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Why bad data breaks your bonus program

If your data’s messy, your bonus program’s dead. Here’s how bad inputs break payouts and how to stop it from happening.

You can have the best bonus program in the world. But if the data feeding it is wrong, none of it matters.

At Protiv, we’ve seen one missed time log or unmarked job throw off an entire pay cycle.
Crews feel cheated.
Admins panic.
Trust in the system drops overnight.
And once you lose trust, you’ve lost the whole game.

Let’s walk through the most common landmines and how smart teams avoid stepping on them.

Here’s where bonus data goes sideways

  1. Time logs are missing
     → No hours = no bonus. Efficiency tanks. Your best guy thinks he got stiffed.
    Why it happens: Worker forgot to log hours. Or hours weren’t approved in time.
  2. Job never got marked complete
     → If the job’s not complete, we can’t trigger the ProPay. It’s not a bug. It’s just an incomplete job.
    Why it happens: Office assumes field will close it. Field assumes office will. No one does.
  3. Revenue’s wrong
     → Someone entered $2,500 instead of $25,000. The system thinks the crew blew the budget. Their bonus disappears.
    Why it happens: Typos, manual entry, lack of review.
  4. ProPay was never created
     → Time and revenue were there. But no one created a manual ProPay. It’s invisible.
    Why it happens: No automation in place, or the admin forgot the extra step.
  5. Duplicate data
     → Same job gets entered twice. Or hours get logged twice. Now you're overpaying or scrambling to claw it back.
    Why it happens: Field and office both log something without coordination.
  6. Late data entry
     → Hours or revenue show up a week late. That job misses the pay cycle. The crew doesn’t see their bonus.
    Why it happens: “I’ll enter it Friday” turns into “I forgot.”

The real cost of bad data

This isn’t just annoying. It kills your program.

  • Crews lose trust. They stop caring because they stop believing the bonus is real.
  • Admins burn out. Instead of managing performance, they’re chasing down loose ends.
  • You lose leverage. A broken bonus program is worse than no program at all.

What smart teams do differently

Top-performing companies don’t wait for mistakes. They run a data hygiene routine every week.

Here’s what it looks like:

  • ✅ Jobs completed and reviewed before payroll
  • ✅ Hours logged, approved, and synced from time-tracking
  • ✅ Revenue spot-checked for typos or surprises
  • ✅ ProPays created for all completed jobs
  • ✅ Draft Bonus Statements reviewed before closing

You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be consistent.

Final takeaway

Your bonus program isn’t just a set of rules—it’s a trust system.

And trust runs on clean data.

If your crews know they’ll get paid fairly and on time for the work they actually did? You’ve won 90% of the battle.