Creating and managing an affiliate program is a daunting task, and although it can work wonders from a marketing point of view, it can seem like more trouble than it’s worth at times. Fortunately, WordPress has quite a few tools you can use to manage an affiliate program with ease, particularly a plugin called AffiliateWP.
It’s incredibly simple to set up, and while it’s fleshed out with a healthy collection of intuitive features, it is missing a few staple ones. This includes the ability to create invoices, or statements, for the payments you issue to affiliates.
That’s a gap third-party add-on Payout Statements for AffiliateWP can help you fill.
Table of Contents
What is AffiliateWP?
AffiliateWP is a premium WordPress plugin that allows you to run a fully-fledged affiliate program from the backend of WordPress. It integrates with WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads along with a number of different membership plugins, and it offers a lot in its standard Personal, Plus and Professional plans.
If you’d like to learn more about AffiliateWP, be sure to check out our review. We also have a tutorial on how to use it to set up your very own affiliate program.
However, like we said, there are a few features this plugin doesn’t offer natively in its default features or its own add-ons. Fortunately, there are a number of different third-party add-ons that allow you to extend AffiliateWP’s functionalities even further.
Payout Statements for AffiliateWP is one of them.
What is Payout Statements for AffiliateWP?
There are a number of different ways to issue payments to affiliates in AffiliateWP depending on the plan you have and the payment gateway you use. If you have the Personal or Plus plans, you’ll need to export the payouts you wish to issue in a CSV file, which is made to be compatible with the mass payment options of such payment gateways as PayPal and Skrill.
If you have the Professional plan or higher, you can issue payments directly from the WordPress admin in a few simple clicks with the included PayPal Payouts add-on.
Payout Statements for AffiliateWP is a premium, third-party add-on for AffiliateWP developed by KryptoniteWP. It allows you and your affiliates to keep records of the payments you’ve issued to them with well-designed printable invoices.
Each invoice features your and your affiliate’s business details as well as a list of the referrals featured in the individual payout the invoice is referencing. You can even include your logo at the top of each invoice and additional text at the bottom.
How to Create Printable Invoices with Payout Statements for AffiliateWP
This should go without saying, but you do need AffiliateWP installed on your site if you wish to use the Payout Statements for Affiliate WP add-on.
Once you do, you’re ready to start using add-ons.
Installation
You’ll need to purchase a license for Payout Statements in order to use it. Pricing starts at €29 for a single site license, which comes with one year of support and updates. Once you pay for a license, you can download a copy of the add-on.
Installing the Payout Statements add-on works the same as any premium plugin you’ve ever installed on your site. All you need to do is upload the ZIP folder to the backend of WordPress by navigating to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
Alternatively, you can upload the extracted version directly to your Plugins folder through the file manager app in your host’s control panel or via FTP.
Whichever method you use to install the add-on, activate it as soon as it’s finished.
Configuration
Configuring Payout Statements is simple, which is great since it’s an add-on for a plugin and not a fully-fledged plugin itself. You can configure its settings by navigating to the tab it adds to the AffiliateWP Settings page on the backend of WordPress.
Start out by entering your license key to ensure you receive the latest updates and are eligible to receive support. You should have received this via email when you first purchased the add-on.
Next up is the Status setting, which is set to Disabled by default. This disables the add-on’s functionality completely. Once you’re ready to start creating statements and allowing affiliates to generate them on their own, change the setting to ‘One statement for every single payout.’
Next, choose the type of information you’d like to appear on each statement. You have the following two options to choose from:
- List Executed Payouts – Showcases the amount paid in the referenced payout but also showcases the total number of payouts issued to that particular affiliate.
- List Paid Out Referrals – A collection of confirmed referrals the affiliate earned and received payment for in the referenced payout.
If you’d like to force affiliates to enter their billing information in order to download printable invoices, tick the Require Billing Data box. This ensures the affiliate’s full billing details appear on each statement as opposed to just their names.
Lastly, configure the layout the unique ID’s of every generated statement will use. The Statement No. Digits setting controls the number of digits that appear in each ID. For example, if you enter ‘1,’ your unique ID’s will appear as 1, 2, 3, etc. If you enter ‘5,’ your unique ID’s will appear as 00001, 00002, 00003, etc.
The prefix and postfix settings allow you to add additional text before and/or after each unique ID. For instance, you can label each invoice with the prefix ‘INV-’ to create unique ID’s that appear as INV-00001, INV-00002, INV-00003, etc.
Configuring Your Default Statement Settings
The Statement Settings section appears on the same page as the previous set of settings. They allow you to control the way your own business details appear on each statement.
Start by uploading your company’s logo or choosing the one already uploaded to the Media Library. Next, enter your company’s name, the name of the person you’d like to reference as the one issuing payments to affiliates as well as your company’s contact information.
You can also enter text to display as a header and footer on each statement. For the header, you can enter something as simple as “Referral Payouts” or “Affiliate Referrals.” For the footer, you can say something along the lines of “Thank you for being a valued affiliate of our company!”
If there’s any additional information you feel is relevant to add to each statement, add it in the Notes section.
If you chose the ‘List executed payouts’ option for the Statement Details setting, you can choose to tick the box for the Payment Method setting, if you wish. This setting ensures the payment method used to issue each payout appears on generated statements.
Payout Statements in Action
Payout statements can be generated as soon as you activate this add-on and turn off its Disabled status. To generate a statement on your end as an admin of your affiliate program, navigate to Affiliates → Payouts, and click the Statement link for the individual payout you want to generate a statement for.
If you’re installing this add-on for an active AffiliateWP affiliate program that’s already issued several payouts, use the Generate Missing Statements button showcased toward the top of the Payouts page.
If your affiliate wants to generate a payout statement themselves, all they need to do is navigate to the Payouts section of the Affiliate Area and click the View link for the individual payout they’d like to generate a statement for.
Either way, you and your affiliates now have a way to generate printable invoices for payouts.
Let’s wrap up with a discussion on this add-on’s payment structure and what else the developers have to offer for AffiliateWP.
Final Thoughts
Payout Statements for AffiliateWP is a simple add-on that makes generating printable invoices for your affiliate program as easy as can be. The layout used for statements is well designed, and both you and your affiliates will have a way to download or print out invoices for issued payouts to keep for your own records.
KryptoniteWP offer a wide collection of plugins that can be used to extend the functionalities of Easy Digital Downloads, Amazon’s affiliate program and even Twitch, but they also offer one other add-on for AffiliateWP called Advanced Payouts.
Advanced Payouts expedites the process of issuing payouts to affiliates and determining who needs payouts by having your affiliates request payouts themselves. You can set up a minimum amount the affiliate must earn before they can request a new payout, which prevents you from issuing too many payouts while using this add-on as well as issuing payouts for every referral your affiliates earn.
It can be used alongside Payout Statements where you can force affiliates to fill out their billing information before they can start requesting payouts. It’s also compatible with popular form plugins, including Gravity Forms and WP Forms.
As far as Payout Statements goes, pricing starts at €29 for a single site license, as stated before. Three site licenses cost €59, and 10 site licenses cost €129. All plans come with one year of support and updates and are not subscription based, meaning they renew manually. Support is available via a ticket system.
Get Payout Statements for AffiliateWP
