What it is
A rebate is the sliding scale in a recruitment agency's terms of business that fixes what percentage of an already-paid placement fee is repayable if the candidate leaves within the guarantee period. It is a schedule, not a transaction: a table or formula that reads something like 100% in the first couple of weeks, stepping down in stages until it reaches zero by the end of the guarantee window. The scale is what gets negotiated line by line before a contract is signed. The actual repayment, if one is ever triggered, is a separate event called a clawback.
Most rebate scales step down in tiers rather than dropping off a cliff. A candidate who leaves in week one exposes the agency to close to the full fee; one who leaves in week ten of a twelve-week guarantee exposes it to a small fraction or nothing at all. Some agencies run a flat rebate instead, the same percentage for the whole guarantee period, but a taper is the more common shape because it treats a placement that nearly worked more gently than one that failed on day two.
A rebate is the scale a client agrees to. A clawback is what happens when it gets used.
Why it matters
The rebate scale is one of the first things a prospective client's finance or procurement team reads in a set of terms of business, and it gets negotiated almost as hard as the headline fee percentage. A shallow scale that drops to zero after two weeks protects the agency's cash but can put clients off; a generous scale that stays high for eight or ten weeks wins business but raises the agency's real exposure on every placement it makes. Getting the scale wrong in either direction shows up months later, either in lost pitches or in fee repayments nobody budgeted for.
Because the rebate scale differs by client, and sometimes by role type within the same client, it needs to be tracked precisely, not remembered approximately. An agency that cannot say exactly what percentage applies to a placement made six weeks ago is negotiating its next set of terms blind, and cannot tell a consultant with confidence what a given departure will actually cost.
How boilr handles it
boilr does not set your rebate scale, that stays a commercial conversation between consultant and client, but the moment terms are agreed, the scale and the guarantee period it runs against are recorded in the Company Brain alongside the rest of that account's commercial terms, so it is never left sitting in a signed PDF nobody reopens.
Because the scale is stored precisely, boilr can tell you exactly what a placement is still exposed to at any point in its guarantee period. If a departure or job-change signal fires on a candidate the scale still applies to, your AI sales employee surfaces the exposure the same day, rather than after the client's finance team has already worked it out.
