Pay your partners

Every sale, renewal or lead a partner brings in becomes a commission. It waits for your hold period, so a refund can still reverse it, and then becomes payable. You can pay everyone who chose PayPal in one go from your own PayPal Business account, and pay anyone else by bank transfer and mark them paid.

Before you start

• The owner or admin role.
• To pay through PayPal: a PayPal Business account, and an app in PayPal's developer dashboard with Payouts turned on.

Steps

Check and adjust commissions

1. Go to Marketing › Affiliate program and open the Commissions tab.
2. Filter by all, pending, approved, paid or void. A commission from a tagged link shows its campaign tag, such as #youtube. A refund shows as a line "Taken off what this partner is owed".
3. To credit a sale made outside your store, such as an invoice paid by bank transfer, click Add a sale. Choose the Partner, type the Sale amount and Date, optionally pick the Product, choose Use my rates or Type an amount, add a Note, and click Add sale. The partner is emailed about it.
4. To cancel a commission you don't accept, such as a fake sign-up, click Void on it, add a note and confirm. This cannot be undone.

Connect PayPal (once)

1. Open the Payouts tab and click Connect PayPal.
2. Follow the steps in the box: sign in at developer.paypal.com, create an app on the Live tab, and turn on Payouts for it.
3. Choose Live (or Sandbox for test money), paste the app's Client ID and Secret, and click Connect. The keys are checked with PayPal before they are kept.
4. Under Pay PayPal partners, choose Only when I press Send, Every Monday or On the 1st of each month.

Pay everyone owed

1. On the Payouts tab, click Pay everyone owed. It lists approved commissions that have passed their hold period.
2. Partners who chose PayPal are listed under Through PayPal. Click Send through PayPal to pay them from your PayPal balance.
3. For everyone else, pay them yourself first. PayPal payouts file and Spreadsheet (CSV) give you the list to work from.
4. Choose the Method (PayPal, Bank transfer or Other), add a Reference if you like, and click Mark these as paid.

To pay one partner only, click Pay out on their row on the Affiliates tab, choose the Method, and click Record payout.

What happens next

• Partners are emailed when they are paid.
• With a weekly or monthly schedule, everyone owed who chose PayPal is paid around 15:00 UTC every Monday or on the 1st of each month. Partners paid another way still wait for you.
• A PayPal payout shows "Sending through PayPal", or "Waiting for the partner to claim it in PayPal" if their PayPal account needs to accept it. Click Check PayPal now for the latest.
• PayPal charges its usual payout fee. Nothing is taken from the partners' commissions.

Troubleshooting

It says "Nobody is owed a payout right now". No commission has passed its hold period yet, or balances are under your minimum payout. They are paid in a later payout.

A partner is listed under "Waiting for a tax form". You require a tax form and they have not sent one. They upload a W-9 or W-8 on their partner page; until then they are left out.

A payout says "Not delivered. The money is back in their balance." PayPal could not deliver it, for example because the PayPal email is wrong or the payment was never claimed. Ask the partner to check the payout details on their partner page. It goes in the next payout.

It says "PayPal connected, but it did not list Payouts for this app." Turn on Payouts for the app in PayPal's developer dashboard, then connect again. Without it, PayPal refuses payouts.

It says "PayPal did not take the payouts. Nothing was paid." Check your PayPal balance and that Payouts is turned on for the app, then try again.

It says "PayPal has not answered yet." The payouts are sent again by themselves, and nobody is paid twice. Check back later.

Related

• Set up your affiliate program
• Approve and manage your partners
• Every workflow trigger explained