- Overview
- Prerequisites
- Sales Reporting & Team Performance
- Sales Training & Enablement
- Workflow Configuration & Automation
- Merchant Reporting
- Residuals & Payout Management
- Sales Manager Best Practices
Overview
This guide outlines how Sales Managers can use Merchant Central to monitor performance, coach effectively, and configure key systems that support growth. It is designed to help managers move beyond day-to-day oversight and focus on scalable, data-driven leadership.
While Sales Representatives focus on daily execution, managers use Merchant Central to analyze results, identify trends, enforce process consistency, and support sustainable growth across teams. The platform serves as a central hub for visibility, accountability, and continuous improvement.
Using Merchant Central, managers are able to:
- Track sales activity and conversion performance
- Coach reps using objective, data-driven insights
- Standardize workflows and messaging
- Monitor merchant portfolio health after activation
- Maintain visibility into residuals and payouts
For assistance, contact support@iriscrm.com or start a live chat with our Support team using the Help icon near your username in Merchant Central.
💡 If you haven’t already, please review our Merchant Central Introduction article to familiarize yourself with CRM fundamentals and navigation.
Prerequisites
Before using the tools outlined in this guide, managers should ensure they have the appropriate access and foundational knowledge. A strong understanding of your internal sales process will help you configure Merchant Central in a way that aligns with your organization’s goals.
- Manager-level access in Merchant Central
- Understanding of your organization’s sales process and compensation model
- Familiarity with lead, merchant, and residual lifecycles
Sales Reporting & Team Performance
Sales reporting tools give managers visibility into performance across the entire funnel—from initial lead contact through closed deals. These insights support coaching, forecasting, and accountability.
By reviewing reports consistently, managers can spot trends early, reinforce activity and process standards, and keep teams aligned with revenue goals. Regular reporting also creates a shared source of truth for performance conversations.
Home Tabs
Home Tabs act as a customizable command center for managers, bringing critical performance indicators into a single, easily accessible view. Instead of navigating multiple reports, you can quickly evaluate pipeline health, rep activity, and time-sensitive follow-ups at a glance.
This consolidated visibility supports faster decision-making, more focused coaching conversations, and earlier identification of potential issues before they impact results.
Learn more: Home Tabs
Sales Metrics
Sales Metrics provide a deeper look into lead volume, conversion rates, deal velocity, and close performance across users, teams, and time periods. Managers can use this data to compare performance trends, identify top performers, and pinpoint stages of the funnel where deals may be stalling.
Learn more: Sales Metrics
Dialer Metrics
Dialer Metrics focus on outbound calling activity, tracking call volume, connection rates, outcomes, and talk time. Rather than measuring effort in isolation, these reports help managers understand how activity translates into meaningful conversations.
Learn more: Dialer Metrics
Email Metrics
Email Metrics evaluate the effectiveness of outbound email outreach by tracking sends, opens, clicks, and engagement trends over time. This data helps managers understand which messaging resonates most with prospects.
Managers can use these insights to refine templates, adjust outreach strategies, and ensure reps are using email effectively as part of a multi-channel approach.
Learn more: Email Metrics
Viewing Advanced Reports
Advanced Reports give managers the flexibility to build custom reports tailored to specific KPIs and business questions. With support for advanced filtering, grouping, and calculated fields, these reports enable deeper analysis beyond standard dashboards.
They are especially useful for long-term trend analysis, executive reporting, and strategic planning initiatives.
Learn more: Advanced Reports
Sales Training & Enablement
Merchant Central includes tools that help managers onboard new hires, reinforce best practices, and keep teams aligned as processes evolve.
By embedding enablement directly into the CRM, managers can deliver consistent training in the flow of work and reduce reliance on external tools. This helps shorten ramp time and keeps updates from getting lost across channels.
Training Slideshows & Pop-Ups
Slideshows and pop-ups allow managers to deliver training content, announcements, and reminders directly within the CRM experience. This ensures reps receive important information at the right moment, without needing to search through email threads or external systems.
These tools are especially effective for onboarding, rolling out process updates, and reinforcing key behaviors across the team.
Learn more: Slideshows & Pop-Ups
Internal Documentation
Document Management centralizes sales playbooks, policies, and training materials within Merchant Central. By keeping documentation tied directly to the platform, managers can ensure reps always have access to the most current and approved resources.
Learn more: Document Management
Workflow Configuration & Automation
Workflow configuration and automation tools give managers the ability to design, standardize, and enforce the sales process from lead capture through deal completion.
By reducing manual effort and embedding best practices directly into daily workflows, these tools help ensure consistency, improve efficiency, and support each stage of the sales lifecycle.
When configured well, automation reduces “tribal knowledge” and makes outcomes more repeatable across new hires and growing teams. It also frees managers to focus on coaching and strategy instead of policing process steps.
Configuring Status States & Triggers
Status states define how leads and merchants move through the pipeline, while triggers automate actions such as task creation, notifications, and updates. Together, they help ensure required steps are followed consistently at every stage.
Learn more: Lead Status States & Triggers
Email & SMS Templates
Email and SMS templates provide reps with pre-approved messaging for common outreach scenarios. By standardizing communication, managers can ensure consistency in tone, branding, and compliance across the team. Templates also save time for reps, allowing them to focus more on conversations and less on drafting messages.
Learn more: Email Templates, SMS Templates
Using Pricing Templates
Pricing Templates standardize how pricing information is captured and presented during the sales process. This helps reduce errors, speed up deal creation, and ensure pricing aligns with approved structures.
