What do the different sales statuses mean?
Affilimate's Performance overview combines reports from many different affiliate programs into a single, beautiful, easy-to-use location.
To do that, we map lots of custom states and statuses into 4 simple statuses.
Here's what each of these statuses mean and how to understand them.
The "Status" column in the table at the bottom marks every single sale as belonging to one of these four statuses.
Four common sales statuses
Here's a quick overview of the flow between different sales statuses.
Complete Complete sales
Complete sales are sales for which you're pretty darn likely to get paid.
Depending on the partner, it could mean that the item has shipped. It could mean the customer completed an activity or received the service. It all depends on the partner and the purchase the customer made on your partner's website.
Depending on the partner, sales that are complete can still be refunded at a later time. However, complete sales cannot be cancelled.
Any item that is sold and then later refunded will show up as separate line items in your sales history.
NOTE: Don't forget that every partner has their own payout timeline after a sale moves into "complete". Always check with your partner itself for exactly when you'll be paid for those sales!
Pending Pending sales
Pending sales are sales where the customer has probably paid for an item, service, or activity, but hasn't yet completed it.
Sales in a pending state do not yet qualify for a payout from your partner.
Pending sales will either become "Complete" or "Cancelled" eventually.
If you want to see exactly when your pending sales will be completed, you can show "Completion date" in the "Filter columns" in order to see the date a sale may change from "Pending" to "Complete".
Cancelled Cancelled sales
These are sales where the customer cancelled the purchase.
Existing "Pending" sales may change to "Cancelled" if the customer cancels their order or whatever service or activity they paid for, before receiving anything from your partner.
TIP: If you want to forecast how many of your sales are likely to be cancelled, extend the timeframe of your Performance overview to get an idea. You can also filter your sales by partner to understand the average cancellation rate for each partner.
Refunded Refunded sales
Refunded sales are sales where the customer bought and item (which generated a "complete" sale in your Performance overview) and then later returned the item or requested a refund.
That means you don't get the commission 😢
Remember, whenever an item is refunded, that same item will appear twice in your Performance overview:
- The original, complete sale
- The second, refunded sale
The number that shows up under your "Total sales" is a simple calculation: