Owners describe two ways to pay a roofing sales rep: a percentage of the contract, such as 10% (7% or 8% on company leads), or a share of the job’s profit, from 35% to 50%. A 10/50/50 plan takes 10% of the contract off the top for overhead and gives the rep half the gross profit left. At a 30% gross margin that pays exactly what a flat 10% does. Above 30% it pays the rep more, and below it, less.
Owners who explain their choice tie it to what the rep controls. A profit split makes him guard the price, since a $1,000 discount costs him $500 on a straight 50/50 split of profit and $100 on 10% of the contract.
A DFW roofer we work with pays reps about 40% of what’s left after every job cost is paid, and the rep gets it once the company is paid, a week to three months after the sale. Some owners cover a wait like that with a draw against future commissions.
I run Zentora, a marketing company for roofers, and rep pay is outside our work, so this guide rests on what owners and reps post and what US federal and state agencies publish. The math on each plan is my own.
About 228 of the 276 posts and comments on rep pay I read from Reddit’s roofing forums looked to be from reps, so the owner’s side is thinner. I found no data on which plan keeps good reps longer or holds up in a slow year.
10/50/50 matches a flat 10% only at a 30% gross margin
Under 10/50/50, the rep’s share of the contract is your gross margin minus 10 points, divided by two:
| Gross margin on the job | Rep’s share of the contract |
|---|---|
| 25% | 7.5% |
| 30% | 10% |
| 35% | 12.5% |
| 40% | 15% |
Take 15 points off the top instead of 10, and the plan matches a flat 10% only at a 35% margin. Plans also define overhead differently, some as a percentage of the contract and some as a flat charge per job, and the table holds only for the first kind.
When the overhead charge is too low, the shortfall comes out of your half
An owner asked under a Roofing Insights video on YouTube how anyone can pay a 1099 rep half a job’s profit and still cover overhead. Whether you can depends on the overhead charge. If it’s lower than what the company costs to run, the rep is paid half of a profit that isn’t there, and the gap comes out of your half.
An exterior remodeler of 18 years pays his W-2 reps hourly, a little above minimum wage, plus 50% of each job’s profit after a flat overhead charge per job. The charge turned out to be roughly half of what the business needs to run in most years, he wrote on r/RoofingContractors: “I haven’t adjusted it as I want to keep my guys happy.”
Set the overhead figure from last year’s books before the plan goes out, since raising it later is a pay cut for every rep at once. How to Price a Roof: Price per Square, Overhead and Target Margin covers how to work out that number.
A 50/50 profit split makes a $1,000 discount cost the rep $500
With a flat overhead charge, the whole $1,000 of a discount comes off the profit being split, so half of it comes out of the rep’s commission. On 10/50/50 he loses a little less, because the 10% taken off the top shrinks with the price, and on 10% of revenue he loses $100.
An owner who pays a profit split made that point in a 2025 YouTube comment: “I don’t need giveaway artists as salesmen.” His reps write the material orders and check on jobs. They pick up the checks too, while he does the supplements.
An owner on r/RoofingSales pays 10% of the contract instead, or 7% on company leads, because his reps don’t manage the job and can’t control its profit. Another owner there pays 10/50/50 even to reps who get the contract signed, hand him the deposit check and go on to the next one.
Other owners describe these profit splits, though I found no count of how common each one is:
- 35% of net profit
- up to 40% of profit, or 50% when the rep only needs the company for credit, liability and labor
- a $52,000 base treated as a draw, plus 45% of net profit
- 50% of gross profit on a 1099, with no production duties
W-2 sales reps at roofing companies made a median $71,310 as of May 2025
The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that roofing contractors had 11,690 sales reps on payroll in May 2025. Their median pay was $71,310 a year. The middle half made between $50,390 and $98,910, and the top tenth more than $141,320. The survey counts only wage and salary workers, so 1099 reps on straight commission are missing.
A contractor in Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado and Arizona pays his W-2 reps, who only sell, 10% of gross on leads they find, change orders and supplements included, and 8% on company leads. On top of benefits and a truck, they get a $24,000 base that comes back out of their commissions over the year.
His remaining 1099 reps get 40% of net profit. A 1099 rep pays 15.3% self-employment tax, both halves of what a W-2 employee and his employer would split, and the contractor says his two plans pay the same after tax for a rep selling about $1.5 million a year.
Writing “1099” on the agreement doesn’t make a rep a contractor
The IRS asks whether your company has the right to control what the rep does and how. By that test, training, set hours, required meetings, a company truck and company leads all point toward an employee, whatever the agreement calls him. Either of you can file Form SS-8 to have the IRS decide, which can take at least six months.
