This plugin is useful if you want to reward the referring affiliate's upline with multi-tier commission, but only if the affiliates in the upline are on a higher rank/level than their child affiliates. Additionally, you don't want to pay more in commissions than the highest rank commission, which is 30% in the example below.
Let's consider that you'd have a few affiliate ranks like this:
- Bronze - Affiliate on this level should get a 5% commission when they refer a sale.
- Silver - Affiliate on this level should get a 10% commission when they refer a sale.
- Gold - Affiliate on this level should get a 20% commission when they refer a sale.
- Platinum - Affiliate on this level should get a 30% commission when they refer a sale.
To set up these levels, you would use the Commission Groups feature. You can also use the Performance Rewards feature to move affiliates between these ranks/levels based on their performance. You only need to set the 1st tier commission and do not need to set up any multi-tier commissions in the commission groups.
What this plugin will do is calculate the commission for the upline affiliate as the difference between the upline affiliate's commission and the sum of commissions granted to their child affiliates.
For example, let's consider the following affiliate tree:
- Peter is a top affiliate but is only on the Silver rank.
- John is Peter's child and is on the Platinum rank.
- Kate is John's child and is on the Gold rank.
- Simon is Kate's child and is on the Bronze rank.
- Tracy is Simon's child and is also on the Bronze rank.
How commissions are calculated:
If Tracy refers a sale and she gets a 5% commission as defined in the Bronze level, this plugin will look through Tracy's upline (up to 99 tiers/levels high in total) and reward the tier commissions like this:
- Simon wouldn't get a commission because he is due is 5%, but 5% was already paid to Tracy.
- Kate would get a 15% commission, which is the difference between her eligible 20% for being on the Gold level and the commissions granted on lower tiers - 5% for Tracy and 0% for Simon.
- John would get a 10% commission, calculated as the difference between the Platinum's 30% commission and what was already paid on lower tiers - 5% for Tracy, 0% for Simon, and 15% for Kate.
At this point, the plugin will recognize that the maximum commission is 30% and won't look higher in the upline. However, for the sake of an example, let's say there is another affiliate rank called Rhodium that pays 50%. Among the 6 affiliates above Peter (John's parent), all of them except the top-most have a rank of Gold or lower. Since their ranks are equal to or lower than the 30% already distributed to lower tiers, they won't receive any payment. The top-most affiliate, who holds the Rhodium rank, will receive a 20% commission. This is calculated as the difference between the Rhodium's 50% commission and the payments made to lower tiers - 5% for Tracy, 0% for Simon, 15% for Kate, 10% for John, and 0% for Peter, as well as 0% for the 5 affiliates above Peter.
Additional notes:
- the plugin would not overwrite custom commissions, for example, if a custom commission was set directly in the tracking request.
- the plugin also works with fixed amount commissions, and even with combinations of fixed amount commissions and percentage commissions. For instance, 5% for Bronze, 10% for Silver, 20% for Gold, and $100 for Platinum.
- the plugin can be enabled only for specific campaigns or for all campaigns
- the plugin will not work with the "put Affiliate into Commission Group (retroactively)" action of the Performance Rewards feature.