Roles and titles both describe people in Fullcast, but they answer different questions. A role defines what someone is accountable for - their function on a territory or team. A title defines who someone is right now, which drives their quota, ramp, and commissions.
The difference at a glance
Roles | Titles | |
|---|---|---|
Question answered | What is this person accountable for on a territory or team? | What title does this person hold right now? |
Examples | Account Executive, Sales Manager, Customer Success Manager | Enterprise AE, Senior Enterprise AE, L1 Senior Enterprise AE, Senior CSM |
How people get one | A coverage assignment places a person with a role on a territory or team | You assign a title with effective dates, individually or in bulk |
Can a person hold more than one at a time? | Yes. Roles can overlap and be active at the same time. | No. One active title at a time. |
What it drives | Territory and team coverage, crediting splits, user permissions, export to your CRM | A target for each person's title, ramp tied to the person, automatic target splits on promotions, comp plan routing |
Permissions | Drives permissioning in the Fullcast system | Does not drive any permissions in the Fullcast system |
Scope | Describes the person's accountability - the part you play on a project, territory, or team, and therefore the outcome you are responsible for on that territory or team. | Describes the person's responsibility and the list of tasks the person must perform, irrespective of the project they are working on. The project, territory, or team you work on has no bearing on your title. |
What roles do
A role is a function, such as Account Executive or Sales Manager. Roles come to life through coverage assignments: a person, in a role, on a territory or team, for a date range. That combination defines who covers what, potentially who gets credit for deals in a territory (depending on the crediting rules), and what appears on the account team in your CRM. Roles also carry Fullcast user permissions, and crediting splits are defined on role assignments.
Because coverage is many-to-many, a person can hold several roles at once - the same rep can be an Account Executive on one territory and an overlay on another.
What titles do
A title is what a person holds right now - for example, Enterprise AE or Senior Enterprise AE. You assign titles to people from the Titles tab of the People Detail view. You can also see each person's current title as a column in the Employees grid under Teams. To assign titles in bulk, import them as a CSV from the Titles catalog.
Title history is effective-dated: when a person's title changes, the prior title is end-dated and the new one starts on the change date, so you always know which title a person held on any given day. A person holds one active title at a time.
Targets
Both titles and roles drive targets. You must therefore pick the model you want to use to drive the target.
Topic | Roles | Titles |
|---|---|---|
Outcome | The target is for the role, and can therefore depend on the details of the project, territory, or team the person is accountable for. | The target is for the title the person holds, and is therefore not dependent on any aspect of the project, territory, or team the person works on. |
Subject of the target | A target set by role lets the person who occupies that role inherit the target set on the project. For example, a target can be set on a territory, and the Account Executive on that territory inherits the target while they hold that role, based on their start and end dates in the role. | A target is set on the person in a title. The target is tied to the person in a specific title, so there is no concept of inheriting a target from a project, territory, or team. |
Ramp | Ramp can be assigned to the person in a role on the project or territory. A person can be ramping for each role they are in. Ramp is associated with the role, so if the person changes roles, the ramp does not follow them. | Ramp can be assigned to the person in a title, irrespective of the project they are involved in. Ramp moves with the person if they are reorganized or promoted. |
Rolled up target | Rollups happen at the territory or team level, so a rolled up target can only be inherited by someone assigned coverage in a role on that territory - for example, the manager inherits the rolled up target for all their team members. | Rolled up targets cannot be inherited by a manager in a title. You must explicitly assign a target to the person in the manager title. |
Target survivability | A target can survive a person's association with a territory or team. For example, a target assigned to a territory does not cease to exist when a rep leaves the territory. The target belongs to the territory, so a new rep coming in inherits the territory target. | A target set on a person in a title does not survive the person. When the person leaves, the target ceases to exist. |
Promotions | A person in a role on a territory cannot be promoted and given a new target in the same role on the same territory, team, or product. For example, a person in an AE role who is promoted cannot be given a new target if their role did not change. | A person can be promoted into a new title and given a new target even if their project and manager did not change. For example, a junior rep with a quota of 750K can be promoted to senior rep with a quota of 1M. |
Titles in targets
You assign every target to a role. Turn on Split targets by title when comp plans differ by title and you want the target to follow the title each person holds rather than their role. With the toggle on, the target reaches only people who hold a title under the assigned role, so the target’s Assigned roles must include the role each title sits under, or its holders will not receive the target. With the toggle off, the target distributes by role as usual.
With Split targets by title on, when someone’s title changes mid-period the target shows up as more than one row in the target table - one row per title the person held during the period. Each row holds prorated values only for the months that title was active, and shows zero for the months outside that occupancy window. A promotion from Junior AE to Senior AE partway through the quarter produces two rows: the Junior AE row carries numbers through the month of the promotion and reads zero after that, and a new Senior AE row picks up from the promotion month onward. These per-title rows appear on the team’s lowest-level node, not on All Teams.
You set Split targets by title when you create a target. Re-saving a target re-derives the titles currently under its role, so re-save a target after you change which titles sit under that role.
Titles in crediting rules and compensation plans
Crediting rules and compensation plan components can base payee eligibility and splits on role or on title - choose one; a single rule or component can’t use both. Use title-based eligibility when pay should follow a person’s level rather than their territory coverage assignment - for example, giving junior and senior AEs different commission tiers on the same territory.
When to use roles
Use roles when the question is about coverage and accountability:
Defining who covers which territory, team, or product
Crediting splits between people on the same territory
Controlling what users can see and do in Fullcast
Exporting assignments to account teams in your CRM
If this is all you need, roles alone are enough. Titles are optional.
When to use titles
Use titles when quota, ramp, or commissions depend on a person's title or tenure rather than on the territories they cover:
People are promoted or change titles mid-period, and commissions must pay each period against the correct quota and comp plan
Quotas differ by title or tenure, and each person's target should follow their title
Ramp should follow the person's title, not their territory coverage
Team-level targets should apply only to people in specific titles
Titles and roles: how they fit together
Roles and titles are independent attributes of a person, and most organizations that adopt titles use both. Coverage and permissions stay on roles; quota, ramp, and tenure live on titles. Each target reads ramp from exactly one source - title or role. If you have not configured any titles, nothing changes: title columns and tabs do not appear, and your targets and ramp continue to work from roles exactly as before.
You may hear titles described as “nested under” roles - meaning a title reflects day-to-day responsibility at a finer grain than the accountability a role captures. That describes how the Titles catalog is organized in the product (titles are grouped under each role’s card on the Roles & Titles page), not a data relationship: a person can hold one title while holding several roles at once - for example, a player-coach who is both a Sales Manager and an Account Executive.
Common scenario best practices
Manager quota based on reps rolled up values
Since managers are assigned to the team they manage via coverage, use a role based target. The goal for the role based target should reference the rolled up value of the title based rep target.
Manager quota unrelated to their teams rolled up quota
In the case of managers being assigned a separate quota unassociated with their reps, a role based or a title based target can be used, as both allow for the target to be assigned specifically to a person. Use the "When to use" sections above to determine the best approach for the target.