Affiliates

From WHMCS Documentation

Revision as of 12:56, 11 August 2020 by AlexN (talk | contribs) (→‎=Linking to the Cart)

WHMCS comes with a built in affiliates system. Affiliates are often key to a business in order to generate revenue by having others refer customers. With that in mind, WHMCS has a comprehensive affiliate system featuring support for one time and recurring commissions, both percentage or fixed money values, payout delays, minimum withdrawal limits and live statistics and information for affiliates from the client area.

Your WHMCS installation generates a unique code for each client to use on their website. For example: 

https://www.example.com/aff.php?aff=001

Clicking this link takes customers to your site and saves a cookie on their computers. If a visitor then places an order for a product or service with the cookie present (it lasts for three months by default), the client will earn a commission.

Configuration

To configure the affiliates system, go to Configuration () > System Settings > General Settings or, prior to WHMCS 8.0, Setup > General Settings and then select the Affiliates tab. From here you can set the initial bonus deposit amount, the minimum withdrawal level, the payout delay, and the percentage to pay out.

  • Affiliate Earning Percentage — The default percentage to pay as commission on all products and services. You can override this on a per-product basis when configuring a product. You can then overide the commission settings further on a per-client basis and set a specific commission rate for an individual affiliate. This is ideal for rewarding your best affiliates.
  • Affiliate Bonus Deposit — The amount to default any new affiliate's balance to. This is a way of offering an incentive to new affiliates so they'll reach their first withdrawal level quicker.
  • Affiliate Payout Amount — The amount at which you allow affiliates to withdraw their commission balance (for example, $50 or more).
  • Affiliate Commission Delay — The number of days to delay commission payments so that you aren't paying commissions as soon as you receive the order. See the Commission Delay section below for more information.

If there is a setup fee, the initial commission will include it. Then, the system bases recurring commissions on the product's Recurring Amount.

Affiliates earn commission for products and services (including configurable options) only. They can't earn commission on:

  • Domain names.
  • Product Addons.
  • Upgrade Orders (however, any recurring commissions will increase with the new renewal price).
  • Manually-created invoices.

Setting Commission Per-Product

To offer a higher commission on a certain product, edit the product and go to the Other tab at Configuration () > System Settings > Products and Services or, prior to WHMCS 8.0, Setup > Product/Services.

From here you can choose a percentage or fixed amount commission. Selecting the One Time Payout checkbox will give the commission only once. The default commission setting for WHMCS is recurring.

It is possible to disable commission entirely for an individual product from this page by selecting the No Commission option. This setting takes priority over the default commission. However, if you have set either the client or the product commission to one time, that setting will override this.

Setting Commission Per-Client

To offer a unique commission, click the "'View Affiliate Details'" link on the Client's Summary Tab and you can set the commission as above.

This setting will take priority over all others. However, if you have set either the client or the product commission to one time, that setting will override this.

Promotion Behaviour

If the referred client uses a promotional code to receive a discount when signing up and you have configured the affiliate to receive a percentage commission, the system will reduce the value of the commission. If you have configured a fixed amount commission, they will still receive the full value.

For example, if someone uses an affiliate's three months free promotional code, the affiliate gets the commission based on the first payment amount and then receives recurring amounts according to the product's settings. So, the user would get a percentage of zero and therefore zero for the first three months.

Upgrade Behaviour

If a referred client upgrades or downgrades their product, the system will adjust commissions the affiliate receives in the future to match the price of the new product. This won't affect commission payments that the affiliate has already earned. There is no commission on the upgrade or downgrade order itself. This does not apply to one-time commissions.

Commission Delay

This option allows you to set the number of days to delay commission payments so that you aren't paying affiliates as soon as you receive an order. This means you avoid paying commission on fraudulent orders or on cancelled orders within a few days of ordering, as the commission is only paid if the product or service is still active at the end of the delay period.

The way this works is that instead of paying commission instantly when you receive payment, it waits for a period of days and then only pays the commission if the product or service is still active after that period of time has passed. For example, you could set it to wait 60 days before paying the commission for a sale on the basis that most fraudulent transactions will have been reported to you within that time. At the time of order, the affiliates Pending Commissions Balance will increase by the amount of commission for the order, but not their Available to Withdraw Balance.

You can view and delete pending commissions from the affiliates management area anytime from the Pending Commissions tab under Clients > Manage Affiliates when viewing an individual affiliates details.

Affiliate Linking Code

You can specify affiliate link code in the configuration area. For example: 

 <a href="[AffiliateLinkCode]"><img src="http://www.yourcompany.com/banners/468x60banner.gif" width="468" height="60" border="0"></a><br>
 <(a href="[AffiliateLinkCode]")><(img src="http://www.yourcompany.com/banners/468x60banner.gif" width="468" height="60" border="0")><(/a)><br><br>
 <a href="[AffiliateLinkCode]"><img src="http://www.yourcompany.com/banners/120x60banner.gif" width="120" height="60" border="0"></a><br>
 <(a href="[AffiliateLinkCode]")><(img src="http://www.yourcompany.com/banners/120x60banner.gif" width="120" height="60" border="0")><(/a)><br><br>

The above code in the Affiliates Link section will display the image preview of the banner first and then the code below it for the affiliate to use. The <( and )> is special syntax which you must use so the code is not executed as true HTML. WHMCS modifies this when displaying it to the client so it will appear as normal HTML.

For more advanced link code, you can add it directly to the affiliates.tpl template file of your active template folder using the template field {$referrallink} wherever you want to include the affiliates unique referral URL.

