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Payment and models

Sale approval

Also called conversion approval, sale validation, transaction approval, commission approval.

Short answer

Sale approval is the step in affiliate settlement where the store confirms that a recorded conversion is valid and should trigger commission. Until then the commission is pending – only after approval can it be included in a payout.

Definition of Sale approval.

A tracking system records conversions automatically, but a record is not the same as a valid sale. Orders are cancelled, goods are returned, test purchases slip through, and some conversions turn out to be the affiliate’s own. The approval step gives the store a window to check the conversion against its own order system before the commission becomes a claim.

The process follows the same basic pattern: the conversion is created as pending, the store approves or rejects it within a defined deadline, and only approved commission counts towards the affiliate’s earnings. Approval can happen manually, order by order, or automatically when the deadline expires. A rejection should always come with a reason – otherwise the affiliate cannot tell a returned item from a program that does not want to pay.

For the affiliate, approval practice is part of a program’s real value: a high rate with slow or arbitrary approval can pay worse than a moderate rate with predictable approval. For the store, the step is the last check before payment – this is where returns, duplicates and rule breaches are filtered out, not after the money has been paid.

What is a valid reason for rejection?

Legitimate rejections cover orders that never came to anything: cancelled purchases, goods returned within the return period, duplicates of an order already credited, the affiliate’s purchases through their own link, and traffic that breaches the program’s terms. What they have in common is that the reason can be documented with a specific order or a specific term.

Regret over the price falls outside that category: a campaign producing more sales than expected is not a reason for rejection. Programs that reject at their own discretion lose affiliates faster than their rate can attract them.

How it goes wrong

  • 01

    Confusing approved with paid

    Approval moves the commission from pending to earned – it does not send any money. The payout is a separate step with its own threshold and its own request, so time can pass between an approved sale and money in the account.

  • 02

    No deadline for the decision

    If there is no deadline for approval, sales can stay pending indefinitely. Check the program’s terms for a defined window and what happens when it expires.

  • 03

    Rejection without a reason

    A rejection without a reason cannot be checked, and the affiliate cannot fix anything. The pattern is also a signal of the program’s quality – documented reasons belong in any serious setup.

At Affilyflow

Sale approval in practice

At Affilyflow, every conversion is created as pending – a conversion never automatically credits a balance. The store has the program’s approval period (30–90 days) to reject; after that the sale is approved automatically, so a sale cannot remain undecided indefinitely. A rejection requires a reason the affiliate can read. If a WooCommerce order or a Stripe payment is refunded, the commission is rejected automatically – even after approval – while a refunded Shopify order has to be rejected by the store within the approval period. The same order can never count twice – it is deduplicated on order ID per program.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take for an affiliate sale to be approved?

It depends on the program’s approval window – many stores wait until the return period has expired. At Affilyflow, the store has the program’s approval period – 30 to 90 days – to respond; if nothing happens, the sale is approved automatically.

Why does an affiliate sale get rejected?

The typical reasons are cancelled orders, returned goods, duplicates of the same order, purchases through the affiliate’s own link and breaches of the program’s terms. At Affilyflow, a rejection always requires a reason the affiliate can read.

Can an approved sale be reversed?

As a rule, rejection has to happen within the approval window. At Affilyflow, however, the commission is rejected automatically – even after approval – if a WooCommerce order is refunded or cancelled, or a Stripe payment is refunded or disputed. On Shopify and with script-based tracking, the 30-day window is the store’s opportunity to respond before the sale is approved automatically.

What happens if the store never responds to a pending sale?

In a program without a deadline, the sale can stay pending for a long time – which is why the terms should define a window. At Affilyflow, the sale is approved automatically when the program’s approval period (30–90 days) ends, if the store has not rejected it.

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