Agent settlement in a ClubGG club: how to work out who owes whom

Settling with an agent comes down to two questions: how much he owes the club, and how much the club owes him. The answer is built from four numbers, and all of them are in the ClubGG export. Below are the formula, a worked example, and the places where people most often get it wrong.

Four numbers that make up the settlement

• Chips the club sent the agent, and chips he sent back. In the ClubGG export this is the Trade Record sheet. Chips for his pool come in as Send Credits, chips for himself as Send Chips. For the settlement they are the same thing: his debt grows the same way.
• Money the agent paid the club, and money the club paid him.
• Chips the agent and his players hold right now. That is Club Member Balance: the agent has two numbers, Chips (his own) and Credits (the pool he hasn't handed out yet), and each of his players has their Chips. The Agent column shows whose player is whose.
• What the club owes the agent for his players' action: his cut of the rake, plus his players' rakeback if the club pays it through him.

The formula

Why his players' chips are in there, not just his own: the club collects the whole debt from the agent, and the agent settles with his own people. While those chips sit with his players, they cover his debt. Asking the agent for that money now means asking for it twice.

A worked example

The agent got 5,000 for his pool and 1,000 for himself. Since the last settlement he sent back 500 and paid the club 1,000 in cash.

Club Member Balance shows: the agent holds 300 of his own and 700 in the pool, his players hold 2,900 between them. 3,900 in chips in total.

His players paid 800 in rake. The agent's cut is 25%, so 200. The club pays his players 30% rakeback through him, another 240. Earnings: 440.

The agent owes the club 160 in cash. If the club only looked at his own 300 chips, it would ask him for 3,760 and get an argument out of nothing.

Superagents

For a superagent it's the same thing one level up. His chips are the chips of all his agents and their players. His earnings are usually the gap between his percentage and the percentages of the agents under him. Work from the bottom up: each agent first, then the superagent on the totals.

Where it usually goes wrong

• Counting only the agent's own chips. The club then asks for cash that is sitting in chips with his players. This is the most common reason for a dispute.
• Ignoring who gave a player his chips. If the club sent chips straight to one of the agent's players, that player has his own debt to the club. Only chips above that debt count toward the agent's cover.
• Forgetting earnings from past periods. His cut wasn't paid last time, and this time only the current period gets counted. The agent remembers one number, the club another, and both are right in their own way.
• Missing a new player. The agent brought someone in, he's already playing, and in your books he isn't linked to anyone. His rake goes to the club and the agent gets nothing for it. Check the agent's player list against the Agent column at every settlement.
• Paying rakeback twice: to the player directly and to the agent who passes it on. Pick one rule for the whole club: either the club pays players itself, or the agent gets it all.
• Rolling debt and earnings into one number with nothing written down. A month later nobody remembers what was netted against what. Record them separately: the debt for chips and the cut for the action.

One caveat. This method works off balances, so a player's winnings count toward the agent's cover just like chips the agent handed him. On small amounts it doesn't matter. If one of the agent's players wins big, the cover will be overstated, and that's worth keeping in mind.

Where these numbers come from and how to check nothing got lost in the export is covered in how to read the ClubGG club export.