Answers
Affiliates: who referred what, what they earned, and the payout run
Turn on the Affiliates module and the page reads Keap’s affiliate module back: the roster, the commission ledger and the payments recorded against each affiliate, joined to your orders by invoice id. Balance is Keap’s ledger, commissions earned less payments recorded, and this page never keeps a second set of books. It is your view of your affiliates, never the affiliate’s view of you.
The overview
Six figures for the span you pick, 30 days, 90 days or this year, each against the span before it: referred revenue, commissions earned, paid out, owed, margin after commissions, and active affiliates. Under them, referred revenue and commissions by month for the last twelve, your top affiliates for the span, the next payout run, and the applications waiting.
Affiliates, one affiliate, and the ledger
Affiliates is the roster with referrals, referred revenue, earned, paid, balance and last referral, filtered by status or by who is owed a balance, and searchable. Open one and you get their balance and how long it has been owed, their details, their payout method, and their ledger with a running balance, every line ending at an invoice or a payment you can open in Keap. Ledger is every commission and payment across all affiliates for the span, filterable by kind.
The payout run
Payouts plans a run: everybody owed, sorted by balance, against the minimum you set. A line is ready when the affiliate has a payout method and clears the minimum; otherwise it is held with its reason and carries forward.
Paying through PayPal
Connect your own PayPal Business account and a run sends every ready PayPal line in one press, from your PayPal balance. At developer.paypal.com, open Apps & Credentials, create an app, and paste its Client ID and Secret under Settings, Modules, Affiliates. Start with the Sandbox pair: a Sandbox run sends test money between PayPal test accounts, so you see a whole run before any real money moves, and since it pays nobody real it holds nothing and asks for nothing in Keap. A Live app needs Payouts, which PayPal reviews and approves for your business. The keys are checked with PayPal before they are kept, the secret is stored encrypted and never shown again, and nothing is sent until somebody presses Send. In beta.
Send asks you to confirm the amounts first, and only an owner or admin can press it. PayPal emails each affiliate; a payment to an address with no PayPal account waits to be claimed and comes back to you after 30 days if it never is. Each run is listed under PayPal runs with what PayPal did with every payment: paid, processing, waiting to be claimed, or returned, with PayPal’s fee. If a send stops before PayPal answers, the run says its outcome is unknown and nobody on it is paid again until it is settled: ask PayPal again, which never pays twice, or release it once you have checked your PayPal activity.
Without PayPal connected, the run hands you the list to pay by hand and a file in PayPal’s mass pay layout for the PayPal lines, in your account’s currency.
Recording the payments in Keap
Keap’s ledger stays the ledger, and recording a payment there stays by hand: our Keap client only reads affiliates, commissions and payments today, and each write is measured endpoint by endpoint before it ships. Record each payment against its affiliate in Keap, with the amount and the day it went. A line paid through PayPal with Live keys is held from every later run until Keap’s ledger shows that payment, so nobody is paid twice; the next data refresh after you record it releases the line. If PayPal returns a payment you already recorded, the run says Keap counts it paid, so you can take it off in Keap.
Applications
An affiliate whose Keap status is neither active nor inactive is an application: somebody who signed up through your affiliate form and has not been approved. Approving makes them active in Keap, which is what starts their tracking link paying. Approve and decline in Keap today; the next sync shows it here.
Settings
Settings → Modules → Affiliates holds what Keap does not: the minimum a run pays, how each affiliate is paid (PayPal with the email, a check, or another method with a note), and the PayPal app a run is sent from. Owners and admins change them; a method is logged in Activity by method and never by address, and connecting or disconnecting PayPal is logged without its keys.