Manage Affiliates

Affiliates help generate revenue by referring customers to your business. WHMCS includes a comprehensive affiliate system with support for one-time and recurring commissions, either in percentages or fixed values. It also includes payout delays, minimum withdrawal limits, and live statistics and information for affiliates in the Client Area.

You can view and manage individual affiliates in the WHMCS Admin Area at Clients > Manage Affiliates.

Affiliates

• Before you can use the affiliate system, you must:
  • Configure the settings in the Affiliates tab at Configuration () > System Settings > General Settings.
  • Activate affiliate status for the desired clients in the client profile Summary tab. Clients can also do this for themselves in the Client Area if you have already enabled the necessary settings.
• For more information about configuring and managing the affiliate system throughout WHMCS, see Affiliates.

Managing Affiliates

You can view and manage affiliates, go to Clients > Manage Affiliates. This displays a list of affiliates, the number of visitors who have accessed their affiliate link, the number of those visitors who became new users, and their earned and withdrawn balances. To view the details for an affiliate, find them in the list of affiliates and click on either their ID number or the Edit (pencil) icon.

Note:
You can also access this from the client profile Summary tab by clicking View Affiliate Details in the Actions panel

Deleting an Affiliate

To delete an affiliate, navigate to Clients > Manage Affiliates and click the corresponding red Delete icon. Deleting an affiliate does not remove the associated client account. However, it does remove all affiliate-related data (for example, referrals and commissions). Reactivating the client as an affiliate will not recover any prior affiliate data.

Affiliate Details

From the affiliate's details page, you can view details about commissions and configure affiliate-specific settings.

Affiliate Settings

The settings available in the affiliate details allow you to override any product settings and the settings in Configuration () > System Settings > General Settings or, prior to WHMCS 8.0, Setup > General Settings.

You can configure the following settings:

• Commission Type — Select whether to provide a percentage of the price or provide a fixed amount per sale.
• Commission Amount — If you selected Fixed Amount for Custom Affiliate Payout, enter a monetary value to pay.
  • Check One Time Payout to prevent subsequent commission payments when the product renews. If you do not check this, the affiliate will receive a commission every time that the product renews.
  • If you did not select Fixed Amount, set Affiliate Pay Amount to 0.00.
• Visitors Referred — Enter a number to manually adjust the number of visitors who have visited the affiliate's affiliate link.
• Available to Withdraw Balance — Enter a number to manually adjust the affiliate's balance.
• Withdrawn Amount — Enter a number to manually adjust the amount that the affiliate has already withdrawn.

Affiliate Tabs

The tabbed sections at the bottom of the affiliate details page display information about the affiliate's referrals, commissions, and withdrawals.

You can view the following tabs:

• Referrals — View a graph of visitors to the affiliate's referral link and a list of the number of hits per referral URL.
• Referred Signups — View a list of clients who purchased products using the referral link and its associated cookies.
  Note:
  This tab shows the normal commission to pay on renewals. If the client used a one-time promotion code, the tab will not reflect the discounted amount. However, the Pending Commission or Commission History tabs will display it, as applicable.
  For example:
  • If the referred client uses a promotional code and the affiliate will receive a percentage commission, the system will reduce the value of the commission.
  • If the referred client uses a promotional code and the affiliate will receive a fixed commission, they will still receive the full value.
  • 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. The user would get a percentage of zero and therefore zero for the first three months.
• Pending Commissions — View a list of pending commissions and associated information. You can also manually delete pending commissions in this tab.
• Commissions History — View a list of paid commissions and associated information. You can also manually add a commission. When you do this, WHMCS will immediately add the entered amount to the Available to Withdraw Balance total.
• Withdrawals History — View a list of withdrawals that the affiliate has made. You can also add a withdrawal manually. When you do this, WHMCS will immediately deduct the entered amount from the Available to Withdraw Balance total and add it to the Withdrawn Amount total.
  When you do this, you can select from the following payout types:
  • Create Transaction to Client — This automatically creates an expenditure transaction for the client's account that reduces your profit figures for that client. You must still make the payment manually (for example, using a check or paying through PayPal®).
  • Add Amount to Credit Balance — This 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.