Affiliate programme reporting

An affiliate report should show what publishers did, which orders qualified for commission, what the channel cost and what decision follows. Put those measures on separate lines. A dashboard total for attributed sales cannot, by itself, tell you what the programme earned or which sales it created.

Set the reporting boundary

Start each report with its date range, currency, covered products and included publishers. State whether orders are grouped by purchase date or by commission approval date. Both views are useful, but their totals will differ while orders remain pending or are later changed.

Choose one basis for revenue and costs, including a consistent treatment of GST. Define whether revenue is after discounts and refunds, and whether delivery charges are included. Keep the definition alongside the figures so a later report can be compared with this one.

These layers should not be collapsed into one conversion rate or return figure. A publisher can have a live placement with no recorded click, and a tracked order can later be declined. The first situation calls for a placement or measurement check; the second needs an order decision.

Reporting layers: question and what to keep visible

Build from records you can reconcile

Use the store order reference to connect commerce records with affiliate transactions. Retain the platform transaction ID and publisher ID separately. Check order status, eligible value, currency, commission status and any amendment. Investigate missing or duplicate references before using a total in management reporting.

Provider fields are a starting point, not a complete business ledger. Awin Classic’s Transactions report includes commission status and a network-fee field, although the fee may not be visible under some special invoicing terms. impact.com’s partner report includes actions, clicks, revenue and other KPIs.

Available and populated fields depend on the account and data supplied by its integration. Add product, fulfilment and other internal costs from the business’s own records.

Maintain an exception list beside the report. It should show unmatched orders, unresolved refunds, missing cost data and commissions approaching their review deadline, with an owner for each item. Do not silently treat an unresolved amount as either approved or declined.

Reconciliation workflow

Exception list items to keep beside the report

Use a small decision panel

Put the period’s main decision at the top: continue, investigate, change a placement or review an offer. Support it with a short set of measures:

Break the measures down by publisher type or named partner only where the groups are comparable enough to inform a decision. A content guide and a checkout voucher placement may have different jobs. A single league table of attributed revenue can hide those differences. Record the placement and customer question before judging performance.

Decision panel measures

Define the fields behind the totals

The Awin Classic Transactions report defines id as Awin’s unique transaction or record identifier, publisher_id as the partner, sale_amount as the total sale amount, commission as the partner’s earnings or fee, date as when the transaction occurred, and commission_status as its current status.

Keep the platform’s field name beside your internal reporting label when data is transferred or combined. That makes it easier to trace a management figure back to its exported field and clarify whether it represents sale value, commission or transaction status.

That report can be filtered by date range or other criteria and exported as CSV or Excel. Use the same field mapping when those exports feed recurring reports, and record any changes to the mapping so that a revised label is not mistaken for a change in performance.

Awin Classic Transactions report field definitions

Make partner comparisons inspectable

Awin’s Publisher Performance report supports filters for calendar date, publisher name, publisher tags, transaction status and transaction type. Record the selected filters or preserve them with the report so the comparison can be reproduced.

impact.com’s Performance by Partner report presents data in a trend graph and a table, with options to add or remove table columns. Its date-range filter can cover up to 366 days, and it can compare two periods; longer date ranges require multiple reports. State the period and selected measures when sharing a comparison.

Use the trend and table views for different questions: the trend graph shows a selected metric’s daily pattern, while the table provides comparable figures for the chosen date range. The report also allows selected partner rows to be compared in a graph, making the basis of a partner-level decision easier to inspect.

Awin and impact.com report capabilities

Review at the right cadence

A weekly operating view can surface missing data, new placements and pending order issues. A monthly closed view can use updated refunds, approved commissions and actual costs. Fix a reporting cut-off and show later adjustments in the next version rather than changing an earlier total without explanation.

Keep attributed and incremental revenue apart. Affiliate credit follows the programme’s tracking rules. Additional demand requires a comparison with what would have happened without the activity. Where a suitable test is unavailable, describe any baseline comparison as directional and record changes in promotions, seasonality and other marketing.

Keep the report version with its export or saved view where practical. impact.com supports scheduling and downloading reports, as well as PDF, Excel and CSV formats; Awin Classic exports its Transactions report as CSV or Excel.

Review cadence: weekly and monthly views