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Partner economics · Compensation
How revenue credit works — and why two identical offers are not identical
Revenue credit is the rule that decides whose number a piece of work counts toward. It varies enormously between firms: some allow credit to be shared so a single engagement counts more than once across a team, others award it to whoever signed the contract. Because partner compensation is calculated against credited revenue, two offers with the same base salary can produce very different outcomes. Ask how credit is allocated before you compare packages.
The variable nobody compares
When partners compare offers they compare base, bonus, equity and title. Almost nobody compares the credit model — and at partner level the credit model does more to determine total compensation over three years than the base salary does.
The reason is simple. Partner pay is largely a function of the revenue attributed to you. Not the revenue you influenced, or contributed to, or could not have happened without you. The revenue the system says is yours. How the system decides that is a set of rules, those rules differ between firms, and they are almost never volunteered in a recruitment process.
The models you will encounter
There is no standard. Broadly, four patterns recur across the UK and DACH market:
| Model | How it works | What it rewards |
|---|---|---|
| Origination-weighted | Credit follows whoever sold the work. Often close to full attribution to one name. | Hunting. Strong originators do very well; collaborators subsidise them. |
| Shared or split credit | A single engagement can be credited across more than one partner, in some cases adding up to more than the engagement is worth, with a limit on how much any one person can claim. | Collaboration and cross-selling. Deliberately designed to stop credit hoarding. |
| Sell-and-serve split | Credit divided between the partner who sold and the partner who delivers, on a set ratio or by negotiation. | Balance. Rewards delivery leadership as well as origination. |
| Revenue-derived | Compensation calculated almost entirely from revenue generated and its profitability; fixed salary is a small component. | Pure commercial output. Highest ceiling, highest variance. |
Two things follow. First, the same personal performance produces materially different pay depending on which model you are inside. Second — and this matters more — the model tells you what the firm actually values, regardless of what the recruitment conversation says about collaboration and culture.
The credit model is the firm’s culture, written down in the only language that is binding.
A worked illustration
Two partners, same base, same client, same £2m programme. One sourced the relationship, the other leads delivery and owns the day-to-day.
Under an origination-weighted model, the originator is credited with most or all of the £2m. The delivery partner may receive little or nothing against their number, despite the work consuming most of their year.
Under a shared-credit model, both may be credited substantially — the total credited across the two adding up to more than the engagement is worth, by design, because the firm would rather pay twice than have partners hide opportunities from each other.
Same work. Same money in the door. Two completely different personal outcomes, decided entirely by a rule neither partner negotiated.
The questions to ask
Get these answered before you accept anything. If a firm cannot answer them clearly, that is itself informative — it usually means credit is allocated by negotiation, which means it is allocated by influence, which means it will not favour the new arrival.
- How is revenue credited when more than one partner is involved? Is it split, shared, or awarded to one person?
- Can credit on an engagement add up to more than the engagement is worth? Is there a limit on any one person?
- Is credit for delivery separate from credit for origination, and are both counted in my target?
- If work comes to me from another partner, do I get credit? What if it goes the other way?
- What happens to credit on a client I bring with me — is it mine indefinitely, or does it revert after a period?
- Who arbitrates disputes, and how often do they actually happen?
- Show me how last year’s credit actually landed for a partner at my level — anonymised is fine.
That last one separates firms with a real system from firms with a stated intention.
Year one, and the trap inside it
Most firms expect little origination in year one. You are building relationships, learning the platform, and being introduced. Targets are typically modest or waived.
The trap is that year two arrives with a full number, and whatever credit structure exists has by then been settled in everyone else’s favour. If your year-one work was all delivered on other partners’ accounts, you may reach your first real target with nothing credited to your name and no established route for anything to be.
So the year-one question is not what is my target. It is: what will be credited to me in year one, and how does that position me for year two?
Where credit meets the guarantee
New partners frequently join with a guarantee — a period, often twelve to twenty-four months, during which compensation is protected while the book builds. Guarantees are sensible and common.
The thing to understand is what happens at the end of one. When the guarantee lapses, you are paid on credited revenue. If the credit model has not been generating anything in your name during the guarantee period, the drop is not gradual — it is a cliff, and it arrives at exactly the moment you have stopped being the new arrival everyone is helping.
A guarantee protects your income. It does not build your book. Only the credit model does that.
What good looks like
There is no objectively correct model, and firms choose differently for defensible reasons. A strong originator with a portable following may do best in an origination-weighted model. A partner whose strength is scaling delivery and growing existing accounts may earn considerably more in a shared-credit environment, and may be quietly penalised in the other.
What matters is the match between how the firm counts and how you actually work. That is a knowable thing, and it takes about twenty minutes of the right questions to establish.
Ask how they count before you ask what they pay.
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Not advice. This is general information about how consulting partnerships typically operate, drawn from our own market conversations. It is not legal, tax or financial advice, it is not a substitute for advice on your own contract, and no reliance should be placed on it. Take independent advice before accepting any offer or acting on anything set out here.
Have a straight conversation about it
We map credit models, tracks and covenants as a matter of course when we run a search — it is the part of a move candidates most often get wrong. A conversation costs nothing, commits you to nothing, and you will leave knowing more about your market than you did.