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Stepped (group target) rebates

A stepped rebate pays a rate that depends on how much turnover the whole group does. The element carries a table of bands (steps) — a from-figure, to-figure, and rate per band — and the group's combined turnover for the period decides which band applies to everyone.

How it calculates

  1. Each period, the engine totals the group's turnover on the element's input stream.
  2. It selects the band whose from-figure is the highest one at or below that total. Turnover below the lowest band pays nothing.
  3. The selected rate is applied to each member's own rebateable (output-stream) turnover.

Example. Bands: £0–100k → 1%, £100k–250k → 1.5%, £250k+ → 2%. The group does £180,000 in the period, so the 1.5% band is selected. A member who did £20,000 of that receives £300 (£20,000 × 1.5%) — the group's level sets the rate, the member's own turnover sets the amount.

By default banding is retrospective: the selected rate applies to all rebateable turnover, so crossing a band boundary uplifts everything. A non-retrospective element instead applies each band's rate only to the turnover inside that band (marginal, like income tax) and shares the banded total between members pro-rata by their share of group spend.

A linear element does not jump between rates at the boundary: the rate is interpolated between the current band and the next according to how far through the gap the group's turnover sits.

Why does a stepped rebate change unexpectedly?

  • The group crossed a band boundary — on a retrospective element this re-rates the entire period's turnover, so the jump can be large.
  • Another member's turnover arrived. A member's own figures being unchanged does not mean their rebate is stable: the group level picks the band.
  • The element is also growth/catch-up/strung/compound — see those pages; modifiers combine.

What a stepped rebate is not

  • It is not an individual target rebate — there, each member's own turnover picks their band, and one member's performance never affects another's rate.
  • It is not a growth rebate — bands here are absolute turnover values, not growth percentages.