Missing Commission?

What to do if you believe commission may not have been credited to an affiliate's account.

by Sophie Alvsaker

Posted: Wednesday 23rd October 2019 | Updated: Monday 25th May 2020

Tracking Orders

Here at ShoutOut we successfully track over 2 million referred orders per month on behalf of merchants, and we're trusted by some of the world's largest brands.

We scan and triple check every order to ensure if an affiliate is due commission, the appropriate credit is applied to their account.

Something missing?

We understand from time to time, an affiliate may claim commission was not duly credited to their account, or if you're the merchant, you may need to understand why, for a particular order, ShoutOut did not record a commission.

Rest assured, in all cases there will be a valid reason, and we're happy to investigate any order in more detail and provide some answers.

Before asking us to investigate an order, here are the most common reasons that may help you to self assess a particular situation further:

• No referral link or coupon code was used when the order was placed.
• A different affiliate/ambassador was credited the sale. A search for the order number may be conducted in ShoutOut > Transactions.
• Lifetime Association is enabled in Settings > Preferences. Lifetime associations are listed under Settings > Associations and take precedence over all other referral mechanisms so a different affiliate may have been credited the sale!
• The order was partially or fully refunded in which case commissions are automatically reversed.
• The order contained a subscription product, and the subscription App did not pass referral information back to ShoutOut.
• A referral link was provided but the customer switched devices to finish the order! Coupon codes avoid this issue.
• "Exclude Affiliate Sales" is Enabled in ShoutOut > Preferences and the customer is an affiliate, so the sale was correctly ignored by ShoutOut.
• An affiliate link was used but the customer was redirected away from the final Shopify Order Confirmation screen by a third party App. Coupon codes avoid this issue.
• A program error (possibly from another App) is causing the final Order Confirmation screen to not operate correctly (browser Developer Tools may be used to check for errors on your website).

Still need assistance?

If after reading the above list you're still needing some answers as to why a particular order did not attract commission, we'd be more than happy to help investigate.

To allow us to look into an order we require the Shopify order data as it will clearly identify the referral tracking ID, or a coupon code that matches an affiliate in ShoutOut. If either is missing then the order was NOT correctly referred by an affiliate!

To allow us to view the order data please follow the instructions below:

• Go to your Shopify Admin
• Bring up the order details of the order you believe should have been credited to an affiliate.
• Copy the entire URL shown in your address bar and send to us here at ShoutOut Support.

Example
Send us the order details URL shown in your browser

Which affiliate?

Please also let us know the name of the affiliate you believe should have been credited the referral commission, and also your Shopify store handle e.g. yourstorename.myshopify.com or primary email address on file with us.

We look forward to assisting you further if needed.