic.
• You provide enough leads that a working rep can't fail to eat.

Straight commission fails when you need reps to do anything other than close. Administrative work, follow-up on pending claims, training new hires, attending meetings — none of that pays under pure commission, so reps will not do it. Do not be surprised.

2. Salary Plus Commission

A base salary (usually $24,000 to $48,000) plus a reduced commission percentage (typically 4% to 7% of net, or 20% to 30% of gross profit). Reps get a floor and the company gets a rep who will actually answer Slack messages.

This is the right structure for closers you want to retain long-term, for sales managers, and for anyone running a team. It is the wrong structure for street-level setters, who should be straight commission or hourly-plus-per-set.

3. Draw Against Commission

The company fronts the rep a weekly or monthly "draw" — essentially a loan — and deducts it from future commission. If the rep earns $8,000 in commission and took $4,000 in draws, they get a $4,000 check. If they earned $3,000 and took $4,000, they owe the company $1,000.

Draws are helpful for new reps in their first 60 to 90 days while they ramp. They are a disaster when you let a rep stack up three or four months of negative balance, because at some point that rep realizes he is working for free to pay down a debt he will never clear, and he quits. We strongly recommend a hard cap on negative draw balance (30 days maximum) and a written policy on what happens when a rep leaves in the red.

4. Hybrid (Setter Fee Plus Closer Override)

For teams that separate setting and closing, a hybrid plan pays a flat fee per set that turns into a contract (often $150 to $400), plus an override percentage (1% to 3%) on deals the setter's leads closed. The closer gets a reduced percentage because they didn't generate the lead. Everybody eats.

For a deeper dive on splitting the pie between setters and closers, keep reading.

Setter vs Closer vs CSR Splits

Every roofing team eventually has to answer one question: when a $40,000 roof gets signed, who gets paid, and how much?

Here is a split we see work consistently for teams that separate the roles:

• Setter: 2% to 3% of net collected, or a flat $200 to $400 per contract signed from their set.
• Closer: 6% to 9% of net collected.
• CSR / production coordinator: 0.5% to 1% of net collected, paid quarterly or on a bonus pool structure.
• Sales manager: 1% to 2% override on everything their team produces.

Total commission load on a deal: roughly 10% to 14% of net collected, depending on roles. That is the budget you need to work backwards from when you set retail pricing.

CSRs are the role most contractors underpay and under-incentivize. Your CSR is the person who keeps production on schedule, manages the insurance supplement process, and fields the angry homeowner calls. Give them a small piece of the revenue pie and you will stop training a new one every six months. We wrote a full piece on this in hiring and scaling a roofing sales team if you want the deeper breakdown.

One warning on splits: get them in writing before the deal is signed, not after. The worst commission disputes we see are from shops where two reps both touched a lead and neither one had a written agreement on the split. If you want a clean system for tracking which rep owns which lead, that is exactly what our lead routing and ownership features are built for.

Pay On Signed Versus Paid On Collected

The single biggest lever in any roofing commission plan is when the commission is earned. There are two camps:

Paid on signed contract. The rep gets paid when the homeowner signs. Good for morale. Good for speed. Catastrophic for cash flow if the deal cancels, the claim gets denied, or the homeowner stops paying halfway through.

Paid on collected. The rep gets paid when you get paid. Protects your cash. Terrible for rep motivation because on insurance jobs, "collected" can mean six months after the sale.

Most successful shops run a hybrid: a draw at contract signing (often 25% to 50% of expected commission) and the balance at final payment. This gets money in the rep's pocket fast enough to keep them motivated without exposing you to the full risk of cancellations and clawbacks.

Example: rep signs a $30,000 roof. Expected commission at 8% is $2,400. Company pays $1,000 draw on signed contract, remaining $1,400 on final collection. If the deal cancels, the $1,000 becomes a draw against future commissions, not a gift.

Whatever you choose, pick one and stick with it. Reps can adapt to almost any reasonable structure. What they cannot adapt to is inconsistency. A shop that pays on signed for three months and then switches to collected because cash got tight will lose its best reps in six weeks.

Commission On Supplement Revenue

This is the most controversial topic in insurance-heavy markets and the one we get the most questions about. When your supplementer recovers an additional $8,400 from the carrier after the original scope was approved, does the rep get commission on that money?

The argument for yes: the rep brought the job. Without them, there is no job to supplement. The supplement is part of the job revenue. Pay them on it.

The argument for no: the rep did not earn that revenue. Your supplementer did. Supplementing is a specialized skill, often outsourced for 10% to 15% of the recovered amount. Paying the rep another 8% on top means you are paying 20%+ on supplement revenue, which is brutal on margin.

Our recommendation: pay reps a reduced commission on supplement revenue, typically 50% of their normal rate. If the rep normally earns 8% of net, they earn 4% of net on supplement money. This acknowledges their role in bringing the job without double-paying for work they did not do.

Write it down. Explicitly. In the offer letter. "Commission is paid at 8% of net collected on the original approved scope and 4% of net collected on supplement revenue." When a $12,000 supplement comes in and the rep asks why their check is smaller than expected, you point at the offer letter. Conversation over.

