Setting Up and Managing Autopay
This guide provides step-by-step instructions on how to enable our Autopay feature and invite your affiliates to participate. Autopay streamlines your commission payout process, ensuring timely and efficient payments.
By following these steps, you can efficiently set up and manage the Autopay system for your affiliate program, ensuring a smoother payment experience for both you and your affiliates.
1. Enabling Autopay
To begin using Autopay, you first need to enable it within your merchant settings and provide your payment details.
Navigate to Payout Settings: Access your merchant dashboard and go to the "Settings" menu. From there, select the "Payout" section.
Enable Autopay: Within the "Payout" section, locate the "Automatic payouts" area. Select the "Enabled" option to activate the Autopay feature.
Enter Payment Details: You will be prompted to enter your payment information. Securely add your bank or credit card details that will be used to fund the commission payouts to your affiliates.
Once these steps are completed, your account will be set up to process automatic payments.
2. Configure Autopay Onboarding for New Affiliates (Premium Plan)
Before inviting affiliates, you can decide how they will connect their bank accounts for Autopay. This setting determines whether affiliates can initiate the connection themselves immediately or if you prefer to enable this capability for them on an individual basis.
Access Payout Settings: If you're not already there, navigate to the "Payout" section within the "Settings" menu of your merchant dashboard.
New Affiliate Behaviour: Locate the options for new affiliate bank connections. You will have two choices for how affiliates can connect their bank accounts:
"Let affiliates connect their bank right away": Select this if you want affiliates to be able to provide their bank details for Autopay as soon as they join or are invited, without needing individual manual activation from you.
"Bank connection disabled initially, then enabled manually for each affiliate": Choose this option if you prefer a more controlled approach, where you will manually enable the bank connection capability for each affiliate before they can link their account for Autopay.
3. Defining Your Autopay Payout Schedule
Next, you need to determine how and when Autopay payouts will be processed. You can choose between an automated monthly schedule or decide to generate payments manually on an ad-hoc basis, and also set your approval preferences.
Access Payout Settings: If you're not already in the "Payout" section within the "Settings" menu of your merchant dashboard, please navigate there.
Configure Payout Schedule: Locate the "Payout Schedule" section. Here, you will configure three key aspects:
(1) Autopay Monthly Schedule: Decide if you wish to establish an automated monthly payment schedule. If enabled, payments for eligible commissions will typically be generated automatically at the end of each month. If you prefer to initiate all payouts manually, you would keep this option disabled.
(2) Require Confirmation for Monthly Autopay: If you have enabled the "Autopay monthly schedule," you then need to decide on the approval process.
Auto-approve payments: If you choose not to require confirmation, the scheduled monthly payments will be processed and sent out automatically.
Create a draft payment for approval: If you opt to require confirmation, the system will generate a draft payment at the scheduled time. You will then need to review and manually approve this draft payment before it is sent to your affiliates. This provides an extra layer of review.
(3) Require a minimum threshold: Decide if you want commission amounts to reach a certain threshold (e.g., $25 USD) before being included in an automatic payout. If an affiliate's earnings are below this amount, their payout may be held until the threshold is met in a subsequent payment cycle.
Choose the settings that best align with your preferred level of automation and control over the payout process.
4. Inviting Affiliates to Autopay
After enabling Autopay, the next step is to invite your affiliates to connect their payment accounts to receive automatic payouts. This involves customizing the invitation email and then sending out the invites.
A. Customize the Autopay Invitation Email:
It's recommended to review and customize the email your affiliates will receive inviting them to join Autopay.
Access Email Editor: In the "Payout" section, click the "Edit autopay invite email" link. This action will navigate you to the "Emails" section of your dashboard.
B. Send Autopay Invitations to Affiliates:
Once you are satisfied with the invitation email:
Return to Payout Section: Navigate back to the "Payout" section in your "Settings."
Initiate Invites: Click the "Invite affiliates to enable autopay" button. This will prepare the system to send the customized email to your eligible affiliates who have not yet set up Autopay.
Confirm and Send: A confirmation prompt may appear. Click the "Send" button to dispatch the invitation emails to your affiliates.
Your affiliates will then receive the email with instructions on how to connect their payment details to receive automatic commission payouts from you.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. Q: Do I have to manually approve every monthly Autopay payment?
A: Not necessarily. When defining your Autopay Payout Schedule (Step 3), if you've enabled the "Autopay monthly schedule," you can choose "Auto-approve payments" for them to be sent out automatically without approval.
2. Q: Can I set a minimum commission amount an affiliate must earn before they are paid via Autopay?
A: Yes. In Step 3, "Defining Your Autopay Payout Schedule," one of the aspects you can configure is to "Require a minimum threshold." This means you can decide if commission amounts need to reach a certain value (e.g., $25 USD) before being included in an automatic payout. If earnings are below this, the payout may be held until the threshold is met.
3. Q: What control do I have over when new affiliates can connect their bank accounts for Autopay, and is this feature on all plans?
A: As detailed in Step 2, "Configure Autopay Onboarding for New Affiliates," you have two choices: you can "Let affiliates connect their bank right away" or you can choose to have the "Bank connection disabled initially, then enabled manually for each affiliate." This feature is only available on the Premium plan.
4. Q: Can I pay some specific affiliates manually and others using Autopay?
A: On the Premium plan, you have the option to enable and disable autopay for certain affiliates. If you choose to disable autopay for an affiliate, they will be asked to provide alternative payment information, and you will be responsible to send payments outside of the app.