How to configure affiliate settings
Affiliate settings decide the mechanics of your program: when a commission is earned, when it’s taken back, how partners get paid, and how the program identifies itself. Getting these right before you recruit matters — an affiliate who earns a commission but can’t be paid, or whose commission vanishes without explanation, stops promoting.
Open Affiliate → Settings. It has four tabs: General, Automation, Order Settings, and Payment.
General
Section titled “General”Two identity settings:
- Contact email: the address affiliates use to reach you. It is behind the Contact Support link in the affiliate portal. It is not used in the emails Bloop sends to affiliates, which follow your email sender settings.
- Affiliate login page — the portal URL, with a customizable subpath. Bloop checks availability as you type and tells you if the subpath is already taken. See portal link.
Automation
Section titled “Automation”How much of the program runs without you:
| Setting | Options | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Affiliate approval automation | Manually · Immediately | Whether a new registration waits for your review or is approved on signup |
| Order approval automation | Manually · Immediately | Whether sales land as pending in the Sales tab or are approved as they arrive |
| Assign tags on Shopify | Customer · Order | Tag the customers and orders affiliates bring, so you can segment them in Shopify |
Immediate order approval is the setting to think hardest about. It removes your review step entirely — including the chance to catch a return before you’ve committed the commission. Use it only if your Order Settings revoke rules cover you, and read when to approve and when to reject first.
Order Settings
Section titled “Order Settings”This tab controls when an affiliate earns commission and what happens to it when the order goes away.
When commission is granted
Section titled “When commission is granted”| Option | Commission is created when | Suits |
|---|---|---|
| Paid (default) | The order is paid | Most stores — the affiliate’s work is done at checkout |
| Fulfilled | The order is fulfilled | Pre-orders, made-to-order, long lead times, or anywhere a paid order still commonly doesn’t ship |
Only one trigger fires per order, so a sale is never created twice.
A sale is only created for an order that is actually payable. When the trigger fires, Bloop skips the order if it is cancelled, or if its payment status is refunded, voided, expired, or still pending (for example cash on delivery or a bank transfer that hasn’t arrived). With the Paid trigger, an order that is still waiting for payment gets its sale later, once it is paid. With the Fulfilled trigger, an order that is fulfilled while payment is still pending does get a sale, because you chose to pay on fulfilment.
If the buyer’s email matches the affiliate’s own email, the sale is created as pending with a note flagging it as a self-referral, even when order approval is set to Immediately. Review it before you approve.
When commission is revoked
Section titled “When commission is revoked”| Option | Revokes on |
|---|---|
| Canceled or refunded (default) | Either |
| Canceled | Cancellation only |
| Refunded | Refund only |
A revoked commission is set to rejected, and the affiliate sees the reason on their Commissions page in the portal — “Commission revoked because the order was cancelled” or “…refunded”. That transparency is the point: a commission that silently disappears generates a support ticket, an explained one doesn’t.
Three rules decide whether a revoke actually happens:
- A partial refund recalculates instead of revoking. Only a fully refunded order revokes the commission. When part of an order is refunded, and your revoke setting includes refunds, Bloop recalculates the commission on what the customer kept, using the campaign rule saved on the sale. The commission can go down, never up, and a sale that was capped keeps its cap. Refunding one line of a five-line order lowers the commission instead of removing it.
- An already-paid commission is never revoked or recalculated. Once a sale is paid or included in a payout, a later cancellation or refund won’t touch it. This is the real reason to approve and pay after your return window rather than before.
- An already-rejected sale stays rejected. The reason isn’t overwritten.
If you later move a revoked sale back to approved or pending yourself, the revoke reason is cleared — the affiliate stops seeing an explanation for something that’s no longer true.
Payment
Section titled “Payment”Payment methods define how you pay affiliates and what details you collect from them.
Bloop ships with four methods:
| Method | Fields collected |
|---|---|
| Bank transfer | Bank name, account name, account number (required); agency code and BIC code (optional) |
| Paypal | Email (required) |
| Debit cash | Name, debit card number (required) |
| Google pay | Email (required) |
For each method you can enable or disable it — only enabled methods are offered to affiliates — and edit the fields it collects: each field’s label, type (Text or Email), and whether it’s required. Add more payments creates a method of your own: give it a payment name and define its fields.
Details an affiliate enters are stored on their profile and shown when you pay them out. An affiliate with no payment method on file cannot be paid — the payout button is disabled until they fill one in.