Clawbacks And Chargebacks

What happens when a customer cancels, rescinds, or stops paying halfway through the job? The commission you already paid the rep is now revenue you do not have. How do you get it back?

Three options, in order of aggressiveness:

1. No clawback. You eat the loss. Simplest for the rep, most expensive for you. Works if cancellation rate is under 3% and average deal size is manageable.
2. Partial clawback against future commissions. You recover the advanced commission from the rep's next few checks. Most common approach. Reps tolerate this if it is written clearly upfront.
3. Full clawback requiring direct repayment if the rep leaves. If a rep quits with a negative balance from clawbacks, they owe you a check. Legally enforceable in most states with a signed agreement, but collection is a nightmare. Use sparingly.

Whatever you choose, the clawback clause must be in the written commission agreement, signed before the rep earns a dollar. Trying to impose a clawback policy retroactively is the fastest way to lose a rep and potentially face a wage claim. California in particular is hostile to ambiguous clawback language.

The practical way to handle this: keep a small reserve (we recommend 10% to 15% of accrued commission) held back until the job closes out fully. Release the reserve at final payment. This way the rep never sees the money until the job is actually done, and you are not trying to claw back cash that is already in their bank account.

1099 Vs W2 For Roofing Reps

This is the legal question that eats companies alive. Roofing has historically run on 1099 independent contractors because it is cheap, flexible, and how everyone does it. The IRS, the Department of Labor, and multiple state agencies have spent the last five years aggressively reclassifying these workers as employees.

Here is the short version of what matters in 2026:

The federal test (the "economic reality" test as currently applied) asks whether the worker is in business for themselves or economically dependent on your company. If you provide leads, dictate territory, require attendance at meetings, set quotas, and control how the work is done, you almost certainly have an employee, no matter what the contract says.

State variation is severe. California's ABC test is the most aggressive and makes 1099 classification for roofing reps nearly impossible under strict interpretation. New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Illinois have similar ABC tests. Texas, Florida, and most Southeast states are more permissive but that can change.

The cost of getting this wrong: back wages, unpaid overtime, back payroll taxes (both halves), penalties, interest, and often class action exposure if you have multiple misclassified reps. We have seen shops hit with six-figure judgments on this.

Our practical advice for 2026:

• Setters can sometimes stay 1099 if they truly control their own hours and methods, but the trend is strongly toward W2.
• Closers who attend your meetings, use your software, follow your sales process, and sell only your brand are employees. Classify them as W2 unless you have talked to a lawyer who specializes in your state.
• Pure lead referrers who send you deals but do not work your system can legitimately be 1099.

This is not tax advice. Talk to a real employment attorney in your state before you make this decision. The cost of the attorney is rounding error compared to the cost of a misclassification judgment.

Why Reps Need To See Their Own Commission Live

Almost every commission dispute we have ever witnessed traces back to one root cause: the rep did not know what they had earned until the moment they got their check, and the number did not match what they expected.

The fix is absurdly simple in concept and painfully rare in practice. Every rep on your team should be able to log into a dashboard, see every deal they have ever worked, see the current status of each deal, and see exactly how much commission they have accrued on each one. In real time. Not once a month. Not when they ask. Always.

When reps can see their own numbers live, three things happen:

1. Commission disputes drop by roughly 80%. We have measured this across our customer base.
2. Rep behavior shifts. Reps start chasing the deals that actually pay them the most, not the ones that feel good to sell.
3. Retention improves. Reps who trust the numbers stay. Reps who don't trust the numbers leave.

This is why we built live commission tracking into RoofKnockers as a first-class feature. Every rep sees their accrued commission the moment a contract is signed, watches it update as the job moves through production, and sees the final number when the deal collects. No spreadsheets. No surprises. No Friday afternoon arguments.

We wrote an entire piece on why this matters more than any other comp decision you will make. Read commission visibility and retention for the full argument and the retention numbers we pulled from our customer base.

If you want to go deeper on the motivational side of visibility — leaderboards, public rankings, how to use transparency to drive behavior without creating a toxic pit — we cover that in rep leaderboards that drive behavior.

Tax Season And Commission-Only Reps

Every January, commission-only reps discover they owe more in taxes than they expected. Every January, a handful of them quit or threaten to quit because they "can't afford to work for you anymore." This is entirely predictable and entirely preventable.

If you have 1099 reps, tell them in writing, at hire, exactly what they need to do:

• Set aside 25% to 30% of every commission check for taxes.
• Make quarterly estimated payments (April 15, June 15, September 15, January 15).
• Track mileage, phone, home office, and equipment for deductions.
• Hire a CPA who has worked with 1099 sales reps before.

This is not legal or tax advice. It is damage control. Reps who get wrecked at tax season do not stay in the industry. Helping them survive year one is the cheapest retention investment you will ever make.

