AbleCommerce Shopping Cart Software

I've been working for the last few days trying to get the Affiliates feature up and running for our site. It's been pretty difficult as I haven't been able to find any documentation on it (searched help/forums/wiki).

Also this listed feature was pretty much unusable out of box - we ending up having to go in and:
1. Modify the Registration Form to actually link them to the My Affiliate Account page after submission (the CANCEL button was linked to this page - not really sure about the logic behind that).
2. Add a link to the My Affiliate Account page to the main My Account area.
3. Add reporting to the My Affiliate Account page (there was a space with the text "Affiliate Reports here" but that was it - no coding to call up/display reports).

We still have questions about these items:
1. What does the “Referral Period” for an affiliate do? The help hover in the Admin site says “Length of time that the affiliate will get credit for a sale made by a referred customer” – what does this mean exactly?
2. How are payouts handled by the system?
3. Also how does he even know when a new affiliate has signed up? There should be an email trigger for this (you could have an email sent to the affiliate with info as well as a copy sent to you so you can go in and configure the account)
4. We have some affiliates who signed up a while back, and orders that they made are showing up under the reports. Shouldn't only referred orders show up here? We don't want them getting commissions on their own purchases.

Does anyone have any further info on any of this?

Thanks in advance!
Laura

1. Modify the Registration Form to actually link them to the My Affiliate Account page after submission (the CANCEL button was linked to this page - not really sure about the logic behind that).

If you enable self signup option in Administration > People > Affiliates then customers will see Affiliate Program link in My Account page. So in this case if some one clicks on cancel button at register page we need to send him back My Account page.

2. Add a link to the My Affiliate Account page to the main My Account area.

Enable Self Sign-up and register page will be automatically linked to My Account Page

3. Add reporting to the My Affiliate Account page (there was a space with the text "Affiliate Reports here" but that was it - no coding to call up/display reports).

Not sure about your version, but in 7.0.5 onward there is a report under Affiliate Program page that provides you time options to list earnings for that period.

1. What does the “Referral Period” for an affiliate do? The help hover in the Admin site says “Length of time that the affiliate will get credit for a sale made by a referred customer” – what does this mean exactly?

Its the time period specified in days after customer signup in which affiliate will be get paid for sales made by customer.

2. How are payouts handled by the system?

AbleCommerce doesn't handles payouts, you can make use of some custom accounting tool.

3. Also how does he even know when a new affiliate has signed up? There should be an email trigger for this (you could have an email sent to the affiliate with info as well as a copy sent to you so you can go in and configure the account)

Right now there is no alert for this but most probably this could be a nice enhancement in some upcoming version. You can do some custom coding to trigger an Email for you upon signup. Read following thread about how to manually send Emails viewtopic.php?f=42&t=8571

Thanks for your reply mazhar. We are using 7.0.3 so that may account for some of those features missing.

Its the time period specified in days after customer signup in which affiliate will be get paid for sales made by customer.

So a referral period of 30 days would mean that affiliate can only earn on their referred orders in the first 30 days after signing up?

AbleCommerce doesn't handles payouts, you can make use of some custom accounting tool.

Like Quickbooks? Will it automatically integrate with the Affiliate reports?

Right now there is no alert for this but most probably this could be a nice enhancement in some upcoming version. You can do some custom coding to trigger an Email for you upon signup.

I will look into creating a custom trigger for new affiliates.

Have a look at this post for custom Email trigger upon affiliate sign up.
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=14732

Thanks mazar, I will take a look. As for the following:

AbleCommerce doesn't handles payouts, you can make use of some custom accounting tool.

Like Quickbooks? Will it automatically integrate with the Affiliate reports?