Choosing which methods to offer
Section titled “Choosing which methods to offer”More payout options means more decisions for the affiliate and more reconciliation for you. Enable the one or two that cover your partners and disable the rest.
| Method | Best for | When to offer it | Friction to watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paypal | Individual creators, influencers, international partners | Most creator-led programs — fast, familiar, and crosses borders easily | Requires a PayPal account; fees may apply on their end |
| Bank transfer | Businesses, agencies, higher-volume or local partners | Larger or recurring payouts and partners who prefer direct deposit | Most fields to collect and verify; details vary by country |
| Google pay | Partners in the Google Pay ecosystem | A lightweight email-based option alongside PayPal | Narrower availability and reach than PayPal |
| Debit cash | Programs that pay directly to a card | Niche cases where a card payout is how you settle | Card-number fields are sensitive; only enable if you actually use it |
A creator-led program can often run on Paypal alone; a B2B or agency program leans on bank transfer. Offering all four forces every affiliate to choose and leaves you reconciling four payout flows for no benefit.
Editing a method’s fields
Section titled “Editing a method’s fields”Two principles keep payouts smooth:
- Require only what you can’t pay without. For bank transfer you genuinely need account name and number; agency code or BIC may be optional depending on the country. Marking a “nice to have” as required delays the partner from finishing their profile — and an unfinished profile is an affiliate you can’t pay.
- Label fields the way the partner’s bank or wallet does. Matching labels mean a partner copying details from their bank app won’t second-guess which number goes where.
A worked example: a creator program’s payout setup
Section titled “A worked example: a creator program’s payout setup”For a program of mostly individual creators with a handful of agencies: enable Paypal (its one required field covers most creators), enable Bank transfer for agencies (require bank name, account name, account number; leave agency code and BIC optional), and disable Debit cash and Google pay so no affiliate sees a method you can’t pay through. A creator fills in one field, an agency fills in three, and you reconcile exactly two payout flows — see Affiliate payouts.
Integrations
Section titled “Integrations”Integrations are set up once for the whole app, under Settings → Integration (the app-wide Settings page), not from the affiliate settings. Klaviyo has its own Affiliate program section that syncs affiliate profiles and affiliate events and keeps a “BLOOP - All affiliates” segment up to date. See Klaviyo and Mailchimp.
Email notifications
Section titled “Email notifications”Bloop sends affiliates transactional emails at key moments — registration (pending), approval or decline, sale approval or decline, coupon assignment, and payout. Default templates are created during setup.
Some templates ship disabled — the “declined” and “denied” templates, and both owner-facing notifications — so they won’t fire until you turn them on. If you want alerts on new registrations, enable that owner notification and set a recipient. The full list of types, triggers, and default on/off states is in Affiliate email notifications.
Send a test email
Section titled “Send a test email”Before launching, send yourself a test of any affiliate email to check wording and formatting:
- Open the email you want to test.
- Enter one or more recipient addresses.
- Send the test.
Bloop renders the template with your store’s details and delivers it to the addresses you entered. It does not fill in an affiliate’s details, so {{FirstName}}, {{CouponCode}} and similar placeholders appear as written. Test sends are rate-limited, so send in small batches.
Test every enabled email, especially the approval and payout messages, since those are what partners read most carefully. A test send checks wording and layout. To confirm variables resolve, trigger the email for an affiliate address you control, for example by adding yourself as an affiliate.
Common mistakes to avoid
Section titled “Common mistakes to avoid”- Approving orders immediately while paying out weekly. Immediate approval plus a fast payout means a cancelled order’s commission is already paid and can’t be revoked.
- Offering every payment method. Enable the one or two that fit your partners; disable the rest.
- Over-requiring payout fields. Require only what you need to complete a payment. Optional details stall a partner mid-setup — and an unfinished profile blocks the payout.
- Skipping test sends. A badly worded or badly laid-out email is avoidable. Test every active template first, and check variables with a real affiliate address.
When to revisit these settings
Section titled “When to revisit these settings”- You start selling pre-orders or made-to-order items → switch the grant trigger to Fulfilled.
- Refund-driven clawbacks start biting → check whether you’re paying out before your return window closes; revocation and refund recalculation can’t touch a paid commission.
- Your partner mix shifts (more creators or more agencies) → revisit which payment methods are enabled.
- You expand to new countries → bank-transfer fields may need adjusting (agency code, BIC) for partners’ regions.
- You change your brand voice or program name → re-edit the email templates so messages still sound like you.
Related
Section titled “Related”- Affiliate sales tracking — where the grant and revoke rules show up.
- Affiliate payouts — where payment methods are used.
- Affiliate email notifications — every email type, variables, and editing.
- Managing affiliates — registration and statuses that trigger emails.
- Recruiting affiliates — getting the right partners into a program that’s ready to pay them.