Before you fire off checks to your partners, you’ll want to double-check that their payments look correct. Here’s how to approve and pay partner commissions.
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Feature updates: Since this video was produced, partner data is available app-wide. You can build a powerful, unified partner center in Ontraport (without WordPress).
Learn how to set up a partner program in this article.
Learn how to set up a partner program in this article.
Home > Ontraport for marketing > Partners > Approving and paying commissions
Approving and paying commissions
Course Instructor
- How to review pending commissions
- The way to approve or cancel commissions
- Steps for paying approved commissions
- How to mark commissions as paid
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Transcript
When you sell something to a partner referral, a commission gets created for that partner.
But before you start firing off checks to your partners, you’ll need to review and approve the commission. It only takes a second, and it’s a good way to make sure you’re not accidentally paying people who don’t need to be paid.
Partner programs can attract some iffy behavior that you’ll want to keep an eye on. For example, people might try to refer themselves, to get a discount on their purchase. Happens all the time.
Another trick is to refer yourself-but-with-another-name, and then wait for a commission to get paid, and then request a refund or issue a chargeback with the credit card company, leaving you out of pocket for that commission.
So, it’s a good idea to review things before paying them. At Ontraport, for example, we don’t pay commissions until after the 30 day refund period is over, so if someone tries to pull the chargeback scam, they don’t win the dispute.
In this video, I’ll walk you through approving and paying partner commissions. It’s pretty straightforward and can be done in four main steps.
We’ll
So, let’s get to work!
First, review your pending commissions.
To see your newest commissions, go to “Partners,” then click “Commissions” and “Pending Commissions.”
“Pending Commissions” shows all the commissions that you need to either approve or reject.
If you want to wait awhile before approving any commissions, group them by transaction date.
As I mentioned, it’s probably smart to wait until a little after the refund period before approving anything, so you’d group commissions created greater than 30 days ago and approve those, after giving them a quick visual once over for things like the referrers and clients having matching last names and such.
Now, you’ll Approve or cancel commissions.
To approve commissions, click the checkbox to the left of an entry - or select all in group if you like - and click “Approve.”
You can also reject a commission by clicking “Cancel.”
The next step is To Pay approved commissions, so we’ll go to “Partners, “Commissions” and then “Pending Payments.”
Here, you’ll see all the commissions you’ve approved for payment.
Click the checkboxes to the left of the listed payments you want to pay.
Now, click “Download PayPal CSV.” This will generate a file that can be uploaded to PayPal mass pay to pay your Partners. This is the most common way to pay partners, industry wide, because it costs nothing or almost nothing to make the transfer, and nearly everyone has a paypal address.
Of course, you need a valid PayPal address for your partners to pay them this way. See our “Sign up partners” video for more info on this.
Your pay threshold will prevent commissions from appearing on the CSV file if your partner hasn’t hit the threshold, so they’ll stay unpaid for now.
After you’ve downloaded the PayPal CSV, import it to PayPal using their MassPay system to pay your partners. It really couldn’t be easier, and you can find instructions from Paypal on how to do that if you get confused.
If you’re not using PayPal, you can mark the commission as paid once you’ve completed your own payment process.
Alright, last step!
From the same menu bar, you can now mark the commission as paid.
Once you do this, the payment moves to “Commission History.”
That’s it! Now that you know how to review, approve and pay commissions, everyone in your partner program can get their hard-earned cash.
If you want to step things up, I can talk to you a little more about setting up a Partner Center in Ontraport, adding different kinds of promotional tools and more. Keep watching the rest of our Partners videos to dig in!
But before you start firing off checks to your partners, you’ll need to review and approve the commission. It only takes a second, and it’s a good way to make sure you’re not accidentally paying people who don’t need to be paid.
Partner programs can attract some iffy behavior that you’ll want to keep an eye on. For example, people might try to refer themselves, to get a discount on their purchase. Happens all the time.
Another trick is to refer yourself-but-with-another-name, and then wait for a commission to get paid, and then request a refund or issue a chargeback with the credit card company, leaving you out of pocket for that commission.
So, it’s a good idea to review things before paying them. At Ontraport, for example, we don’t pay commissions until after the 30 day refund period is over, so if someone tries to pull the chargeback scam, they don’t win the dispute.
In this video, I’ll walk you through approving and paying partner commissions. It’s pretty straightforward and can be done in four main steps.
We’ll
- Review pending commissions,
- Approve or cancel commissions,
- Pay approved commissions, and then
- Mark commissions as paid
So, let’s get to work!
First, review your pending commissions.
To see your newest commissions, go to “Partners,” then click “Commissions” and “Pending Commissions.”
“Pending Commissions” shows all the commissions that you need to either approve or reject.
If you want to wait awhile before approving any commissions, group them by transaction date.
As I mentioned, it’s probably smart to wait until a little after the refund period before approving anything, so you’d group commissions created greater than 30 days ago and approve those, after giving them a quick visual once over for things like the referrers and clients having matching last names and such.
Now, you’ll Approve or cancel commissions.
To approve commissions, click the checkbox to the left of an entry - or select all in group if you like - and click “Approve.”
You can also reject a commission by clicking “Cancel.”
The next step is To Pay approved commissions, so we’ll go to “Partners, “Commissions” and then “Pending Payments.”
Here, you’ll see all the commissions you’ve approved for payment.
Click the checkboxes to the left of the listed payments you want to pay.
Now, click “Download PayPal CSV.” This will generate a file that can be uploaded to PayPal mass pay to pay your Partners. This is the most common way to pay partners, industry wide, because it costs nothing or almost nothing to make the transfer, and nearly everyone has a paypal address.
Of course, you need a valid PayPal address for your partners to pay them this way. See our “Sign up partners” video for more info on this.
Your pay threshold will prevent commissions from appearing on the CSV file if your partner hasn’t hit the threshold, so they’ll stay unpaid for now.
After you’ve downloaded the PayPal CSV, import it to PayPal using their MassPay system to pay your partners. It really couldn’t be easier, and you can find instructions from Paypal on how to do that if you get confused.
If you’re not using PayPal, you can mark the commission as paid once you’ve completed your own payment process.
Alright, last step!
From the same menu bar, you can now mark the commission as paid.
Once you do this, the payment moves to “Commission History.”
That’s it! Now that you know how to review, approve and pay commissions, everyone in your partner program can get their hard-earned cash.
If you want to step things up, I can talk to you a little more about setting up a Partner Center in Ontraport, adding different kinds of promotional tools and more. Keep watching the rest of our Partners videos to dig in!
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