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Troubleshooting affiliate sales and payouts

Affiliate problems almost always land in one of three places: the sale was never recorded, the commission was revoked, or the payout is blocked. Check them in that order.

A sale was never recorded

Section titled “A sale was never recorded”
Likely cause How to confirm What to do
The order has not reached its grant trigger yet Affiliate → Settings → Order Settings shows Paid (default) or Fulfilled Wait for the order to reach that state
The order isn’t paid yet, or was cancelled In Shopify the order is cancelled, or its payment is pending, refunded, voided or expired Nothing to fix: with the Paid trigger the sale appears once payment arrives; a cancelled order never earns commission
The affiliate already reached the campaign’s maximum for this customer The campaign has Maximum affiliate commission per customer on, and earlier orders from the same customer already add up to it Expected. Raise the maximum if you want to keep paying on repeat buyers
The customer never used the affiliate’s link or code Nothing ties the order to an affiliate Record it with Add sale
The sale happened offline The order exists in Shopify but has no attribution Add sale → Existing order, so Bloop calculates the commission from the campaign rules
The affiliate is not approved or has no campaign They do not appear in the Add sale affiliate list (no campaign), or saving the sale fails (pending or rejected) Approve them and assign a campaign in managing affiliates

Only one trigger fires per order, so a sale is never created twice. If you sell pre-orders or made-to-order items, Paid can fire long before anything ships — Fulfilled usually fits better.

The commission amount looks wrong

Section titled “The commission amount looks wrong”

Each sale stores a snapshot of the campaign rule that applied — its name, type, value and which exclusions were active. Open the sale and read the snapshot before assuming a miscalculation: it shows the rule as it was at the time, even if you have since changed the campaign.

Common explanations:

  • Excluded products, collections, discounts, shipping, taxes or tips were removed from the qualifying base.
  • A tiered campaign picked the rate the order total qualified for.
  • A product-specific rate overrode the campaign rate.
  • The campaign’s maximum commission per customer limited it.
  • Part of the order was refunded, so Bloop recalculated the commission on what the customer kept (only for sales not yet paid out, and only when your revoke setting includes refunds).

The full rules are in affiliate campaigns and commissions.

A sale arrived as pending with a self-referral note

Section titled “A sale arrived as pending with a self-referral note”

When the buyer’s email matches the affiliate’s own email, Bloop creates the sale as pending and adds a note saying so, even if order approval is set to Immediately. It is usually an affiliate buying with their own link or code. Approve it if your program allows affiliates to earn on their own purchases, reject it if not.

A commission disappeared

Section titled “A commission disappeared”

Bloop rejects a sale automatically when its order is cancelled or fully refunded, and records why. The sale’s page shows a Revoke reason card, and the affiliate sees the same explanation in their portal.

Three limits decide whether this happens at all:

  • A partial refund doesn’t revoke. Only a fully refunded order revokes a commission; a partial refund lowers it instead.
  • A paid commission is never revoked. Once a sale is paid or in a payout, a later cancellation or refund cannot claw it back.
  • An already-rejected sale stays as it is. Its reason is not overwritten.

Which events trigger a revoke is yours to set under Order Settings — cancellations, refunds, or both.

If you move a revoked sale back to approved or pending, the revoke reason clears, so the affiliate stops seeing an explanation that no longer applies.

An affiliate cannot be paid

Section titled “An affiliate cannot be paid”

The payout button is disabled when the affiliate has no payment method on file. They fill this in from their portal profile, and only the methods you enabled under Affiliate → Settings → Payment are offered to them.

If partners routinely stall here, check you are not over-requiring fields — a “nice to have” marked as required leaves profiles unfinished, and an unfinished profile is an affiliate you cannot pay.

An affiliate cannot log in or reset their password

Section titled “An affiliate cannot log in or reset their password”

For security, the portal never reveals whether an email has an account. That changes what affiliates see:

  • “Login failed” appears for any wrong email or wrong password, with no hint which one it was. Ask them to use the exact email they signed up with for your store.
  • “User not approved” appears when the email and password are right but the affiliate is still pending or was rejected. Approve them in managing affiliates.
  • Forgot password always says the email was sent, even for an address that has no account. If nothing arrives, the address is probably not the one they registered with, or the email is in spam.
  • Reset and activation links work once. After a partner has set a password with a link, that link stops working. They can request a new one from the forgot-password page.
  • An expired session returns to the login page. Partners who leave the portal open for a long time are asked to log in again.

You paid commission on an order that later came back

Section titled “You paid commission on an order that later came back”

This is the one the revoke rules cannot fix: a paid commission is never clawed back. The cause is almost always timing — approving or paying before your return window closes.

  • Move your approval rhythm to just after your typical return period.
  • If Order approval is set to Immediately, you have no review step at all. Read when to approve and when to reject and consider switching it back to Manually.
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