Sales Commissions, Promotions, Advertising, Gifts & P.R.: Codes 6100-6203

Sage treats the cost of actively winning sales as a Direct Expense rather than a general overhead, since it's closely tied to generating the revenue it sits alongside in the profit and loss account.

The codes, and what each one holds

Code 6100 — Sales Commissions records commission paid to sales staff or agents for securing sales.

Code 6200 — Sales Promotions covers the cost of promotional campaigns, discounts, or offers run to boost sales.

Code 6201 — Advertising records spend on adverts across any media, from print to digital.

Code 6202 — Gifts and Samples covers free samples or promotional gifts given to prospective or existing customers.

Code 6203 — P.R. (Literature & Brochures) records the cost of printed marketing literature and public relations materials. All five are Direct Expenses codes and normally carry a debit balance.

A worked example

Say a business pays its sales team £1,800 in commission this month, runs a £2,500 digital advertising campaign, and spends £300 producing new product brochures.

Sales Commissions (code 6100): £1,800 debited.

Advertising (code 6201): £2,500 debited.

P.R. (code 6203): £300 debited.

Why this matters day to day

Breaking marketing and sales-winning costs into these separate codes makes it far easier to see which channels are actually being invested in and to calculate a rough return on marketing spend against the sales it generates. Because these sit in Direct Expenses rather than Overheads, they directly affect gross profit — a useful reminder that a business's marketing spend is treated as part of the true cost of making a sale, not just a background running cost.