Affiliates

Give partners a code and a referral link, credit the business they send you, and pay them in batches.

Overview

Affiliates gives you:

• Partners, each with their own code and commission rate.
• Referral links that count every click.
• Commission credited automatically when a customer a partner referred pays an invoice, accepts a quote or pays through a payment link.
• Approval before anything is paid, and clawbacks when a sale is undone.
• Payout batches you approve and mark as paid.
• An overview of clicks, conversion rate, earnings per click and what you owe.

Adding a partner

Go to Affiliates → Partners and press Add affiliate. Fill in their Name, Email and Their code. If you leave the code empty, one is made from their name (Ada Lovelace becomes ADALOVELACE). Then choose the Commission: A share of each sale (a percentage) or A fixed amount per sale. Press Add affiliate.

Use Edit on a partner's row to change their name, email, notes or commission later.

Referral links

Go to Affiliates → Links and press New link. Choose the Partner, paste the web address under Where it sends people (usually a page on your own website), add an optional Campaign name and press Create link. The link looks like https://app.softsolz.uk/ref/adalovelace, and you can copy it from the list.

When somebody follows it, the click is counted and they are sent straight on to your page. Clicks show on the Links page and on the Overview. We store a one-way hash of the visitor's address, never the address itself, and clicks from known bots are not counted.

How sales are credited

A click on its own does not credit a sale. Commission is credited in two ways:

• Automatically - open the customer in Contacts and set Referred by to the partner. From then on, commission is credited when that customer pays an invoice in full, accepts a quote, or pays through a payment link with the same email address.
• By hand - on Affiliates → Commissions, press Credit a sale, choose the Partner, What was sold on (invoice, quote, subscription or payment link), a Reference and the sale amount, and press Credit the sale.

Commission

A commission moves from Waiting, to Approved, to Paid. Approve them one at a time, or press Approve everything waiting to approve the waiting commissions on the page you are looking at. Use Reject for one you will not pay.

The totals at the top (Waiting on you, Owed right now, Paid out) always cover everything that matches your filter, not just the page you are looking at.

Refunds

If a sale is undone after you have paid its commission, use Claw back on the commission's row. The commission keeps its record, marked Clawed back, so the history stays honest, and the partner's revenue and sales totals go down. A commission that has not been paid yet can simply be rejected. Commission that was already paid stays counted in Paid out, and the clawed-back amount is shown separately as money to recover from the partner.

Paying partners

On Affiliates → Payouts, press Build a payout. SoftSolz gathers every approved commission that is past its hold period, grouped by partner, skipping anybody below the minimum payout. Each batch holds one currency. Commission in another currency waits for its own batch.

Open the batch, press Approve, pay the partners from your bank, then press Mark as paid. Marking a batch paid marks its commissions paid too. You can also use Mark paid on a single approved commission.

Paying partners is a separate permission from managing them, because it moves money.

Programme rules

The first time you open Affiliates → Programme, press Set up the programme. It holds the payout rules for partners linked to the programme. Change them and press Save programme:

• Default commission - a percentage from 1 to 100, or a fixed amount more than zero. New partners start on this rate.
• Cookie window - days a click keeps crediting the partner, from 0 to 365.
• Hold period - days to wait before commission can be paid, so refunds land first. Zero pays straight away.
• Minimum payout - do not pay a partner until they have earned at least this.
• Repeat payments - how long a subscription keeps earning: first payment only, a number of months, or every payment for life.

Numbers outside these ranges are refused with a message, never quietly changed.

Tiers

On the Programme page, press Add tier to pay your best partners more as they grow. Give the tier a name, the referred revenue at which it starts, and the commission at that tier. Partners in the programme move up on their own as their revenue passes each threshold.

Keeping it honest

A partner cannot earn commission on their own purchase: we check the email and the linked contact.

The Overview page also flags anything worth a second look before you approve it, under Worth a look before you approve, such as several visitors arriving from a single network, a sale refused because the partner looked like the customer, or the same sale credited more than once.

Test it step by step

These steps prove Affiliates works from a new partner to a paid commission. You can try them in the sandbox first: open the workspace menu and choose Switch to Sandbox mode. The sandbox keeps its own data.

1. Install the service. Open Marketplace, find Affiliates and press Install. Do this as the workspace owner or an Admin. Other roles need the Affiliates permissions turned on under Members & access → Roles, and paying partners has a permission of its own.
2. Add a partner. Under Partners, press Add affiliate. Use a test name and an email address of your own, keep A share of each sale at 10% and press Add affiliate. You should see "Affiliate added" and the partner in the list with their code.
3. Make a link. Under Links, press New link, choose the partner, paste your website's address and press Create link. You should see "Link created" with the link.
4. Click it. Open the link in a private browser window. You land on your website. Reload Links: the link now shows 1 click, and Overview shows it under Clicks.
5. Credit a sale. Under Commissions, press Credit a sale. Choose the partner, pick Invoice, type a reference such as TEST-1 and a sale amount of 100, and press Credit the sale. You should see "Sale credited" and a 10.00 commission marked Waiting.
6. Approve and pay it. Press Approve on the row. It becomes Approved and Owed right now goes up. Then press Mark paid. It becomes Paid and moves to Paid out.
7. Optional: the automatic path. With Invoicing installed, add an Invoicing customer whose email is different from the partner's. The customer also appears in Contacts: open them there and set Referred by to the partner. Send that customer an invoice, then record a payment for the full amount. A new Waiting commission appears for the partner.

For developers

In the sandbox, create an API key under Developers with the service.affiliates.manage scope. Sandbox keys start with sk_test_. Add a partner with a 10% commission:

curl -X POST https://app.softsolz.uk/api/v1/services/affiliates/affiliates \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_test_your_key" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "Ada Lovelace",
    "email": "ada@example.com",
    "code": "ADA10",
    "commission_percent": 10
  }'

A reply with the partner, their code and "status": "active" means it worked, and they appear under Partners. Send a programme_id as well to link the partner to your programme. Full details: Add a partner and issue their code and Credit a sale to a partner code.

If something goes wrong