Sales Commision Problem Setup And Answer

Question

One employee is paid base salary of 2000 a month plus 8% commission on all sales over 7000 during the month. How much does one need to sell in a month to earn a total of 4000?

Answer 1

step one is to always figure out what you need and what the question is asking.

1) total income to be $4000

2) base income is $2000

3) paid 8% on sales OVER 7000

the equations will look like this :

income = sales commission

start with either side until you have a full equation. We will start with income, we want an additional income of $2000 so we can make that part of the equation look like this: $4000 - $2000 = $2000

now our equation looks like this:

2000 = sales commission

So, now we need to figure out the right side.

because the employee is paid 8% we have the following:

income = sales *8% -> income = sales * 0.08

because the employee is paid on everything over 7000 we need to adjust the previous equation to look like this:

income = (sales * 0.08) +7000

now combine the first equation and you get :

2000 = (sales * 0.08) +7000

you should be able to solve it from here.