Affiliate program

Run your own affiliate program: approve affiliates, track referred sales, and pay commissions through PayPal or by hand. This needs TierMint Pro.

How the program works

A customer applies to become an affiliate, and you approve them. They get a personal referral link to share. When a visitor arrives through that link and buys, TierMint records a commission. You approve commissions and pay them on your own schedule.

The program runs on your own site, with no outside affiliate service. Affiliate data leaves your site only when you pay through PayPal. The program is off until you turn it on, and every application and every commission waits for your approval.

Who can do what:

Capability	What it allows
view_tiermint_reports	Open TierMint → Affiliates, read the affiliates, commissions and payout totals, and download the payout CSV.
manage_tiermint	Approve, reject and disable affiliates, set their rates, act on commissions, run payouts and see payout runs.
manage_tiermint_settings	Change the program settings.

Administrators have all three.

Turn the program on

Open TierMint → Settings → Affiliates, change the settings and click Save.

Setting	Default	What it does
Enable the affiliate program	Off	While it is off, referral links do nothing and no new commissions are recorded, even for approved affiliates.
Default commission rate (%)	10	The commission on a referred sale, before tax, for an affiliate with no rate of their own. Enter 15 for 15 percent.
Referral cookie window (days)	30	How long a referral is remembered after a visitor follows an affiliate link, from 1 to 3650 days. When a visitor follows several links, the last one wins.
Pay affiliates through PayPal	Off	Lets a payout run send money from your PayPal account. See Pay affiliates through PayPal.

How affiliates apply and get their link

Put the affiliate panel on a page with the [tiermint_affiliate_dashboard] shortcode. It also shows as the Affiliate panel on the customer account dashboard.

[tiermint_affiliate_dashboard]

A signed-in customer who is not an affiliate yet sees Apply to the affiliate program. Applying creates a pending application. Nothing is earned until you approve it.

After you approve an affiliate, the same panel shows Your referral link: your site address with ?ref= and their code. It also shows Your earnings in each currency, split into pending, approved and paid. A visitor who follows the link gets the cookie, and the page reloads without ?ref= in the address. Any purchase within the cookie window earns the affiliate a commission.

Affiliates enter the PayPal address they want to be paid at in Your PayPal payout email, then click Save payout email.

Approve affiliates

The Affiliates tab on TierMint → Affiliates lists everyone who has applied. Filter the list with Status.

For each affiliate you can:

• click Approve so their referrals start to earn
• click Reject to turn down an applicant
• click Disable to stop an approved affiliate earning, while keeping their history
• type a rate and click Save rate to override the program default for this affiliate

Leaving the rate field empty keeps the program default. For a user who can change settings, the field shows that default as its placeholder.

Each row shows the affiliate's name, or their email address when no name is on file. A manager can click the name to open Affiliate detail, with the referral code, the PayPal payout address, the commission earned in each currency and the payout history.

Review commissions

The Commissions tab lists one row per referred order: the order, the affiliate, the customer, the Base the rate was applied to, the Rate, the Commission and its currency. For users who manage TierMint, the order number links to the order.

A commission starts as pending. You can:

• click Approve once you are happy the sale is genuine
• click Mark paid after you have sent the money another way
• click Reject if it should not be paid

A rejected or reversed commission is final and counts toward no payout total.

Pay affiliates

The Payouts tab totals what each affiliate is owed, in each currency, split into pending, approved and paid. Download CSV saves the same figures for your accounts. Currencies are never added together: an affiliate who earned in dollars and euros has one row for each.

Under Pay affiliates, pick how to pay the approved commissions: Pay via PayPal or Record a manual payout. Both mark the commissions they cover as paid.

Pay affiliates through PayPal

TierMint can send money through PayPal Payouts, PayPal's bulk payment service. Before your first run:

1. Ask PayPal to enable Payouts on your PayPal business account. It is a separate approval on PayPal's side, and PayPal charges a fee for each payout. TierMint cannot see whether PayPal approved it, so until then a run shows the error PayPal returns.
2. Turn on Pay affiliates through PayPal under TierMint → Settings → Affiliates. Payouts use the PayPal credentials you set up for PayPal payments.
3. On the PayPal webhook TierMint already uses, subscribe the payout item events (PAYMENT.PAYOUTS-ITEM.SUCCEEDED, FAILED, BLOCKED, DENIED, RETURNED, REFUNDED, REVERSED, HELD, UNCLAIMED and CANCELED) and the payout batch events (PAYMENT.PAYOUTSBATCH.SUCCESS, PROCESSING and DENIED). TierMint uses them to mark each payout paid or failed. Without them, a payout can stay in processing until the hourly check settles it.

To run a payout:

1. On the Payouts tab, pick Pay via PayPal and click Preview payout.
2. Check the preview: the total for each currency, each affiliate's amount and payout email, and anyone left out of the run with the reason. Nothing has been sent yet.
3. Click Send payment.

The preview is the confirmation step. If the commissions change between the preview and the send, for example because someone approved or reversed one in another tab, TierMint refuses the run and asks you to preview again.

A run sends one PayPal batch for each currency. The commissions it covers still read Approved on the Commissions tab, and you cannot act on them while the run is open. On the Payout runs tab each item shows as processing until PayPal reports back through the webhook. Each item then moves to paid, or back to approved if it failed, so you can fix the email address and pay it again. The Payout runs tab lists every run with the status of each item. An hourly check settles anything a missed webhook left behind.

An affiliate with no payout email on file is left out of a PayPal run and listed as skipped. So is an amount in a currency PayPal cannot pay. Pay these affiliates with a manual payout.

Record a manual payout

When you pay an affiliate another way, such as a bank transfer, pick Record a manual payout. It marks the same commissions paid without contacting PayPal, so the payout runs and the commission list still show what was paid and when.

To settle a single commission, use Mark paid on the Commissions tab.

What earns a commission

Only purchase orders earn. Renewals, plan upgrades and refunds never earn a commission.

The commission is on the sale before tax: the order total minus tax. Tax never adds to a commission, and a discount lowers it.

A refund reverses the whole commission. Any refund on a referred order, of any size, voids the full commission for that order. This happens even when the commission was already paid, and even while the program is off. A reversed commission that you already paid is your signal to recover the money: TierMint does not take money back.

An affiliate disabled after the visitor's click earns nothing when the order completes.

Affiliates cannot refer themselves. A purchase by the affiliate's own customer account, or with the same email address, earns no commission. An affiliate who buys under a different email address cannot be told apart from a real referral, so review commissions before you pay them.

Turn the program off

Switch off Enable the affiliate program. Referral links stop working, the affiliate panel says the program is not available, and no new commissions are recorded. Affiliates and commissions are kept, so you can still pay what was earned and turn the program back on later.