States can set their own tests. Texas, for one, weighs 20 factors for unemployment tax and ignores the “contract labor” label once the relationship is employment. The federal Labor Department is rewriting its test. Its investigators stopped applying the 2024 rule in May 2025, though it still governs private lawsuits, and the replacement proposed in February 2026 still wasn’t final on October 3, 2026.
If you pay on a 1099, the 1099-NEC threshold rose from $600 to $2,000 for payments made after December 31, 2025, which changes the paperwork only. Roofing Contracts and 1099 Rules: What a New Owner Needs in Writing covers the contract side.
W-2 phone closers usually need minimum wage and overtime
Federal law exempts an outside salesperson from minimum wage and overtime, with no salary required, when his main job is making sales and he regularly works away from your place of business. Selling by phone or online doesn’t count unless it backs up in-person calls, and the regulation treats “any fixed site, whether home or office,” used for phone selling as your place of business.
So a W-2 closer who runs phone or video appointments from your office or from home needs minimum wage and overtime unless another exemption covers him. For employees who aren’t exempt, such as hourly canvassers and in-office closers, commissions count toward the regular rate used to figure overtime, even when they’re paid after the normal payday. These are federal rules, and states may set their own.
The rules are less clear for reps who also run production. They count collecting checks as outside sales work and say nothing about ordering materials or running crews. A rep who spends more than half his time on sales work generally meets the main-duty test, though time isn’t the only test. My reading, which isn’t a ruling, is that a rep whose main job becomes project management could fall outside the exemption.
Draws cover the months before a job pays
An owner on r/RoofingSales pays straight commission on revenue and says insurance money on a finished job sometimes takes two months to arrive, so he’s weighing a draw that future commissions repay. Another owner, on r/Roofing, advances draws of up to 10% of the down payment.
One rep on r/RoofingSales, asking in 2025 whether he should change companies, wrote: “here I am 5 months in without seeing a single commission check… even with the draw system.” A Florida owner answered in the same thread that his company pays half the commission upfront and half at install.
Under the FTC’s Cooling-Off Rule, a homeowner who signs for $25 or more at home can cancel until midnight of the third business day, so commission paid at signing goes out on contracts that can still be canceled. One exception is an emergency repair the homeowner asked for, with a handwritten waiver. I haven’t looked into state laws on canceling an insurance-contingent contract after a claim is denied, so check yours before you pay on signature.
Texas payday rules say a draw paid to an employee “may be recovered from the current or any subsequent pay period until fully reconciled,” and New York requires the written plan to say how often a recoverable draw is reconciled. With a true contractor, the contract decides. Roofing Cash Flow: Depreciation Checks, Final Payments and Liens covers the wait for insurance money from the company’s side.
Write the commission deal down, even where the state doesn’t make you
California and New York require an employee’s commission terms in writing. California wants a signed copy in the rep’s hands and a signed receipt back. New York also requires commissions to be paid at least monthly, and if you can’t produce the written terms when the state asks, the rep’s version is presumed to be the deal.
In Texas, where I work, an unwritten deal still binds you. The state’s Workforce Commission says an employee’s commission agreement is enforceable whether oral or written, and a pattern of paying commissions one way can establish one. A good agreement, it says, spells out how commissions are earned, when they’re paid, whether there are chargebacks and what happens to sales in progress when someone leaves.
Texas final pay is due within six calendar days when you let someone go and by the next regular payday when they quit, and commissions are due by the same deadline unless the commission agreement sets a different schedule. Before a Texas company pays a departed rep a lump-sum commission of $500 or more, it has to notify the Attorney General in case a child-support deduction applies.
Run your own margin through the formula before you offer a plan
Start with your gross margin and your real overhead per job, and run a few recent jobs through the formula before you offer anyone 10/50/50. Then decide what you want the rep to answer for. A split ties his pay to the price he sells at, and to what the job costs to build if he runs it. A percentage of the contract pays him for the sale alone.
Write the rep’s duties next to the percentage, since a rep who drifts into running production may change how federal wage law treats the job. The agreement should also say when a commission is earned (after the three-day cancellation window at the least) and how a draw is repaid and reconciled. Then have an employment lawyer check W-2 versus 1099 and overtime, especially for phone closers and reps who run production.
Two of the plans above pay less on company leads, the ones your own marketing brings in. To see where your Google profile shows up when homeowners search for a roofer, run the free Google Maps heatmap: pick your profile and a search, and in a few minutes you’ll see your rank at 49 points around your office.