Every carrier you write with keeps its own version of your book. Their portals know which policies issued, which are pending, which missed a draft and what they paid you. Your agency's records are only as true as the last time someone brought those versions together.
A weekly cadence is the simplest way to keep them together. It does not need to take long, but it does need to happen on the same days, by the same people, every week.
The three files that matter
| File | What it tells you | Typical rhythm |
|---|---|---|
| Policy report | Status of each policy: issued, pending, in force, lapsed, canceled | Pull weekly |
| Commission statement | What the carrier paid or took back, line by line | On the carrier's pay cycle |
| Debt report | Each agent's balance owed to the carrier | As the carrier issues it |
Policy reports are usually pulled from the carrier portal by someone at the agency. Statements and debt reports tend to arrive on the carrier's schedule. Rhythms vary by carrier, so write down the real one for each carrier you use.
Why weekly
- Lapses are saveable for a short time. A missed first draft found this week is a phone call. Found next month, it is a chargeback.
- Producers trust pay they can see. When expected pay and received pay are reconciled every week, questions about commission get answered with a screen, not a promise.
- Errors are smaller when they are fresh. A statement line paid to the wrong writing number is easy to query a week later and hard to unpick after a quarter.
A week, day by day
One shape that works for many agencies. Adjust the days to your carriers.
| When | What | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Pull a policy report from every carrier and upload them together | Statuses updated across the book |
| Monday | Review every status change since last week | A list of new issues, lapses and missed drafts |
| Tuesday to Thursday | Work the at-risk list: call clients with missed or failed drafts | Policies saved before they lapse |
| As they land | Upload each commission statement and match every line | Received pay beside expected pay |
| As issued | Upload debt reports and compare balances to your own estimates | Debt you can explain |
| Friday | Clear anything unmatched and close out the week | A clean start on Monday |
Keep a calendar, not a memory
List each carrier with the day its report is pulled, where it is pulled from and who pulls it. When a report is late, the calendar shows it on the day, not at month end when the numbers look wrong.
What to check after each upload
- Unmatched agents. A writing number the agency does not recognize usually means a new producer or a missing mapping. Fix the mapping once and it stays fixed.
- Unmatched policies. A policy on the carrier's report that is not in your book means a deal was never posted, or was posted with a different policy number.
- Status changes. Read every change, not just the lapses. A policy moving back from issued to pending is worth a question.
- Zero and missing commission. A paid premium with no commission line often means a contract or level problem with the carrier.
- Chargebacks. Check each one against the policy it belongs to, and against the advance months, before you accept it.
Who owns what
The cadence breaks down when everyone assumes someone else did it. Name an owner for each step: who pulls reports, who reviews status changes, who calls at-risk clients, and who answers producers' pay questions. In small agencies that may be one person. Write it down anyway.
Common pitfalls
- Partial pulls. Pulling one carrier's report and not the rest makes the book look healthier than it is. Pull them all, together.
- Layout changes. Carriers change their export formats without warning. A file that suddenly fails to read is usually a new layout, not a broken file.
- Password-protected exports. Some portals protect downloads by default. Remove the password before you upload.
- Uploading the same file twice. Without duplicate protection, a repeated statement can double count pay.
Running it in Vora
Vora is built around this cadence.
- Policy reports, commission statements and debt reports are uploaded in one place, up to 20 files at a time, with live progress as each one is read and matched.
- Every status change a report causes is listed under Deal Changes, so the Monday review is one screen.
- Unmatched agents and policies are listed with what Vora needs to fix them.
- The report calendar lists which carrier reports are due each week, with reminders, and a week can be finalised and exported when it is done.
- When a carrier changes its layout, AI-assisted reading can map the new columns for a person to review, without sending client names, numbers or amounts to the model.
- Policies missing a premium move to at risk, which becomes the week's call list.