Partner volume caps
Set how much each affiliate can send in a day, a week, a month or in total, get an alert when one gets close and when they reach it, and choose whether anything past the limit is held for your review.
A volume cap is an allocation: the most an affiliate can send you in a period. Caps are useful when you buy a fixed volume from each publisher, when a new affiliate should start small, or when you want to hear the moment someone gets close to a limit you agreed with them.
What a cap measures
| Measure | Counts |
|---|---|
| Leads | Every lead the affiliate sends, paid or not |
| Sales | Every sale credited to the affiliate |
| Event | One of the campaign's funnel events, for example funded accounts |
| Commission | The commission the affiliate has earned on the campaign, in your home currency |
Each cap has a period: per day, per week (Monday to Sunday), per month, or in total. Periods follow UTC. Refunded, denied and held rows do not count.
Set a cap for every affiliate
- Open the campaign and go to the Commission tab.
- Under Partner volume caps, click New cap.
- Choose the measure, the period and the limit.
- Choose what happens when the cap is reached (see below), then click Add cap.
A cap you add here applies to every affiliate on the campaign.
Set a cap for one affiliate
Open the affiliate from Affiliates, and add the cap under Volume caps on the Overview tab. An affiliate's own cap replaces the campaign's cap with the same measure and period, for that affiliate only. Everyone else keeps the campaign's cap.
When a cap is reached
You choose one of two behaviours for each cap:
- Alert only. You are told when the affiliate reaches 80% of the cap, and again when they reach it. Nothing is blocked, and everything they send keeps earning.
- Alert and hold. You get the same two alerts. Anything that arrives after the cap is reached is still recorded, but it earns nothing until you approve it. Held sales, paid leads and funnel event payouts show as Invalidated on the Conversions page, where you can validate the ones you want to pay. Held funnel events are also counted separately in the funnel report until you validate them.
When several caps apply to the same affiliate, the first one reached is the one that holds.
A free signup lead or a tracking-only funnel event carries no commission, so there is nothing to hold on it. It still counts toward its cap and triggers the alerts.
Alerts
Each alert is sent once per cap, affiliate and period:
- in the dashboard bell,
- by email to your Owners, Admins and Managers. Each person can turn Partner volume cap alerts off under Settings, Notifications,
- as the
partner_cap.approachingandpartner_cap.reachedwebhooks.
Changing a cap's limit re-arms its alerts for the current period.
Where affiliates stand
The Partner volume caps card on the campaign shows how much of each cap affiliates have used, starting with the ones closest to their limit (the first 25). The same bars show on each affiliate's own page.
Good to know
- Pay per click rewards are not covered by volume caps. They have their own daily limits and the campaign budget, described in Pay per click or lead.
- A Commission cap counts each row at its full commission. A sale that is refunded in full stops counting; a partial refund does not lower the count.
- Raising a cap does not release rows that were already held. Validate them from the Conversions page.
- A sale or bonus you add by hand is never held by a cap.
- A Commission cap adds up commission amounts as they were recorded. If your affiliates earn in more than one currency, use a cap that counts leads, sales or events instead.
Funnel events
Track the steps a referred customer goes through after the click, such as an application, an approval or a funded account, pay your affiliates for the steps that matter, and see the whole funnel per affiliate.
Coupon-code attribution
Use Stripe promotion codes as a tracking mechanism alongside referral links.