Managers benefit from greater consistency and visibility, while reps gain a clearer, faster path to closing deals.
Learn more: Pricing Templates
Configuring Lead Custom Properties
Custom Properties allow managers to capture data points specific to their business, supporting more precise segmentation, automation, and reporting. These fields make it easier to align Merchant Central with internal workflows and analytics needs. Over time, custom properties become a powerful foundation for advanced reporting and process optimization.
Learn more: Custom Properties
Sending E-Signature Agreements
Merchant Central’s E-Signature feature enables users to send agreements — such as processing contracts and leases — directly from a lead’s profile for electronic signature using the Adobe E-Sign integration. The system automatically pre-populates documents with lead data, supports multiple signers and combined PDFs, and allows clients to upload attachments.
Once signed, completed documents are emailed to all parties and stored on the lead’s record, with notifications for key events (opened, clicked, completed). Any new client information entered during signing is also pulled back into the lead record.
Learn more:
Collecting Client Information using Web Forms
Merchant Central Web Forms capture inbound leads directly into Merchant Central from websites and marketing campaigns. Automated assignment rules and triggers help ensure new inquiries are routed quickly and followed up on consistently. This protects response-time SLAs and increases the likelihood that inbound opportunities convert into active pipeline.
Learn more: Merchant Central Web Forms
Importing Leads with the Lead Importer
The Lead Importer enables bulk creation and updating of leads in Merchant Central via CSV upload. Users map CSV columns to lead fields, apply default values (status, source, campaign, group, owner), and optionally update existing leads by matching on a unique identifier. Imports are processed asynchronously with validation and completion notifications.
Learn more: Lead Importer
Client Payments & Invoices
Payments and Invoicing tools allow managers to collect fees, issue invoices, and track transactions within Merchant Central. Keeping billing activity inside the platform improves visibility into revenue and reduces reliance on external systems.
Learn more: Lead Payments, Invoicing
Merchant Reporting
Merchant reporting tools help managers monitor post-sale activity, identify risk, and maintain long-term portfolio health.
These views make it easier to catch early warning signs—like declining processing volume or stopped activity—before they impact residual revenue. Consistent monitoring also supports stronger retention habits and clearer portfolio ownership across teams.
Using the My Merchants Page
The My Merchants page provides a centralized view of all merchants associated with your team or portfolio. Managers can use this view to track ownership, monitor status changes, and quickly access account details. This centralized oversight supports efficient portfolio management and proactive follow-up.
Learn more: My Merchants
Viewing Merchant Portfolio Activity
Portfolio Activity reports in Merchant Central highlight merchant behavior after onboarding, including processing trends and account changes. These insights help managers identify early warning signs such as declining volume, unusual shifts, or account updates that require attention.
Learn more: Portfolio Activity
The Scoop
The Scoop provides a concise, at-a-glance summary of important merchant and portfolio updates. Managers can quickly spot accounts that need attention without running a full set of reports. This makes it ideal for daily check-ins and high-level oversight across larger portfolios.
Learn more: The Scoop
Importing Merchants with the Merchant Importer
The Merchant Importer enables bulk creation and updating of merchant accounts in Merchant Central via CSV import. Users upload a CSV containing at minimum merchant identifiers (e.g., MID, DBA Name), map file columns to CRM merchant fields, and set defaults (group, processor, data source).
Additional fields such as active status, dates, user assignments, and split configurations can also be included. Import behavior for existing merchants can be configured to ignore or update matched records. Once configured, the import runs with preview and activity tracking.
Learn more: Merchant Importer
Residuals & Payout Management
Residual tools provide managers with transparency into ongoing earnings, compensation structures, and portfolio profitability.
Having clear residual visibility supports more accurate forecasting, smoother compensation conversations, and faster troubleshooting when questions arise. It also helps managers connect merchant performance to long-term revenue outcomes.
Residual Management
Residual Management tools control how residuals are calculated, distributed, and reported across the organization. Residuals are managed through configurable templates, which standardize calculation rules and support consistent application of compensation structures across portfolios.
Managers can support unique compensation agreements through exceptions, import residual files directly from processors, and review detailed line items to audit transaction-level earnings.
For teams with more complex arrangements, splits make it possible to distribute residuals across multiple stakeholders while keeping reporting clear and consistent.
Learn more: Residuals Templates
Residual Analytics
Residual Analytics provide visibility into earnings trends, growth over time, and contributor performance.
Managers can use these insights to forecast revenue, evaluate long-term performance, and support compensation planning. Reviewing residual analytics regularly also helps identify portfolios that are growing, flattening, or declining—so you can act earlier on retention strategy.
Learn more: Residuals Analytics
Merchant Profitability
Merchant Profitability reports show how processing volume translates into revenue and residual earnings. This helps managers identify high-value accounts and prioritize retention efforts. These reports are also useful for understanding which segments or pricing structures produce the strongest long-term returns.
Learn more: Merchant Profitability
Sales Manager Best Practices
Consistent habits and a regular reporting cadence make Merchant Central significantly more valuable for managers. Teams perform best when expectations are reinforced through objective metrics and repeatable workflows.
Use these best practices to stay proactive, improve coaching outcomes, and maintain long-term portfolio performance:
- Review metrics weekly: Identify trends before they escalate.
- Coach using data: Ground feedback in objective performance metrics.
- Standardize workflows: Automation improves consistency and scalability.
- Monitor beyond activation: Portfolio health drives long-term revenue.