How to pay your affiliates

Paying on time keeps affiliates loyal. Partners promote stores that pay reliably and drop the ones that make them chase commissions. In Bloop, you only ever pay against approved sales — the payout step turns balances you already owe into recorded payments. Bloop never moves money itself.

Open Affiliate → Payouts. It has two views, Pending and Paid.

Best practice

Set a clear payout schedule and a minimum threshold, then stick to both. A fixed cadence — monthly, once sales have cleared their review period — tells affiliates exactly when to expect payment and keeps your accounting tidy. A minimum balance avoids tiny transfers. Record every payout right after you send it so the Pending view always reflects what you truly owe. See paying affiliates reliably.

Pending vs Paid

View	What it shows
Pending	Each affiliate’s outstanding balance — the total of their approved, unpaid sales, alongside their chosen payment method and how many sales make it up. This is the money you currently owe.
Paid	A record of every completed payout, with the amount, payment method, and any note.

An affiliate appears under Pending as soon as they have approved sales with a balance above zero. After you pay them, that amount moves to Paid. Pending means owed; paid means settled. A sale only becomes payable once it is approved in the Sales tab, so you are always paying money you have already confirmed is genuinely owed.

Setting a schedule and threshold

Bloop doesn’t hold a payout schedule or a minimum balance — payouts run when you run them. That makes the two rules below yours to set and keep, and they’re what turn payouts from an ad-hoc chore into something affiliates can trust.

• Schedule (when). A fixed cadence — monthly is common — set just after your sales review period so balances have already cleared returns. Affiliates who know payday is “the first week of every month” stop emailing you about it.
• Threshold (how little). A minimum balance — say, $25 or $50 — avoids processing tiny transfers and the fees that come with them. Balances below the threshold roll forward to the next cycle.

Paying an affiliate

1. Open the Pending view and select the affiliate.
2. Review the approved sales making up their balance and tick the ones to include in this payout. The total updates as you select.
3. Press Process to pay $X. The confirmation shows the affiliate’s name, their payment method, and every payment detail they entered — copy them from here to make the transfer.
4. Make the transfer outside Bloop, in your bank, PayPal, or other tool.
5. Add a Note (for you) and a Message for affiliate (shown to them in the Payouts table of their portal, not included in the payout email) if you want, tick I confirm that I have paid $X to the affiliate outside of this app, and press Mark as paid.

The confirmation tick is deliberate: Bloop never moves money, so marking a payout paid is you asserting the transfer already happened.

Bloop then creates a payout record, flips the included sales from approved to paid, and reduces the affiliate’s balance accordingly. A “new commission payout” email goes to the affiliate. Sales that are already paid cannot be paid again, so there is no risk of double-paying the same sale.

When an affiliate has no payment method

Process to pay is disabled, with a tooltip saying the affiliate hasn’t set up a payment method — there’s nowhere to send the money, so there’s nothing to record. The affiliate fills this in from their portal; you decide which methods they can choose from in affiliate settings. If a balance has been sitting unpaid, this is the first thing to check.

The button is also disabled when no sales are selected, or when the selected sales total zero.

Payment methods

The payment method shown for each affiliate is the one they selected and the details they entered (for example bank account or PayPal email). You define which methods are available and what fields each collects in affiliate settings. Bloop records the method and details with each payout; the actual transfer happens in your bank, PayPal, or other tool.

Because Bloop records but does not move money, send the transfer first, confirm it went through, then record the payout. Recording before you have sent the money creates a paid record for a payment that does not exist — the revert step exists to fix exactly that.

A worked example: from approved sales to a paid payout

Illustrative. Affiliate “Sam” builds a $42 approved balance from four orders over the month — above your $25 minimum threshold, so this month’s payout goes ahead. You open Sam under Pending, tick all four sales, and press Process to pay $42. The confirmation shows Sam’s PayPal email; you send $42, confirm it cleared, then tick the confirmation and press Mark as paid with a note. Bloop flips the four sales to paid, drops Sam’s balance to $0, and emails the payout notification — next month starts from a clean balance.

Reverting a payout

If you recorded a payout by mistake, Revert payment on the payout undoes the record (Bloop asks you to confirm first). Reverting:

• Deletes the payout record from the Paid view, and
• Returns the included sales from paid back to approved, so the balance reappears under Pending ready to be paid correctly.

Revert corrects record errors (wrong amount, wrong sales included, recorded before the transfer went out) — it does not move money. Any actual transfer you already made must be handled with the affiliate directly.

Your payout history

The Paid view is your record: each payout carries the affiliate, the number of sales, total sales, commission paid, payment method and details, and any note or message. Payouts themselves aren’t exportable — for a spreadsheet, export your sales, which carry each sale’s paid status.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Paying before a sale is truly settled. Only approve a sale after its return window. If you pay on a sale that should have been rejected, you have paid on reversed revenue.
• Recording a payout before sending the money. That creates a paid record with no matching transfer. Send first, confirm, then record.
• Forgetting to record a payout you sent. If the transfer went out but you never recorded it, the Pending view still shows the balance as owed — and you may pay it twice.
• Leaving a balance stuck behind a missing payment method. The affiliate sees the commission accruing and assumes you’re late. Check the Pending view for the “no payment method” tooltip and nudge them.

When and why to use each action

• Pay once a pending balance clears your threshold and you have reached your scheduled payout date.
• Revert when a recorded payout is wrong — wrong amount, wrong sales, or recorded before the money went out — to restore the balance and re-record it correctly.
• Export your sales at the close of each cycle for accounting and reconciliation against your bank or PayPal records.

Related

• Affiliate sales tracking — approve sales before paying them.
• Affiliate settings — configure payment methods.
• Managing affiliates — the affiliates you pay.
• Paying affiliates reliably — the schedule-and-threshold playbook.