When we moved Grav Premium onto KahunaCart last month, one of the things we carried across was an affiliate deal: a cookie, a welcome banner and a discount code for a hosting partner. It turned out nobody had ever used it, and when we looked at why, the answer was simple. There was nothing behind it. No commission was ever worked out, nothing tracked what the partner had earned, and paying them would have meant a spreadsheet. The usual fix is a monthly fee to an outside service that only sees part of what happened to the order. We'd rather it lived in the store, next to the orders and the refunds. So we built it into KahunaCart. KahunaCart Affiliates is available today.
Links, coupons, or both
Every partner gets a link to your store, a coupon code, or both. The link is your store's address with ?ref= and their code on the end. It works on every page, and partners can turn any page of your site into a link of their own. The coupon is an ordinary KahunaCart coupon, so it credits the partner on every order that uses it, whether the customer clicked anything or not.
That second part matters more than it sounds. A podcast host reads out a code, and the listener types it in a week later on their phone. There's no click to track, and with most affiliate tools that sale is lost. Here it's credited. A partner like that doesn't even need an account on your store: they share their code, you pay them by PayPal or by hand, and they can get a monthly statement by email.
The referral cookie is listed with the Consent plugin as a marketing cookie. A visitor who says no is remembered for that visit only, or not at all in strict mode, where a coupon is the only way to credit them. The tracking docs explain which to pick. The store keeps a count of clicks per partner per day, and nothing about the visitor.
Commissions that follow the order
Set one rate for the whole program, then give a partner, a category or a single product its own, as a percent or a flat amount. A commission is worked out on what the customer paid for the goods, after discounts. Tax is left out, and so is shipping unless you choose to pay on it.
If you sell subscriptions with the Subscriptions add-on, partners earn again when a customer they referred renews. Pay on every renewal, a set number of them, or none.
Each commission waits out your refund window before it can be paid, 30 days by default. A refund takes back exactly what the refunded items earned. If the partner was already paid, the refund writes a negative amount that comes off their next payout, so nobody has to chase anyone for money.
One batch pays everyone
At the end of the month, build a batch. The preview lists everyone who's owed enough and says why anyone is left out. Partners choose how they're paid:
- Store credit goes straight into their credit account, ready to spend in your store. Add a bonus for choosing it if you like, since credit costs you no fees.
- PayPal Payouts sends the money from your own PayPal account. The add-on has its own PayPal connection, so you don't need to take PayPal at checkout.
- By hand, you pay outside the store and mark each one paid. The batch gives you a CSV for your bank, a PayPal Payouts upload file and a Wise batch file.
The add-on never holds anyone's money. Every amount is worked out again when the batch is built, so a refund that came in that morning is counted.
Tax details for year end
Partners fill in a W-9 or a W-8BEN in their account. At year end you get each partner's totals, a flag on US partners who reached the 1099-NEC threshold, a CSV in the layout of the IRS IRIS upload, and a statement PDF for each partner. Full tax ID numbers are stored only when your server has its own key, and they're encrypted with it. Without one, a W-9 keeps the last four digits and the signed PDF.
To be clear about where this stops: KahunaCart collects and totals this information. It doesn't file anything or give tax advice. It gives you the numbers to hand to whoever does.
Apply without an account
A blogger who has never bought from you shouldn't have to make an account just to ask about your program. So anyone can apply from a public form: their name, email, where they'll share your link and how they'd like to be paid. They confirm their email address, and the application waits for you. Nothing else happens until you decide.
Approve it and KahunaCart makes their customer account, with a link in the welcome email to choose a password. Reject it and nothing is made at all, so spam applications never turn into accounts. If the email already belongs to a customer, approving attaches the partner to that account instead. Customers who are signed in get the same form filled in for them. Each application tells you which of these it is, so you always know whether approving makes a new account.
You can also pick a customer group for your partners. Everyone you approve goes in it, and anyone who leaves the program comes out of it. Filter Customers by that group to see your partners, or lock a page to it for brand assets and news that only partners should see.
Partners help themselves
Partners get an Affiliate tab in their customer account. They can apply to join, copy their link, see what's waiting and what's been paid, choose how they're paid and fill in their tax form, all without writing to you. They see the order number and date for each commission, never your customer's name or email. You can add banners and text for them to copy, and put a "Join our affiliate program" block on any page with your rate and terms.
Also in the core
KahunaCart 1.5.2 came out alongside it, with the store credit movement that pays a partner in credit, and two fixes to merging a store bundle into a running store. 1.5.1 came out a few minutes before it: orders paid through Polar, or Stripe under Managed Payments, now show the tax the provider charged on the receipt, the invoice and the customer's order history, so the total matches what the customer actually paid.
Get started
Affiliates needs KahunaCart 1.5.2 or later and the store's job worker running. It's $149, a one-time purchase for your site, and updates are covered by your site's single renewal.
Add it to your licence in the store, install it through Grav's plugin manager, and follow the overview and setup guide.
If you run a program with it, or you've been putting one off because of the paperwork, I'd love to hear how it goes. Come and tell us on Discord.
Andy