Most compensations in Dolfin are generated for you by the rules inside a plan. When something falls outside those rules — a one-off bonus, an advance payment, a commission your CRM never recorded — you can add it by hand. This guide walks you through the whole form, from opening it to checking the result on the recipient's statement.
👋 Before you begin: manual compensations are for the exceptions — anything no automated rule covers. Any admin or team manager can add one. Before you do, check that no rule will generate the same compensation later, or you will end up paying it twice.
Here's what will be covered in this article:
Open the Form
Go to Compensations and click Add manually in the top right. You'll be asked whether you're adding a Compensation or a Deduction.
Both open the same form. The difference is the direction of the money: a deduction is taken off the recipient's payout. Enter the amount as a positive number either way — Dolfin applies the minus sign for you.
Fill In the Compensation
The form opens as a panel titled New compensation.
⚠️ Important: Dolfin warns you at the top of this form not to add compensations that are already covered by automated rules. Doing so creates a duplicate the next time the automation runs, and the duplicate is easy to miss because both entries look legitimate.
Compensation
Choose Bonus or Commission. This sets the label the compensation carries in the Compensations and Statements sections; it doesn't change how the amount is treated.
Category
The category is your organisation's own classification for the payment. Open the dropdown and use the search box at the top to narrow a long list. If the one you need doesn't exist yet, Manage categories lets you create or edit categories without leaving the form.
Recipient
Start typing a name. Dolfin matches against users in your organisation and shows each match with their email, so you can tell similar names apart before selecting one.
Period Type and Period
Period type is the period the compensation belongs to — a month, a quarter, a half year or a year. Period is then the specific one: choosing Quarter offers Q1 to Q4, and choosing Month opens a picker where you move between years with the arrows and click the month.
🔍 Note: the period a compensation belongs to is not the same as when it gets paid. Payment timing is a separate field further down, and the two are often different months.
Amount
The value of the compensation, in your organisation's currency. For a deduction, enter the value without a minus sign.
Reason
A short explanation of why the compensation is being given.
💡 Tip: this is what explains the compensation to the person receiving it. Write it so it still makes sense to them when they open their statement six months from now — "Advance payment for August" rather than "adjustment".
Payment Timing
Select the statement the compensation should be paid in. The compensation will appear on the recipient's statement for that period.
Check the Outcome and Create
The Outcome panel at the bottom of the form updates as you fill it in, showing the amount and who it's for. Create compensation stays disabled until every required field has a value.
Click Create compensation. You'll find it on the recipient's statement for the payment timing you chose, or in Compensations by filtering on that user.