Run a partner or agent program whose commissions live inside your books. Commission accrues only when the referred client's payment is actually collected — never on clicks — into an append-only ledger. Finocket never moves money: it computes exactly what each partner is owed, and your CA executes the payout.
How do I set up a program and invite partners?
- Turn on Partner programs in Modules & features and open Partners.
- Create a program: commission rate (in basis points — 500 bps = 5%), a hold period (days a commission waits before becoming payable, your refund buffer), a cookie window for link attribution, and an optional referee discount % for the referred client's first invoice.
- Optionally add milestones — conversion or revenue thresholds that pay a one-time bonus and can step the partner up to a higher rate from then on.
- Invite a partner by name and email. Finocket emails the invite (with a copyable link as fallback); when they sign up at the partner portal with that email, their account links automatically.
- Build your share kit once: WhatsApp-ready messages partners copy with their referral link already appended, links, and files such as a PDF one-pager, a price sheet, images and a short video.
Has my partner actually been invited — and did they accept?
The partner's row tells you, in those words, and it is worth reading rather than assuming: a partner can sit on your list looking enrolled without ever having been contacted.
- Never invited — they are enrolled and nothing has been sent. Press Send invite.
- Invite emailed · not accepted yet — it went, on the date shown, and they have not signed in with it. Resend invite sends the same link again, so a copy already sitting in their inbox keeps working.
- Invite email failed — with the reason. The link still exists;Copy invite link and send it to them yourself.
- Invite link expired — invites last 30 days. Send a new one.
- Portal claimed — they accepted and are in.
Copy invite link is there for the commonest support question you will get — “I never received the email”. It gives you the same link the email carries, to send by WhatsApp or any other way. It only appears while a live link exists, so you cannot accidentally send one that has expired or been revoked. If a partner you added has no link yet, pressing it creates their invite link first and copies that.
The invite link is the only way in. A partner cannot join just by signing up with the invited email address - they accept through the link, which is what records their acceptance of the programme terms and what a revoked or expired invite refuses.
How does attribution work?
Referral links (/r/<code>) set a cookie for the program's cookie window; a lead who arrives through one is attributed first-referral-wins — the first partner keeps the credit, later touches never overwrite it. Coupon codes cover WhatsApp and in-person referrals with no cookie needed: mint a code per partner (optional usage cap and expiry, deliberately hard-to-guess), and when the client quotes it on their invoice, attribution lands the same first-touch way. If the program has a referee discount, it's applied automatically as a visible line on that client's first invoice only.
What does my partner see in the portal?
Balances per currency in three tiles — eligible (payable now), on hold, and paid — plus a step-by-step timeline per referral: captured → lead → first invoice → payment collected → accrued → on hold → paid. “Where's my commission?” answers itself. Partners see their attributed-lead count but never lead contact details, copy the share kit, track milestone progress, and self-serve their tax details — PAN (India), ABN (Australia, checksum-validated), or US tax ID — and upload the document itself (PAN card, W-9, ABN declaration). Uploaded documents go to a private vault and are never displayed back.
What to put in your partner kit
Open a programme on this screen and use Share kit. Add a message, a link, or a file. Files can be a PDF, a PNG, JPG or WebP image, an MP4 or MOV video, or a PowerPoint deck, up to 25 MB each. Move items up or down to set the order your partners see, and remove anything out of date. You add everything here; your partners can only see it and download it.
A good first kit:
- A one-page product PDF: what you do, in one sentence, and what a customer stops doing by hand.
- A pricing sheet. Replace it the day your prices change, because partners forward whatever is in the kit.
- WhatsApp images, one for each kind of customer you sell to, square and with large type.
- A short demo video, under a minute, with captions.
- Your logo as PNG files, on a light and a dark background. SVG files are not accepted.
- A short pitch deck, as a PDF, or as PowerPoint if you want partners to edit it.
Your partners see every item on their Links screen with a thumbnail for each image and a Download button for each file, and one Download everything zip that carries every message with their own link already in it, their links, their codes and every file. If the files add up to more than 100 MB, the zip is refused with the sizes and the partner downloads the files one at a time instead.
