Introduction ============ What tigerdistribute does ------------------------- tigerdistribute manages the *distribution side* of an insurance business: the producers (agents, agencies, MGAs) who sell your products, the regulatory paperwork that keeps them allowed to sell (licenses, appointments, E&O coverage), the commercial arrangements around them (contracts, commissions, incentives) and the goals you set for them (targets and scorecards). It deliberately does **not** administer policies. Policies, quotes and billing live in your Policy Administration System (PAS); tigerdistribute receives production and commission data *from* the PAS (see :doc:`integrations`) and publishes distribution events back out to your other systems through webhooks. Who this guide is for --------------------- This guide is a step-by-step manual for the staff of a **tenant** — the carrier, MGA or agency network that has been set up on the platform. Typical readers: * **Distribution / channel managers** — recruit producers, build the hierarchy, set targets, run incentive programs. * **Licensing & compliance staff** — track licenses, E&O and CE, triage compliance alerts, file and confirm appointments. * **Onboarding teams** — invite producers, review applications, approve or reject them. * **Finance / commissions staff** — generate commission statements, approve and pay incentive awards. Key concepts ------------ Tenant Your organisation's isolated space on the platform. Every record — producers, licenses, targets, everything — belongs to exactly one tenant, and isolation is enforced at the database level. Users can belong to more than one tenant and switch between them; you only ever see the data of the tenant you are currently working in. Producer Anyone who distributes your products: an individual agent, an agency, a sub-agency, a general agent (GA) or a managing general agent (MGA). Producers are the central record almost everything else attaches to. License A producer's regulatory license to transact insurance in a jurisdiction, with an expiration date and continuing-education (CE) obligations. Appointment The regulatory filing that authorises a producer to write business for one of your writing companies in a jurisdiction. Appointments are filed, confirmed by the regulator, and can be rejected, renewed or terminated. E&O coverage The producer's Errors & Omissions insurance. Current E&O is one of the prerequisites for placing business. Market access The combined readiness check: a producer can place a given product in a given jurisdiction only if they are licensed there, appointed there, authorised for the product, have current E&O and are not terminated. All five must be true. Distribution hierarchy The upline/downline tree of producers — for example agents under an agency, agencies under an MGA. The hierarchy drives target roll-ups and commission overrides. Target plan A named set of production goals (targets) for a period — annual, quarterly or monthly. Attainment against targets is computed from ingested production data and rolls up the hierarchy. Incentive program & award A reward scheme (bonus, contest, contingent commission, profit share) and the individual payouts granted under it. Awards move through a controlled pending → approved → paid lifecycle. Commission plan The versioned rate card a producer signs. Statements are verified against the plan's rates; a signed plan version is locked and its rates can only be changed by cutting a new version. Commission statement A per-producer statement for a period, built from the commission transactions ingested from your PAS and verified against the producer's commission plan. Payability The continuously derived verdict — active, licensed, E&O current — that tells your PAS whether it is safe to pay a producer. tigerdistribute never moves money; payability is a signal. Producer portal The self-service area where a producer (signed in with a passwordless magic link) sees their own compliance standing, finalized statements, contracts and book of business. Bulk job A mass operation — filing appointments, inviting, terminating, importing a roster — run in two phases: a validation preview, then an explicit commit. Compliance alert An issue raised by the platform's monitoring — an expiring license, lapsed E&O, missed CE deadline — that your team triages through an acknowledge / escalate / resolve / dismiss workflow. How the pieces fit together --------------------------- A typical end-to-end flow through the platform looks like this: #. An administrator sets up the tenant: users, reference data (jurisdictions, writing companies, lines of authority, products) and settings (:doc:`tenant-administration`). #. The onboarding team **invites** a producer; the applicant's details become an **application** which is reviewed and **approved** — this provisions the producer record, and, when supplied, their first license and E&O coverage (:doc:`producer-onboarding`). #. Licensing staff **file appointments** for the producer and confirm them when the regulator responds (:doc:`appointments`). #. Contracts — including the **commission schedule** the producer signs — are **sent for e-signature** (:doc:`contracts`). #. The producer is placed in the **hierarchy** under their upline (:doc:`hierarchy`) and can be granted **portal access** to follow their own standing (:doc:`producer-portal`). #. Production and commission data flows in from the PAS (:doc:`integrations`); managers run **performance cycles** — goals, rewards and payouts (:doc:`performance`) — and generate **commission statements**, verified against the signed plan rates (:doc:`commissions`). #. Monitoring keeps raising **compliance alerts** as licenses and E&O approach expiry, the compliance team triages them (:doc:`compliance`), and each producer's **payability** verdict is kept current for the PAS. #. **Scorecards** rank producers by a weighted composite score (:doc:`scorecards`). Anywhere a workflow applies to many producers at once — appointments, invitations, contracts, terminations, roster imports — it can run as a validated **bulk job** (:doc:`bulk-operations`), and the day-to-day numbers are exportable from the **Reports** screen (:doc:`reports`).