Refunds
Affluent should match the Activity Summary Report within ShareASale. If there is a discrepancy it could be because of the way ShareASale reports refunds. By default Affluent shows refunds applied on the date of the transaction (not the date of the refund).
For example, if a sale happened in March and the refund was in April, ShareASale would report a lower NET for April on the Affiliate Timespan Report because it's subtracting the refund for a March transaction from the April GROSS.
This can result in strange reporting scenarios where you might have a day or even an entire publisher with negative revenue in ShareASale.
Affluent reports data based on the transaction date, so we apply the refund to the transaction date, rather than the refund date. The only report you can find the refunds accounted for this way is the Activity Summary Report. You can pull this report from ShareASale by clicking on Reports > More Reports > Activity Summary.
Leapfrog/Influencer Transactions
ShareASale has a special commission payout called Leapfrog/Influencer Transactions, where more than one publisher can get commission rewarded for their contribution to a transaction.
Affluent counts the revenue for a transaction that also has an Influencer or Leapfrog transaction attached only ONCE. However, ShareASale counts it twice. Once for each publisher involved.
Example scenario:
To make the explanation a little easier, the last publisher in the Leapfrog will be referred to as “Coupon Publisher” and the previous publisher in the Leapfrog as the “Content Publisher”. Going forward, our commission rules structure looks like this:- Publisher A (Content Publisher) sends a customer to a site and the customer wants to buy but thinks, "hmmm, I bet I can find a coupon code out there", so they go to Publisher B (Coupon Publisher) and find a code, go back to their cart and check out with an order total of $200.
- The user paid $200 - it is ONE order worth $200
- The merchant receives ONE order for $200, so the merchant generated just $200 in revenue.
- ShareASale paid Publisher A a commission for sending the customer. But, they also want to reward Publisher B since maybe the user wouldn't have completed their purchase without the coupon code. So, they pay Publisher B as well.
- ShareASale accounting would look like this:
Publisher A - Sale - $200 Revenue $20 Commission
Publisher B - Leapfrog/Influencer - $200 Revenue $20 Commission - So, ShareASale reporting is inflated showing $400 in revenue but shows the correct commission, because the merchant really did pay $20 to Publisher A and $20 to Publisher B
- Affluent's reporting is the most correct here, because the sale was worth just $200 in revenue but cost $40 in commission.