Linking to a Product

It is possible to link directly to the order form for a specific product. To do this, simply append &pid=x to the end of the [AffiliateLinkCode] where x is the ID of the product. For example: 

<a href="[AffiliateLinkCode]&pid=2"><img src="http://www.yourcompany.com/banners/468x60banner.gif" width="468" height="60" border="0"></a><br>  <(a href="[AffiliateLinkCode]&pid=2")><(img src=http://www.yourcompany.com/banners/468x60banner.gif" width="468" height="60" border="0")><(/a)>

Linking to the Cart

It is possible to link directly to the cart. To do this, simply append &gocart=true to the end of the [AffiliateLinkCode]. For example: 

<a href="[AffiliateLinkCode]&gocart=true"><img src="http://www.yourcompany.com/banners/468x60banner.gif" width="468" height="60" border="0"></a><br>  <(a href="[AffiliateLinkCode]&gocart=true")><(img src=http://www.yourcompany.com/banners/468x60banner.gif" width="468" height="60" border="0")><(/a)>

Activating an Affiliate

Clients can activate their affiliate account from the client area but you, as an admin, can do it from the client summary page too. To do that, locate the client you want to activate using the search or client list and then, in the Actions panel, click the Activate as Affiliate link.

Deactivating an Affiliate

To remove a client from the affiliate program, navigate to Clients > Manage Affiliates and click the red X icon next to their name.

Managing Affiliates

  • To view and manage affiliates, go to Clients > Manage Affiliates.
  • To view the affiliate statistics for a specific client, search for that client as normal and from the Client Summary" page, click the View Affiliate Details link in the Actions panel.
  • To view your best-performing affiliates, click the Balance column heading to sort the affiliates into order of their balances.

Referral Tracking

In WHMCS 7.5 and later, the system logs and records referral traffic to allow you to see where referrals are coming from and trends in the volume of referrals over time.

The logged data includes the referrer URL where possible, and the number of hits for each unique referral URL.

You can choose between a range of time periods: 30 Days, 60 Days, 90 Days, and 120 Days.

The referral tracking displays as the first tab within the affiliate profile view.

Affiliate-referral-tracking.png

Manual Operations

Assigning an Affiliate to an Existing Order

To assign an affiliate to an already-placed, referal-free order, go to Orders > List and locate the order you want to assign to the affiliate. Click on the Order ID number to open the details for that order. Then, click the Manual Assign link in the Affiliate section. A popup will appear, with a menu to choose the affiliate you want to assign it to. Click Save to apply it.

Paying Commission for an already paid order

There may be some instances where you apply an affiliate to an order after it is paid for, in which case the affiliate has missed out on the initial commission for that order. To correct that, after assigning the affiliate with the steps above, open the affiliates page (see Managing Affiliates, above) and then on the Referrals list for the affiliate, click the Manual Payout button next to the new account. That will perform the equivalent action of an end user paying for an invoice for a referred order in terms of crediting the affiliate.

Manually Adding a Commission

Sometimes it might be necessary to give commission to an affiliate without any order. For example, this could be a special commission bonus, or an import of a commission balance from another affiliate system. To do this, open the affiliates page (see Managing Affiliates, above) and click the Commissions History tab. You can then enter the details of the commission under the Add Manual Commission Entry' heading. If the commission relates to an existing referral, you may select it from the 'Related Referral' menu. Otherwise, leave it as 'None'.

Affiliates Cookie

The affiliates cookie lasts for 3 Months on the user's computer by default. You can change the cookie duration by editing the aff.php file.

Line 24 controls the creation of the cookie and how long it lasts: 

Cookie::set('AffiliateID',$aff,'3m');

When editing this line, only alter the final argument. (3m)

The final argument defines the lifetime of the cookie using PHP Timestamps. For convenience, we offer a helper when defining months. When you require months, specify the number of months and append "m" as in the example above.

We have provided some common examples of commonly-used lifetimes below:

1 Day: 

Cookie::set('AffiliateID', $aff, time() + (24*60*60));

7 Days: 

Cookie::set('AffiliateID', $aff, time() + (7*24*60*60));

14 Days: 

Cookie::set('AffiliateID', $aff, time() + (14*24*60*60));

1 Month: 

Cookie::set('AffiliateID', $aff, '1m');

Multi Currency

When you select the %age it will pay x% of whatever currency the user pays you in and convert it to the affiliates' currency, it will use the current exchange rate. If you select to pay a fixed amount, it pays the same amount in any currency.

The system converts the Affiliate Bonus Deposit amount and Affiliate Payout Amount into the client's currency.

Making a Withdrawal (Paying Commission)

When an affiliate's balance reaches the affiliate payout amount a request withdrawal button appears on the client's affiliate page. If they click that to submit a request, it will open a ticket notifying you of their request.

To process the withdrawal request, navigate to the affiliates management page for the affiliate in question and select the Withdrawals History tab. There you will see a form for making a withdrawal payout. This allows you to enter the withdrawal onto the system, automatically deducting the specified amount from the users affiliate balance, and performing some additional actions for the Payout Type selection from the options below:

  • Create Transaction to Client — This will automatically create an expenditure transaction on the clients account in WHMCS to reduce your profit figures for the client (you must still actually make the payment manually - Cheque, PayPal, etc...)
  • Add Amount to Credit Balance — This will automatically create a credit on the clients account equal to the value of the withdrawal amount to be applied to the future invoices they receive from you
  • Record in Withdrawals Only — This just makes a record of the withdrawal in the affiliates area and doesn't create any transaction or credit.

There may be occasions when it is necessary to manually give a client commission (for example, if you handled an order outside of WHMCS or you've imported data from another billing system and want to transfer their affiliate balance across). This is when you use the Add Manual Commission Entry section on the Commissions History tab. You can also select a Related Referral if the commission relates to a specific referral; leave the field as "None" if you are adding a general commission.

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