Milestone Bonus Components
What is a Milestone Bonus?
Use a Milestone Bonus component whenever a comp plan pays a lump sum for hitting a threshold — whether that threshold is an attainment percentage or a volume count. Milestone Bonuses are binary: the full payout only unlocks once the threshold is reached, and there's no credit for partial progress.
Example:
At 10 closed-won deals, a rep earns $1,000.
At 15 closed-won deals, they earn another $1,000.
At 20 closed-won deals, they earn an additional $2,000.
A Milestone Bonus can be nested under a quota or stand alone with no related quota, just like other commission and bonus components.
Setting Up Attainment and Earnings Fields
Milestone Bonuses support both currency and quantity fields for attainment, and — as with other components — you can mix field types between your attainment and earnings fields on the same component.
Once you select your attainment and earnings fields, QuotaPath asks what you want to base your bonus rate thresholds on. The options depend on the field type you chose:
Quantity fields (e.g., Demos Occurred): choose between
Demos Occurred – enter a specific quantity in each tier to unlock that milestone (e.g., 50 demos unlocks tier one).
Attainment – % – enter an attainment percentage in each tier to unlock that milestone (requires a quota)
Currency fields (e.g., mapped deal amount): choose between
Attainment – % – enter an attainment percentage in each tier. (requires quota)
USD amount – $ – enter a specific dollar amount in each tier, unlocked when summed deal amounts reach that figure.
Whichever option you pick determines how you'll define the threshold in each tier.
Building Milestone Tiers
Milestone Bonuses support as many tiers as needed. Each tier you add represents the marginal payment for that tier — not the cumulative total paid out by that point. QuotaPath calculates and displays the running total automatically.
Example: You want 100% attainment to unlock a $5,000 payment, and 110% attainment to unlock a total of $6,000 paid (i.e., $1,000 more than the first tier). Enter:
QuotaPath will display the total payout for achieving 110% as $6,000.
Rate Formulas
Milestone Bonuses can also use rate formulas instead of flat tier amounts. This requires a PostgreSQL query that returns a multiplier applied to the milestone tier rates.
One-Time vs. Recurring
Recurring is the right choice for most Milestone Bonuses and means the bonus will apply for the life of the assigned plan dates, recurring across each earnings period.
One-time should only be used when the component applies to a specific, date-bound portion of the plan — for example, a milestone bonus that only runs during Q1 2026. In that case, set the start and end dates to the first and last day of that period. If you have nested a milestone bonus under a quota that is one time and has a start and end date, you will not need to set the bonus setting to one time. It will inherit the date range from the quota.
Rate Behavior Over Time
Next, choose whether the rate stays the same or changes over time:
Typically Stays the same is the standard choice for Milestone Bonuses.
Changes over time should be used only if the milestone payout amounts differ across time periods.
Earnings Period
The earnings period determines when attainment resets. This is required whenever a Milestone Bonus has no related quota — without a quota, QuotaPath needs the earnings period to know the timeframe over which to measure progress up the milestone tiers.
Additional Features
Like all other earnings components, Milestone Bonuses support: