How does the billing work?
When you have validated the conversions of an advertiser, partners are entitled to be paid commission. Partners do not have to invoice the advertiser to receive this commission. Instead, the system will create so called self-billed invoices or payout entries which define how much commission partners are entitled to receive. This process follows article 224 in the explanatory notes of the Invoicing Directive 2010/45/EU adopted by the European Union. According to this article, invoices may be drawn up by the customer in respect of the services supplied to him, by a taxable person, of goods or services, where there is a prior agreement between the two parties and provided that a procedure exists for the acceptance of each invoice by the taxable person supplying the goods or services. In the context of this system, the customer is the entity, i.e. the legal body responsible for the payout of the partners. The taxable person is either the partner or the partner’s company, the service supplied is generating conversions. The prior agreement is the terms and conditions partners accept when they register for the network and the terms and conditions they accept when applying for an advertiser program.
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Creating payout entries
Validating payout entries
Dispatching payout entries to your accounting service or paying your partners directly via the platform.
Getting started
Make sure you are logged in to your admin UI, click on ‘finance’ in the main navigation menu and proceed to click on ‘partner billing’.
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When you are done setting the options in the filter panel, all you need to do is click the button ‘preview’ in the bottom right corner of the panel. If you were expecting a payout entry to appear in your preview but it didn’t show up, please use the checklist in the article on troubleshooting with payout entries
Creating the payout entries
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By clicking on ‘Deactivated’ in the overview bar you get a list of all partner payout entries of partners that are deactivated. Independent of the status ‘Deactivated’, you are able to create payout entries for the partners:
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From preview to payout entry
When you find the data in the preview of the payout entry is correct and you want to proceed to create the payout entry, all you need to do is select the tick box on the left and click on the button ‘create’ in the right lower corner of the panel. The CSV and PDF files for the payout entries will then join the generation queue. You are then presented with the following page where you are able to directly create new payouts or go back to the payout entries overview:
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If you want to find payout entries created earlier than ten days, you can use the options under ‘timeframe‘. The ‘dynamic timeframe’ allows you to select the last week, the current week, last month, etc. You can also use the custom timeframe for a more extensive search.
Payout entries can also be filtered by user, entity, advertiser, partner label, partner, type, currency and billing run. Please note the following:
The advertiser filter can be used as a search function or as a list. If you filter for an advertiser, you will only see payout entries containing confirmed commission related to this specific advertiser.
Under type, you can choose between ‘payout entries’ and ‘requests for payouts’. In most cases, you will manage your partner billing with regular payout entries. Request for payouts have to be created from an external function which is not implemented on most of the platforms.
The billing run represents the collection of all the payout entries you’ve created on a specific moment. By selecting a specific billing run, you will narrow down the payout entries to the ones you’ve created on the moments you choose.
Under ‘options’, you can filter payout entries by status (opendraft, confirmedpending, paid, rejected or reversed). You can also use the search box for a comprehensive text search.
Under ‘options’, you will also find an option to change the display mode. It looks more or less like this:
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Let’s have a look at an individual payout entry in more detail:
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From left to right, you will find the following data in the payout entry: the date on which the payout entry was created, the entry (if already available), the entity, the partner who will receive the commission (with his address below) and, finally, in the top right corner, the gross amount in the first row. The icons and the status section are discussed in more detail below.
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To validate the payout entries, you will need the status section you find in the right section of the payout entry:
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The dot below the icons signalizes the current status of the payout entry. In the example above, the status is opendraft. You can change the status of the payout by selecting the circle below a different icon. If you do this, you will see a panel appears below the payout entry. In this panel, you can write a brief note related to the validation and click on change on change status to confirm your validation. Possible options are:
The icon represent an open a draft status. As long as its status is opendraft, the payout entry will not have a booking number and will not be visible for the partner in his partner UI.
The icon represents a confirmed a pending status. If you change the status to confirmedpending, the payout entry will be numbered and become visible in the partner UI directly. Please note confirmed note pending payout entries cannot be canceled anymore.
If the payout entries have been dispatched to your accounting service, you can use the icon, which indicates the payout entry has been paid to the partner.
The icon signalizes the payout entry has been canceled. If you cancel a payout entry, the conversions included in the payout entry are cleared and can be generated in a new payout entry.
By selecting the status marked with the icon, you reverse the payout entry. This means an already transferred payout entry will be subtracted from the next one generated for the partner. Use this option only when you are absolutely sure the payout entry has been transferred unrightfully.
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