Affiliate system can allow affiliates to bank thousands of dollars before payout.

[bluesteam]

Hello,

I just have a few questions around the affiliate system.

1. Why is there no CAP on payouts?  If the affiliate decides to horde the money and bank all the referral commissions in his affiliate account and only request his payout once a year like right before christmas, it could end up with our company having to payout massive lump sums of money in one SINGLE shot.  The affiliate system should have a payout limit and no more commissions earned until that payout is done because it could cripple a company if 100 clients all decide to horde their money and ask for a payout only after 2-3 years while it grows. In order for us as a company to mitigate this, we have to  now go and make special payments to an alternative account to set the money aside until the client requests his payout??

Or have I missed something in the Affiliate system?

2. I don't see an option to aply referrals on specific billing cycles.  We for example, offer our yearly packages by giving 2 months free if they pay annually. Now we are also going to give referral commission of 5% on top of that. Our margins become almost 0.  So we only want to apply the affiliate links to specific billing cycles like month, quarterly or semi-annually but never annually.

I would appreciate thoughts from other people that have used the affiliate system.

[bluesteam]

sad day indeed.  42 views and noone can give me answers 😞

[bear]

2 hours ago, bluesteam said:

42 views and noone can give me answers

It's possible no one has an answer. Or maybe, they aren't using the affiliate system.
For faster answers about the internal workings, don't rely on public response, ask WHMCS directly. If they say it's no possible, then the next step would be to see if anyone has created a 3rd party addon that can do it, or (while giving up all hope of success) is to open a feature request. 

[Remitur]

For your first question, the answer is simple: just regulate it in the contract with your referrer, and monthly (or quarterly, or whenever you want) report all the user that has referral commissions higher than X, and do the payout.
If you require any activity from the user to do the payout (i.e. producing and invoice), ask for it and, if no answer ina reasonable time, freeze the referral account.

[slim]

I personally monitor the payouts - and when they get large I will do the payout and contact the affiliate to ordained either a PayPal transfer or bank transfer or if they want, as credit on their account.

largest payout was 2k AUD and that hurts. Hehe.

[bluesteam]

18 hours ago, Remitur said:

For your first question, the answer is simple: just regulate it in the contract with your referrer, and monthly (or quarterly, or whenever you want) report all the user that has referral commissions higher than X, and do the payout.
If you require any activity from the user to do the payout (i.e. producing and invoice), ask for it and, if no answer ina reasonable time, freeze the referral account.

Would be nice if the vanilla system had the affiliate enter his bank details through a form on his profile so we can store it so that we have it on record for us to make payouts when their account reaches a certain threshold.

Would also be nice if when the affiliate clicks the "Request Payout" that it asks the affiliate if they want the commission added as credit and it does it automatically without our intervention.

21 minutes ago, slim said:

I personally monitor the payouts - and when they get large I will do the payout and contact the affiliate to ordained either a PayPal transfer or bank transfer or if they want, as credit on their account.

largest payout was 2k AUD and that hurts. Hehe.

This is exactly why the system needs an extra feature that suspends referral commissions if the payout grows too large based on an amount that we can set in the affiliates tab under general settings. I don't like to have to do so much admin.

[slim]

Yes - it would be nice if we could specify some options for payout - add to credit being one, PayPal being another and bank transfer also being an option.. the affiliate system could be a lot better with just a bit of love from WHMCS.