How to review and manage referral orders

Most referral orders need nothing from you — Bloop records the purchase, runs its checks, and issues the reward. Referral orders is for the few that need a decision: an order still inside its review period, one flagged as suspicious, a referral that happened off-platform, and the cash rewards you pay by hand.

Best practice

Review flagged orders weekly, not as a fire drill. A flagged order sits on a 14-day hold and then approves itself if you do nothing (unless its reward is a custom reward, which always waits for you), so a quick weekly pass clears legitimate referrers before they give up waiting, and catches abuse before the reward leaves your account.

Find the orders that need you

The list is split into tabs:

Tab	What’s in it
All	Every referred order
Pending	Waiting — either inside the review period, or flagged and held
Approved	Passed, reward issued
Rejected	Declined by you or automatically
Cash payouts	Approved cash rewards waiting to be paid

Each row shows the order ID, when it was purchased, the referrer, the purchaser, the order value, and the reward status.

Reward status

Status	What it means
Pending - N hours/days left of review period	Your configured delay is still running. It approves itself when the clock runs out
Suspicious	Bloop’s fraud checks flagged it and put the reward on a 14-day hold
Reward sent	Approved, and the discount code, store credit or free product has been issued
Reward declined	The referral was rejected, by you or automatically (for example a self-referral email match, or an order cancelled or refunded before the reward went out)
Payout pending	An approved cash reward waiting in the payout queue
Cash sent	You marked the payout as paid

Pending costs you nothing. It’s your only cheap window to catch a problem before the reward exists. Even after a reward is sent, Bloop can still revoke it if the order is cancelled or refunded, see reward revocation.

Why an order is held

• Review period: the delay you set under Referral → Settings → Reward review period, in hours. 0 approves instantly. The row counts down so you can see how long is left.
• A fraud flag — Bloop found a signal it doesn’t like: a self-referral pattern, a shared address or IP, an unusual volume of referrals in a week. This overrides your review period with a 14-day hold. See the fraud center for the reasons and what they mean.

Either way, a hold that runs out approves the reward. The window is your chance to intervene, not a permanent block. There are exceptions: a banned referrer, whose held rewards are rejected, and an order that was cancelled or refunded in the meantime, which is rejected instead of rewarded. A referral with a custom reward never approves itself: it has no countdown and stays Pending until you approve it. If the campaign has been turned off, or the order can no longer be found in Shopify, the referral stays Pending instead.

The default review period is 6 hours, and a short one suits most stores. Go longer if your return rate is high or your order values are large.

Approve or reject

Open an order to see the referrer, the purchaser, the order value, and any fraud reasons. View in Shopify opens the underlying order.

Approve issues the reward straight away. Approving before the review period ends asks you to confirm, because the reward goes out immediately — a discount code or store credit lands with the referrer, and a cash reward moves into the payout queue. Verify the order is genuine before you do it.

Reject is for a referral you’re confident isn’t real — a suspected fraud pattern, or an invalid referral such as one created by mistake in a call centre. When you reject:

• The referrer loses this reward and is emailed about it.
• The order is excluded from referral revenue and analytics.
• The referral no longer counts toward the referrer’s successful referrals or FlexiTiers progress.
• The referee can still take part in future referrals.
• It can’t be undone.

Approving or rejecting a flagged order also closes its case in the fraud center — approved as legitimate, or confirmed as fraud.

When the evidence is ambiguous, approving is usually the gentler default. A rejected genuine advocate often stops sharing altogether; a single bad reward costs you far less than that.

Add a referral order manually

Some referrals never reach Bloop — a phone order, a code the customer mentioned but didn’t enter. Add order credits the referrer by hand:

1. Enter the Shopify order number (#1001) or ID. Bloop shows the order value and purchaser so you can check you have the right one.
2. Search for and pick the referrer to credit.
3. Pick the campaign.
4. Leave Send reward to referrer on to issue the reward now, or uncheck it if you’ve already handed the reward over some other way.

Add order only works with an active campaign. If the campaign’s reward is a custom reward, the order is added as Pending and Send reward to referrer is ignored: approve the order when you’ve arranged the reward.

Bloop refuses the ones that would corrupt your data: an order already assigned to a referrer, a purchaser already tied to someone else, or a referrer who isn’t in the campaign you picked.

Pay out cash rewards

Cash rewards are tracked in Bloop and paid by you. The Cash payouts tab groups them by referrer, with a Pending and a Paid view, showing each referrer’s payment method, reward, total payout and how many orders it covers.

Rejected referrals are left out of the payout, so a declined referral never adds to what you owe.

To pay someone:

1. Open the referrer’s payout to see their approved orders and the total.
2. Pay them outside Bloop, through the method they chose.
3. Confirm payout, tick the confirmation that you’ve already paid outside the app, optionally add a note, and Mark as Paid.

If you mark a payout by mistake, Unmark payout puts it back to Pending — it does not retrieve money you’ve already sent.

A referrer who hasn’t given you their details shows a Referrer hasn’t added payment details yet warning. They fill these in through the Reward payment method block in their customer account — see customer account extension — and the methods you offer come from Referral → Settings → Payment method.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Chasing unflagged pending orders. They approve themselves, except those with a custom reward, which wait for you. Spend your attention on the flagged ones and the custom rewards.
• Letting the 14-day window lapse. The hold expires into an approval, except for a custom reward, which stays Pending until you approve it. A flag you never read protects nothing.
• Rejecting a genuine order to be safe. A denied real advocate usually stops sharing.
• Approving early without checking. The confirmation exists because the reward goes out immediately and can’t be recalled unless the order is later cancelled or refunded.
• Turning on cash rewards without the payment method block. The payout queue fills with referrers you can’t pay.

Next steps

• Investigate flagged orders in the fraud center.
• Learn how rewards are calculated in Referrer and referee rewards.
• See individual referrers and their rewards in Contacts.