Affiliates

The affiliate programme pays your clients for bringing you business. A client joins, gets a personal link, and shares it. Visitors who come through the link are remembered in their browser; when such a visitor orders, the services on that order become the affiliate's referrals, and each time an invoice for a referred service is paid, the affiliate earns a commission. Commissions can be held for a number of days before they are released to the affiliate's balance, and staff pay the balance out as account credit or record that it was paid another way. This chapter covers the settings, the staff pages under Clients > Manage Affiliates, how commissions are worked out and released, and what the client sees.

Settings

The programme is set up on the Affiliates tab of Settings > General Settings (see Settings).

A product can set its own commission on its form under Settings > Products/Services: "Affiliate commission" is The default rate, A percentage, A fixed amount, or None, with an amount box and "Paid once, not on every renewal". A product's own setting comes before the affiliate's own rate and the general rate.

Clients > Manage Affiliates

The list shows every affiliate account: its number, the client, since when, visitors, referrals, balance and amount paid out, each in the client's currency. Search by name, company, email address or affiliate number. When the programme is turned off, a warning says so at the top.

"Open an affiliate account" takes a client number or email address and opens an account for that client, as if they had joined themselves: the sign-up bonus is credited and the welcome email is sent. For a client who already has an account, the existing account is shown.

The affiliate page

Opening an affiliate shows:

• Summary: the link to share, since when, visitors (how many times the link was followed), referrals with the conversion rate (referrals divided by visitors), clients brought in (accounts that registered through the link), and the commission rate that applies.
• Money: the balance, the amount waiting to be released, and the amount paid out so far.
• Commission for this affiliate: The general rate, A percentage, or A fixed amount per payment, with the amount, and "Only the first payment of each referral earns". Save changes the rate for future payments only.
• Referrals: each referred service with the date, its status, the recurring amount and cycle, the date of the last commission, and what it has earned in total. Remove takes the service off the affiliate; commissions already in the balance stay, pending ones for it are dropped. "Add a service by its number" makes any service a referral of this affiliate, except the affiliate's own services and services that are already a referral of someone.
• Waiting to be released: pending commissions with the day they clear, the service and the invoice.
• Pay out: an amount (the whole balance is filled in), how (Add to the client's account credit, or Paid another way, for a bank transfer and the like), and a reference. The amount must be more than zero and no more than the balance. Paying to credit adds the amount to the client's account credit, as a credit entry "Affiliate commission paid out", so it is used on their next invoices.
• Change the balance: an amount (negative to take away) and a description, for corrections. The balance cannot go below zero.
• Commission history: every change of the balance with its date, description and the invoice it came from.
• Payouts: every payout with the date, how, reference, who recorded it and the amount.
• Delete affiliate: removes the affiliate account with its referrals, history, payouts and visit records, and clears the "brought in by" mark on clients. The client account stays. When there is a balance you must tick "Delete even though there is a balance".

Every action here is written to the activity log on the client.

How commissions are earned and released

The link

An affiliate's link is

https://www.example.com/aff/12

where 12 is the affiliate's number. It can carry a page to go on to, which must be on your own site: https://www.example.com/aff/12?to=/store. Without it the visitor lands on the home page.

When the programme is on and the affiliate's client account is not closed, the visit is counted (once per browser; a repeat visit by someone already remembered for this affiliate is not counted again) and the affiliate's number is remembered in the visitor's browser for 90 days. The address the visitor came from is kept with the visit.

Referring a client

When a remembered visitor registers, the new client account is marked as brought in by the affiliate, unless the account belongs to the affiliate. The mark is kept, so this client's later orders count too, even after the browser has forgotten the link.

Referring an order

When an order is placed (in the store, by staff or through the API) the services on it become referrals of the affiliate whose link the buyer came through; if there is none, of the affiliate who brought the client in. An affiliate never earns on their own account's orders. A service can be a referral of only one affiliate, and this happens inside the order itself, before its invoice exists, so an invoice paid with credit at once still earns.

Earning on payment

When an invoice is paid in full, CoreInto looks at its lines for referred services. For each referred service, the service's own lines (the period and any set-up fee) are added together and:

1. The rate is chosen: the product's own setting first (a percentage, a fixed amount, or none), else the affiliate's own rate, else the general rate from the settings.
2. The amount is converted into the affiliate's currency at the current exchange rates. Fixed amounts, which are in your default currency, are converted too.
3. Nothing is earned when the product's commission is None, when the result is zero, when the affiliate's client account is closed, when the affiliate owns the service, or when this invoice has already earned for this referral.
4. With "Paid once" on the product, or "Only the first payment" on the affiliate, nothing is earned after the referral's first payment.
5. With a delay set, the commission is put in the waiting list with the day it clears; otherwise it is added to the balance at once with the description "Commission on invoice #NUMBER".

The commission is worked out on the line amounts before promotion discounts.

Releasing held commissions

The daily task affiliate-commissions goes through the waiting list. A commission whose day has come is added to the balance, unless the service was cancelled, terminated, marked as fraud or deleted meanwhile, the invoice was refunded or cancelled, or the affiliate's account is closed; in those cases it is dropped. The task's result line says how many were released and how many dropped.

The monthly report

With "Send affiliates a monthly report" on, the task affiliate-reports emails every affiliate whose client account is active a summary of the month before: visits, sign-ups (new referrals), the amount earned that month, and the balance. Each month is sent once. The email is the template "Monthly affiliate report" in the Affiliates group of Settings > Email Templates; the welcome email is "Affiliate account opened". Clients can turn affiliate email off in their email preferences.

The client side

Clients find Affiliates in the client area menu (/client/affiliates) when their user has the "affiliates" permission on the account.

Joining

A client without an affiliate account sees the programme's rate and the sign-up bonus, and a "Join the affiliate programme" button. Joining opens the account, credits the bonus, and sends the welcome email with the link. When the programme is off the page says it is not open.

The affiliate page

An affiliate sees:

• Tiles: visitors, referrals, conversion rate and balance.
• Your link, with the rate that applies.
• Your earnings: balance, waiting to be released, paid out, and the "Ask for a payout" button once the balance reaches the least amount. Below the minimum the page says what the minimum is.
• Referrals: date, product, status and what each earned.
• Commission history and payouts.
• Banners and link codes, when the setting "Link codes for affiliates" is filled in: each code with a preview and a text box to copy, the affiliate's own link already inserted.

If the programme is turned off, a notice says it is paused, visits are not counted and nothing new is earned, and the balance is kept.

Asking for a payout

"Ask for a payout" opens a support ticket with the subject "Affiliate payout request" in the department chosen by "Department for withdrawal requests" (or the first department). The message gives the balance and the affiliate number. Only one such ticket can be open at a time; a second request shows "Your request is already with us." Staff then pay the balance out on the affiliate page and answer the ticket. If no department exists, the client is asked to contact you instead.

Where else affiliates appear

• A client's summary page in the admin area links to their affiliate account.
• The report Affiliates Overview under Reports > Clients lists every affiliate with visitors, referrals, earnings, payouts and balance (see Reports and utilities).
• The import brings affiliates, referrals, pending commissions, history, payouts and visit counts from your previous system (see Import).
• The automation tasks are affiliate-commissions (daily) and affiliate-reports (monthly); see Automation.