A commission pool is a bonus on top of regular commissions. You set aside a percentage of your revenue for a period, and the money is split equally among the partners who held a rank in that period. Pools reward your strongest partners for the growth of the whole program, not just for their own sales.
Before you start
Pools are part of the Business plan and only work in advanced mode, so switch Program mode to Advanced on the Settings tab first. They build on ranks: a partner without a rank never receives a pool share. Set up your ranks as described in Setting up affiliate ranks before you create a pool.
To create, edit, delete or recompute pools you need the Manage Program (Levels, Ranks, Pools) permission. Open Affiliates in the admin menu, then Settings > Pools.
Creating a pool
Click Add. The form New Pool has these fields:
- Name identifies the pool in your list.
- Percent of all sales (%) is the share of revenue that goes into the pool, as a whole number from 0 to 100.
- Required rank limits the pool to partners who hold this rank or any rank with the same or a higher priority. Choose No minimum rank to include every partner who holds any rank.
- Payout period is Monthly by default or Yearly. A monthly pool pays out from each month's revenue, a yearly pool once a year from the revenue of the previous year.
One pool covers all currencies. Each run pays out per currency from that currency's revenue, so you do not need a pool per currency.
A new pool is active right away. To pause it, open the pool, switch off Active in Edit Pool and save. Inactive pools are skipped when pools are calculated, and the list shows their Status as Inactive.
You can run several pools side by side, for example a small one for all ranked partners and a larger one for your top rank. Each pool takes its percentage of the same revenue, and a partner can receive a share from more than one pool.
How a pool is calculated
For each pool and period the engine works in three steps.
- It adds up the revenue of the period: every paid order of your business in one currency, minus tax, shipping and refunds, the same base as for commissions. Orders without a partner count too, because the pool is based on all sales. Test orders are left out.
- It takes the pool's percentage of that revenue, rounded down to the smallest currency unit.
- It finds the active partners who hold a qualifying rank for the same period and splits the pool equally among them, again rounded down.
The rank that counts is the one for the same period. When pools are calculated for May, each partner's rank for May counts, not their lifetime rank. If there was no revenue in that currency, or nobody qualifies, nothing is distributed for that period.
Rounding remainders stay with you. A pool of 100.00 split among three partners pays 33.33 each.
When pools are calculated
Pools follow the Recalculation cadence in your settings. Ranks for the period are always calculated first, so the pool sees current ranks.
- With Nightly, pools for the previous month are calculated on the first day of each month.
- With Scheduled (monthly), they are calculated on your Recalculation day, again for the previous month.
Both runs cover every currency you have sold in, so each currency gets its own pool amount from its own revenue. Monthly runs only calculate monthly pools.
With Nightly, yearly pools are calculated on January 1 for the previous year. With Scheduled (monthly), yearly pools are never calculated on their own, so recompute them by hand at the start of each year.
Recomputing a pool
To calculate a pool now, click the round arrows button in the pool list toolbar; its tooltip reads Recompute pools. Pick a Period type, enter the Period (2026-05 for a month, 2026 for a year), set the Currency and click Run now. If you leave the period empty, the current month or year is used. The result shows the Distributions and the Total distributed for that period in the chosen Currency.
A recompute removes the shares of that period and currency that have not been paid out yet and books new shares for every qualifying partner. A share that is already part of a payout is not credited again: the partner only gets the part that is still open. If the recompute finds no revenue in that currency or no qualified partner, the open shares of that period are removed. Shares that are already part of a payout stay.
If you changed your ranks, recompute the ranks for the same period first. The pool only sees the ranks that were last calculated.
How partners get paid
Each pool share is added to the partner's balance in the currency of the revenue it was calculated from. It counts as cleared right away, without a Payout freeze period, and is paid out with their cleared commissions in the next payout run once the balance reaches the minimum payout. See Affiliate payouts for running payouts.