Tracking conversions and paying affiliates

The integration page

Open a program and go to Integration. This is where you pick how affiliates get paid and wire conversion tracking. A readiness strip stays pinned under the header as you work through it — your program goes live when it turns green.

Getting paid out: PayPal Business

Payouts run through PayPal Business, paying affiliates straight from your PayPal balance. Connect your PayPal Business account from the integration page.

Money moves from your PayPal account to the affiliate's directly — AppGram tracks and triggers the payout but never holds your funds.

Tracking conversions

There are two ways to tell AppGram a referral converted, and one small piece that records the click.

Click pixel

Records the click and writes a cookie when a visitor lands on your site with a ?ref=… parameter. This is what makes attribution and the cookie window work.

Stripe webhook

The lower-effort path if you already use Stripe. Stamp affiliate_ref into your Checkout metadata, point Stripe at AppGram, and you get conversions plus refund clawbacks for free — no JavaScript pixel required on the conversion side.

Conversion webhook

A server-to-server call from your own backend when a payment succeeds. Commission calculation runs from here. Use this when you're not on Stripe, or when the moment that counts as a conversion is something only your backend knows.

Conversion signing

An optional HMAC key, with a per-program enforcement flag, for the conversion webhook. Turn enforcement on so nobody can post fake conversions to your endpoint. Treat the key like any other secret — server-side only.

Testing in the sandbox

The affiliate module has a sandbox mode with its own event simulator, so you can fire test clicks and conversions against the sandbox attribution pipeline and watch the raw response.

Sandbox events are fully isolated from live data. The backend writes to sandbox tables, never dispatches payouts, never sends emails, and never fires your merchant webhooks — so you can verify your whole flow end to end without touching a real affiliate or a real payment.

A test conversion needs a referral code belonging to an affiliate seeded under your sandbox program, since that's what decides who gets credited.

Paying affiliates

Payouts are triggered manually from an affiliate's row once they clear the program's minimum payout. The Payouts page lists every payout with its status:

• Queued — created, waiting to be sent.
• Processing — in flight.
• Paid — successfully delivered.
• Failed — didn't go through. Usually a payout-method problem on the affiliate's side.
• Reversed — sent, then reversed.

The page also summarises what's been paid, what's in flight, and what needs attention. A failed payout is worth chasing the same day — affiliates notice, and a partner who isn't paid stops promoting you.

The audit log

Audit log on the affiliate overview opens the conversion audit: every conversion, and the events behind it. When an affiliate disputes a missing commission, this is where you find out whether the click was recorded, which attribution rule applied, and whether the conversion arrived at all.

Going live

1. Connect PayPal Business.
2. Install the click pixel on your marketing site.
3. Wire either the Stripe webhook or your own conversion webhook, with signing enforced.
4. Run a click and a conversion through the sandbox simulator and confirm the commission lands on the right affiliate.
5. Check the readiness strip is green, then invite your first affiliates.

Test before you recruit. Attribution problems found by an affiliate cost you goodwill; attribution problems found in the sandbox cost you an afternoon.