E-commerce Operations: Orders, Commissions & Coupons

Run a store-based affiliate program end to end: how orders from Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce and Magento are attributed, how commission rules price them (CPA, RevShare, hybrid or tiered by revenue band), how to approve commissions, credit affiliates through coupon codes, handle refunds and debug webhooks.

Overview

Connect a store first — see Shopify, WooCommerce or BigCommerce. Then open Integrations → E-commerce. Its tabs:

TabUse it to
DashboardAttributable revenue, orders, average order value and new customers; a daily trend by platform; how orders were attributed; a live order feed; top affiliate/campaign pairs, best sellers, country breakdown and a refund report.
OrdersEvery order received from your stores, attributed or not, with search and CSV export.
IntegrationsConnected stores: test the connection, get the tracking snippet, and sync products or orders.
RulesCommission rules that turn an attributed order into affiliate payout.
CommissionsThe commission ledger: approve, reject and export.
CouponsMap discount codes to affiliates.
Webhook LogEvery inbound event from your stores, with replay.

How Orders Are Attributed

The dashboard's How Orders Were Attributed panel shows which signal credited each order:

OutcomeMeaning
ClickA tracked click (cookie) was present and inside the attribution window.
Coupon codeAn affiliate-owned discount code was on the order — no click needed.
Direct IDAn affiliate ID was passed without a click ID.
Click expired / Lost to windowThe click was older than the attribution window.
Below Min ValueThe order was under the rule's minimum order value.
DuplicateThe same order arrived again and was deduplicated.
No AffiliateNo affiliate signal on the order — organic or direct sale.

Attributable revenue excludes tax and shipping, which is the base RevShare commissions are calculated on.

Commission Rules

Rules define how an attributed order converts into payout. Create one under Rules → Add Commission Rule.

Payout typePays
CPAA fixed amount per order.
RevShareA percentage of attributable revenue.
HybridA fixed amount per order plus a percentage of revenue.
TieredA percentage that depends on the order's revenue band, for example 5% up to 100, 8% above.

Scope and conditions. Scope a rule to an affiliate, a campaign, both, or neither (the default). Under More options you can pay only on certain SKUs or product categories (for example 12% apparel, 3% electronics), never pay on excluded SKUs such as gift cards, require a minimum order value, pay on new customers only, and set validity dates.

Which rule wins. The most specific rule is used: affiliate + campaign, then affiliate only, then campaign only, then the store's default rule. Priority breaks a tie between two rules at the same level. If no rule matches, the order is priced by the campaign's own payout terms (the ledger marks these "campaign terms"). Rule changes apply to new orders only; commissions already in the ledger keep their rate.

Conversion Postback

Required for your main reports

Store orders appear in the E-commerce screens as soon as they arrive, but they only become tracked conversions — in the Conversions report, Daily Report and affiliate earnings — once the store's conversion postback is set. Leave it blank and the order is recorded here only.

From the Commission Ledger, open the store's postback settings. The suggested Conversion Postback URL is pre-filled; macros include the click ID, affiliate and campaign, order number, attributable revenue, the commission, country and status (1 approved, 0 reversal). A refund or cancellation fires the reversal URL — or the conversion URL with status 0 if you leave it blank. Keep order_id in the URL: it lets the tracker reject a retried postback instead of counting a second conversion. Use Generate Preview to check the URL, and Retry for postbacks that failed.

Commission Ledger

  • Every attributed order creates a commission row: Pending, Approved, Paid, Rejected or Reversed, with order, affiliate, campaign, revenue, commission and whether a rule or the campaign terms priced it.
  • Approve or reject one row, or select several and use Approve Selected / Reject Selected. A rejection reason is shown to the affiliate.
  • Summary by Affiliate totals earned, net commission and effective rate for the range. Export CSV downloads everything matching the filters.
  • Paying affiliates is done through the normal invoices and mass payments flow — the ledger has no "mark paid" button on purpose, so it never claims money moved when it did not.

Affiliate Coupon Codes

Influencer and content partners often drive sales through a discount code rather than a link. Under Coupons → Map a Code enter the code exactly as it exists in your store (case is ignored), choose the affiliate, optionally a campaign (blank uses the campaign on the order), and validity dates. Any order carrying that code is then credited to the affiliate even without a tracked click. Inactive or expired codes are ignored.

Orders & Refunds

The Order Log lists every order received on the webhook — including ones that were not attributed — with status, store, platform, customer, revenue and whether it was a first-time buyer. Open an order to see why it was or was not credited. Refunds and cancellations reverse the commission and, if a postback is configured, fire the reversal postback so affiliate earnings stay correct. The dashboard's refund report totals refunds for the range.

Webhook Log

Every inbound event from your stores, newest first, with its outcome: Processed (attributed and recorded), Skipped (filtered or duplicate), Queued (waiting on the worker), Failed (errored, replayable) or Bad signature. Click an event to see the exact payload your store sent.

Bad signature almost always means the webhook secret saved on the integration does not match the one your store signs with. Fix it under Integrations → Edit, then replay the failed events — no order data is lost.

Affiliate & Advertiser Views

Affiliates see an E-commerce page in their portal with only their own orders and commissions. If you assign a store to an advertiser, that advertiser sees the orders for their store or campaigns in the advertiser portal. Both use the same figures as your dashboard.

Rate this article
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Thanks for rating!

Was this article helpful?