What happens when I suspend a partner?
Suspending ends their access immediately. The partner keeps their sign-in and can still reach their own profile and tax details — so they can see that it happened and fix whatever caused it — but their referral links, coupon codes, attributed leads and balances all stop resolving the moment you suspend. There is no end-of-month grace period, and a link they already shared stops attributing.
Suspending changes access, not money. Commission accrued before the suspension stays in the ledger and keeps appearing on your statements — you still owe what they already earned. Suspending is not a clawback; a refund is what reverses commission. Reactivate them and everything returns exactly as it was.
What gets flagged for review?
If a referral's email or phone matches the partner's own, the accrual is still recorded — books stay honest — but it's flagged and held out of the payable balance. The needs-review card on Partners shows every flagged accrual: approve it (owner-only) and it joins the normal hold-and-release flow; reject it and it never becomes payable. Refunds claw back the matching commission automatically.
Can two partners share the same client?
Yes. On the client, set each partner's percentage of the commission — every payout then splits by those shares, each at that partner's own program rate. The split conserves the pool to the paisa (the rounding remainder is placed deterministically), so shared clients can never over-accrue. A single-partner client is unchanged.
Can a rule pay a different rate for a specific product or volume?
Commission rules layer on top of the program's base rate (after milestone tiers): a rule can target a product, a plan, a currency, a volume tier or a time window, and the highest-priority matching rule wins. A product rule applies when that product is the biggest product on the invoice the payment settles (by its lines' total). With no matching rule, the base rate stands — rules can refine, never surprise.
How do I see whether a partner's GST is in order?
The Partner GST health card on Partners shows, for each partner whose tax details include a GSTIN, whether the GST register lists it as Active, how many of their returns in the last twelve months were filed on time, and a QRMP marker where they file quarterly. Press Check GST to refresh it. Onboarding is blocked until the GSTIN is confirmed Active, and a register that could not be read is shown as unknown — never as Active. Where we cannot tell whether a return was on time, it is left out of the score instead of being counted either way.
- Payout holds. A partner's payout is carried forward, with the reason written on the statement, while their GSTIN is not Active or their GSTR-1 is overdue. A partner who is not GST-registered is tracked against the registration threshold over the financial year; when they cross it their payout is held until they register or you release the hold with a note. Where the threshold has not been sourced yet, the card says so and nothing is held.
- Rule 37A. Each October, credit you claimed on a partner's invoices for a year in which they did not file GSTR-3B is queued for reversal, with the date to file the reversal by. Press I filed the reversal once it is in your GSTR-3B; it is tracked until they file and you can re-avail it.
Affiliates for a shop
A retail shop's affiliates are partners too — the same programme row, the same ledger, the same statements. What the Shop affiliates preset above the programme form adds is the shape a shop needs: commission on what is collected excluding GST, a hold that must be at least your published return window (the preset refuses a shorter one, naming both numbers), a link window capped at 30 days, and a share kit built from what your shop actually has — the shop link only when a domain is serving, the catalogue link only when a page is published, a product-page template, and WhatsApp and Instagram messages with the affiliate's link filled in.
- Books. The preset creates a channel cost centre called Affiliates; commission expenses post to it, so Cost centres shows the channel's real cost side.
- Each affiliate's row shows clicks → orders → sales → commission, their code and their primary link, with Copy link, Mint code and Resend invite. When a number cannot be read yet — the database update that adds it is not applied — the row says so in a sentence rather than showing a zero.
- Codes are minted by you, never by the affiliate. A code is one code on the web cart, at the till and on an invoice; minting is refused, in words, until the database update that joins those is applied.
- Nothing to share yet? You can still create the programme. Inviting waits until a catalogue page is published or your shop domain is live — then press Refresh share kit.
- Invite many at once by pasting names and emails. Invitations go out in order until the sending limit for the minute is reached; the rest are enrolled and marked to resend.
- Terms — publish what an affiliate agrees to on Partner terms before you invite. See Partner agreement and terms.
Related: Commission statements, Partner agreement and terms, Invite your CA.