For W2 reps, tax season is less brutal but bonus true-ups can still be a shock. If you pay a big year-end bonus, warn reps that supplemental wages are withheld at a flat federal rate (22% at most levels in 2026) and that their actual bracket might be higher. Reps who expect a $20,000 bonus and get $14,700 after withholding are reps who feel cheated, even though nothing was taken from them illegally.

State-Specific Commission Law Pitfalls

State wage and hour law on commissions varies enormously. Here are the highest-risk states we see in roofing right now, and the specific pitfalls in each.

Texas: Generally employer-friendly. Commissions must be paid per the written agreement. If there is no written agreement, courts will construct one from industry standard, which usually means you owe the rep more than you wanted to pay. Always get it in writing.

California: The hardest state in the country to do roofing comp. Written commission agreements are legally required for anyone paid on commission (Labor Code § 2751). Clawbacks must be explicit and reasonable. 1099 classification is nearly impossible under ABC. Final wages, including accrued commission, are due immediately on termination, with waiting time penalties of up to 30 days of wages for delay.

Colorado: Strong wage claim laws. Accrued commission owed at termination is due within 10 days of final payroll. Colorado has been aggressive on misclassification audits in construction trades since 2024.

North Carolina: Commission agreements must be in writing to be enforceable under the Wage and Hour Act. Unpaid commissions can trigger treble damages plus attorney's fees. This is not a state where you want to be cute about definitions.

Florida: Generally employer-friendly and a popular roofing market. Florida does allow 1099 classification more easily than ABC states, but federal tests still apply. Florida also has no state minimum commission law, so the contract is the contract.

Minimum wage floors: even commission-only reps in W2 status must earn at least minimum wage for all hours worked in every state. If your rep has a bad month and their commission divided by hours worked comes in under $7.25/hour federal or the state minimum (whichever is higher), you legally owe them the difference. Keep time records.

This is also where storm chasing without burnout becomes a legal issue, not just a humane one. Reps pulling 70-hour weeks on slow commission months have winnable wage claims in most states.

Designing A Plan That Scales Past 10 Reps

The plan that works for your first three reps will collapse when you hire your eleventh. Not because the math changes but because complexity compounds.

Three reps: you can run the whole thing in a spreadsheet and negotiate exceptions case by case. Everybody trusts you because they see you every day.

Eleven reps: you have two or three sales pods, a manager over each, at least two office staff touching commission calculation, and reps you barely interact with personally. The spreadsheet breaks. The "trust me" stops working. Exceptions become inequities. Inequities become resentment. Resentment becomes turnover.

The plan that scales has four properties:

1. Tiered but not bespoke. Have two or three commission tiers (rookie, standard, senior) with clear promotion criteria. Not individual deals for every rep.
2. Automated calculation. Commission math runs without a human making decisions. When a job moves from signed to paid, the system recalculates every rep's accrued commission automatically. If you are still computing this in Excel at 11 reps, you are one sick CSR away from payroll disaster.
3. Visible to the rep. See the previous section. Non-negotiable at scale.
4. Rules-based exceptions. If you must make exceptions (big accounts, manager overrides, training splits), have a written rule for when and how, not ad hoc judgment calls.

At scale, commission plan design becomes a function of data, not intuition. You need to know which reps are profitable, which are near breakeven, and which are costing you money after training and support costs. We cover the measurement side in roofing sales metrics that predict revenue, which pairs well with this post if you are building out a management layer.

The Plan You Can Actually Ship

If you have read this far, here is the minimum viable commission plan for a roofing contractor in 2026. Use it as a starting point and modify to your market.

Structure: Salary plus commission for closers and managers. Straight commission (or hourly plus per-set) for setters. Small revenue override for CSRs.

Closer commission: 6% to 8% of net collected on original scope, 3% to 4% on supplement revenue. 40% paid on signed contract as draw, 60% on final collection.

Setter commission: $250 flat per signed contract, plus 1.5% override on deals that close from their sets.

Clawback policy: Cancellations within 3 days of signing are 100% clawback. Cancellations later are clawback of any paid draw against future commissions. Written and signed before hire.

Classification: W2 for anyone who works your system, uses your software, or attends your meetings. 1099 only for true arm's-length lead referrers.

Visibility: Real-time dashboard showing every rep their accrued and paid commission on every deal, updated the moment a job status changes.

Pay schedule: Weekly commission runs. Not biweekly. Not monthly. Weekly. Reps who see their money move every week trust the system.

Ship The Plan, Then Prove The Math

The best commission plan on paper is worthless if your reps do not believe the math. And they will not believe the math until they can see it live, every day, on a dashboard they trust.

This is what we built RoofKnockers to solve. Every rep sees their own deals, their own accrued commission, and their own pipeline in real time. Managers see the team view. You see the full P&L. The spreadsheet becomes a living system instead of a Friday afternoon fire drill.

If you are still running commission calculation in Excel and wondering why your turnover is high, see what a real commission system looks like, or just start a 14-day free trial and put your actual deals in it. We will not send a single sales email you do not ask for.

Pay your reps fairly. Pay them fast. Show them the math. Everything else in roofing sales management gets easier when the money is not a mystery.