Automatic affiliate activity checking

This feature is available in Post Affiliate Pro since version: 5.4.22.2
This feature requires Cronjob to be configured for your Post Affiliate Pro installation. (All our hosted accounts have Cronjob working  by default)
It allows you to send automatic email notifications to inactive affiliates after defined number of days of inactivity and it also allows you to automatically decline or delete inactive affiliate accounts.

Activating the feature
To activate this feature open your merchant panel, navigate to Configuration->Features->Automatic affiliate activity checking feature and click activate button next to it to activate it.
(If you haven't purchased this feature yet you will see buy feature option instead of activate button.)

Configuring the feature
By default this feature doesn't do anything. You have to configure it first. After you activate the feature your merchant panel will be reloaded. Then navigate to configuration menu and you will see a new option in general settings section called Affiliates activity check. Click on it to open feature configuration menu.



Types of activity checking
Automatic affiliate activity checking feature is able to check three types of affiliate activity:

1. Check logins to affiliate panel -> This option checks the date of last login of affiliate to his affiliate panel. If registered affiliate never logged into his affiliate panel, date of affiliate account approval is used.

2. Check traffic from affiliate -> This option contains several sub-options that can be enabled at the same time. In this case the check is positive if at least one of the enabled conditions is fulfilled.

• Check clicks -> This option checks if affiliate has any referred clicks in defined time period.
• Check sales/actions -> This option checks if affiliate has any referred sales/actions in defined time period.
  - Check multi-tier commissions -> This sub-option defines if multi-tier sale/action commissions earned by the affiliate should also count for the sales/actions check or not.
• Check direct subaffiliates -> This options checks if affiliate referred any new subaffiliates to your affiliate program in defined time period.

3. Check new pending affiliates who were never approved or declined before -> This options check if pending affiliate signup was not approved by merchant within defined time period (Max days of inactivity). Inactivity warning notification email is not sent for this inactivity check. Only the inactivity action is executed.


You can enable all these affiliate activity checks at the same time. With all options active, this feature will perform defined actions if conditions of at least one of the checks are met.​ All affiliate activity checks are automatically checked once per day via background task running in your Post Affiliate Pro installation.

Available actions
After you activate one of the activity checking options you will see a new menu that allows you set up conditions and actions that should happen when conditions are met. There are two types of actions:

1. Send warning notification -> This action will send notification email to an affiliate after defined number of days of affiliate inactivity in field Days of inactivity warning.

2. Inactivity action -> This option can perform three actions after defined number of days of affiliate inactivity in field Max days of inactivity.

1. Decline -> This action will set the status of affiliate account to Declined. (Declined affiliates are not able to login to their affiliate panel or earn commissions, merchant can reactivate affiliate account manually anytime directly in his merchant panel)
2. Delete -> This action will permanently delete affiliate account from your affiliate program. (Deleting affiliate account will result in deletion of all his tracked clicks, sales and reports as well)
3. No action -> This action wont do anything. It is supposed to be used only if you want to send warning notification emails to your affiliates without actually declining or deleting their affiliate account.

Decline and Delete actions will also send automatic email notification to affiliate informing him that his account was declined or deleted due to inactivity. Here is an example of feature settings:


Email notification templates
Content of all notification emails that are sent to affiliates via this feature can be modified.
To edit them open your merchant panel and navigate to configuration->email templates. In the list of templates you will be able to find email templates: 

Affiliate - Inactivity warning -> This template is used for emails sent by action Send warning notification.
Affiliate - Inactivity action -> This template is used for emails sent by inactivity actions Decline and Delete.


In addition to general email variables, these two email templates can also use some extra email variables:

{$daysOfInactivity} -> Represents number of days defined in feature conditions. This variable is available in both templates. 
{$action} -> Represents name of defined inactivity action. So it can have two values Declined and Deleted. This variable is available in both templates. 
{$remainDays} -> Represents number of days remaining until inactivity action is executed. This variable is available only in Affiliate - Inactivity warning template.