In order to activate the Split commissions feature, at your merchant panel navigate to Configuration>Features>Split Commissions (click the Activate button).
After activating, PAP will work in the same way as before (if you used overwrite cookies, then the last affiliate is configured for receiving reward, if you didn't use overwrite cookies, then the first affiliate is configured for receiving reward) - so you need to go to Campaign Edit > Commissions Settings > Sale edit to configure the difference. Scroll down to Split Commission Settings and you will notice 3 input fields that are important and after clicking on More HELP, you will be able to view the example of $100 commission divided to 5 affiliates according to your actual Split commission settings (it's really helpful tool and it's allows you to imagine how the current settings would work).
Split commission feature will always divide the calculated commission to the number of affiliates that referred the particular sale. First and last affiliate bonus means how many % of the commission will be awarded to first or last referring affiliate as bonus commission. In our example first affiliate will receive 25% bonus and last affiliate 50% bonus. So when we add these bonuses together we have 75% of the commission awarded to bonuses, therefore we will split remaining 25% to all 5 affiliates. That's $5 for every affiliate + first affiliate will receive $25 bonus and last affiliate will receive $50 bonus. You can also set the minimum commission that needs to be calculated for one affiliate in order to save this commission. If you set it to let's say 10$ in our example, only first and last affiliate out of 5 will receive commission because affiliate 2, 3, 4 didn't reach the minimum commission value.
1. affiliate: 5$ + 25$ = 30$
2. affiliate: 5$
3. affiliate: 5$
4. affiliate: 5$
5. affiliate: 5$ + 50$ = 55$
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together: 100$
After configuring Split commission settings don't forget to hit the save button. Now, here are few more examples which are commonly used:
1.) All commission for first / last referring affiliate - we recommend you to use standard overwrite cookies setting to achieve this, you can deactivate Split Commissions feature. If you want to reward only first affiliate that referred sale, go to your merchant panel > configuration > cookies > deselect Overwrite Cookies checkbox. If you want to reward only last affiliate that referred sale, go to your merchant panel > configuration > cookies > select Overwrite Cookies checkbox. You can configure this setting also differently for each of your campaign in edit campaign > edit details > Cookies
2.) No bonus = equal split for all referring affiliates - if you don't want to reward first / last affiliate with a bonus commission, but you want to split the commission to all referring affiliates equally, then simply leave the first and last affiliate bonus fields empty (0 = Undefined)
3.) Commission for first and last affiliate only (example: 50/50) - if you want to reward only your first and last referring affiliate and not the affiliates in between, then simply distribute the whole commission to bonuses for first and last affiliate.
4.) Bonus for last only and split the rest (example: 20/80)- if you want to split the commission between all referring affiliates plus reward the last referring affiliate with a small bonus (this affiliate had his last word and persuaded the client to purchase) then simply fill in only the last affiliate bonus field with a percentage that will be awarded to the last referring affiliate as bonus. This affiliate will receive also the share of the rest commission. (rest = commission - bonus)
5.) Split commissions with performance groups and multi-tier affiliates (different commission settings for various affiliates) - in this case the commission that splits isn't predefined, but rather the commission is calculated for each affiliate separately from the total cost value. In our next example we have $1000 total cost value, 5 referring affiliates (referral order is from affiliate 1 as first referring and affiliate 5 as last referring, after referral 5, the sale occurred). Our split commission settings are as followed: bonus commission for first affiliate is 30%, for the last referring affiliate the bonus is 20%.
We have also several commission groups: first referring affiliate is in 50% commission group, everybody else is in default 30% commission group. Affiliate number 3 has also a second tier parent that has commission setting set to 5%. In next steps I will try to explain calculating of final commissions for each affiliate and also parent affiliate step by step.
On our first image we can see affiliates and their split commission bonus percentage:
As you can see, the bonus commission for affiliate 1 and 2 is equal to 50%, this means that 50% of total commission will be given to affiliate 1 (30%) and affiliate 2 (20%). On the next picture we can see that the remaining 50% of total commission will be divided equally between all affiliates (10%).