Affiliate Report: Edit Profile View

Overview

If you run an affiliate program, you can get reports on your affiliate sales in Hotcakes.  This report will not only help you to track the sales from affiliates, but you'll be able to edit/approve affiliates, make payments, and more.

The affiliate report has several views.  This article covers the edit profile view of the affiliate report.

The edit profile view allows you to edit any of the details of the affiliate that you'd like, such as approving them, changing their name or e-mail address, and even adjusting their commission.

Requirements

The following prerequisites will be necessary to accomplish the goals of this article:

• Have access to your Hotcakes store administration
• Have the affiliate program enabled
• Configure your site to allow affiliates to register

Getting Started

This report and all of it's functionality will not be useful until you have at least one affiliate added to your site.

Affiliate Report: Edit Profile View

In order to see the affiliate activity view, you'll need to already be in the affiliate report, and then click on the edit icon results grid, shown below.  In this example, you'd click on the pencil icon in the right-most column.

You'll end up looking at the edit profile view now, as shown below.  

The left panel has a single button available for you.  Clicking this button will take you to the user account view in the CMS portion of your site.

The left column of the affiliate profile editor contains editable attributes that help define the affiliate partnership with your site.  This includes commission, Tax ID, and more.

Setting	Description
Approved	By default, no affiliate will be marked as approved, so this checkbox will always be unchecked until you check it.  Once you do, the affiliate will always be approved.  The checkbox will be disabled from future use.
Enabled	This checkbox will define whether or not the affiliate is still active in the affiliate program. If you need to discontinue the affiliate's participation, simply uncheck this checkbox.  It's checked by default.
Username	This is a read-only field for the username of the affiliate on the website.  While the example here has it matching the affiliate ID, they don't need to match.
E-Mail	This is the primary e-mail address that the affiliate prefers to be contacted at.
Affiliate ID	You can change the affiliate's chosen ID here.  However, please be aware that if they change their affiliate ID, they will be responsible for updating all of their affiliate links to use their new affiliate ID.  This is most useful after they initially register, to address a typo.  If you do change this value, it will need to be unique.  No two affiliates can have the same ID.
Referral Affiliate ID	If the affiliate was referred by another affiliate, you'll see their ID here.  You can add a referral ID here at any time.
Commission	The default value of the commission will match whatever the affiliate program settings are at the time when the affiliate registers.  However, you can adjust the affiliate's commission at any time, should you want to, and it won't affect any other affiliate.  Simply enter any full number or decimal value (up to 2 decimal places), then select either the flat rate or percentage-based commission.
Default Referral Days	The default value for this field will be zero, signaling that this affiliate will "own" the referred customers until the main affiliate settings say otherwise.  If you enter a value, it should be a full number, such as 5 (where the customer would not longer be associated to the affiliate after 5 calendar days).
Tax ID	If you need to keep track of tax information as it relates to affiliates, you should enter their tax ID here.  However, this value is also sometimes creatively used for other purposes, such as an ID value for the affiliate when you integrate you ERP.
Driver's License	If you need to keep track of driver's license numbers as it relates to affiliates, you should enter their tax ID here.  However, this value is also sometimes creatively used for other purposes, such as an ID value for the affiliate when you integrate you ERP.
Website URL	If you wish, you can save the URL to the affiliate's website here.  It's not used anywhere but this view, unless you begin displaying affiliates in an a customized view or integration.
Notes	You can enter any notes that you feel necessary to keep saved with the affiliate record.  Like the website URL, this isn't used anywhere but here.
Sample URL	The sample URL is simply a static text value, showing you what a referral URL might look like for the affiliate.  This is useful if you need to send an example to someone.  Simply copy and paste it as necessary.  Please note that if you visit the URL yourself, you'll be associated with that affiliate.

The left column contains the standard address editor you'll see throughout the e-commerce administration area.  The address editor works the same here, but you'll want to enter the preferred address details for the affiliate.  While you can edit the address, you should know that the address is not required.  If you'd like to know more about the address fields, please see the customer address book documentation.