How to Manage Commissions

Commissions are what your partners are owed. This page covers how to create them, review and approve the results, and move those records through your payment workflow.

Most of the setup for this workflow lives in Payment Settings, especially Commission Generation, Commission Source, Commission Schedule, and Commission Statuses.

If you are trying to understand why a specific commission structure applied in the first place, see How to Set Up and Manage Commission Tiers.

Manual commission records are useful when:

• your portal is not using scheduled commission generation
• you need a one-time correction
• you need to record a payout that happened outside the normal automated flow

In those cases, use the Commissions page or the lead detail screen to create or update the record directly.

Use scheduled generation when you want PartnerPortal to turn eligible revenue into commissions on a recurring cadence.

1. Open Portal Setup → Payment Settings.

2. In Commission Generation, turn on Automatically Generate Commissions.

3. Choose the Commission Source you want to use:

   • Legacy to read directly from Stripe or QuickBooks at scheduler time
   • In-App Revenue to generate from the revenue already stored on the Revenue page

4. Set the frequency, timing, payout delay, and payment type.

5. Save the schedule.

The most important automated-generation setting is Commission Source.

• Legacy reads directly from Stripe or QuickBooks at generation time and compiles commission records from that external accounting system.
• In-App Revenue generates commission records from the revenue already stored in PartnerPortal’s local Revenue ledger.

That means the two modes depend on different revenue workflows:

• Legacy depends on the lead-to-customer mappings on the Stripe or QuickBooks integration page.
• In-App Revenue depends on the captured revenue rows that your team has reviewed inside PartnerPortal.

If you want more detail on how those revenue workflows differ, see How to Track Revenue.

The old name for this area was Commission Scheduler. In the current app, it lives under Commission Generation in Payment Settings.

This is where you control the timing rules for automated commission generation:

• frequency: monthly, quarterly, or in some older portals yearly
• start date: the cycle start for yearly schedules
• payout delay: how long PartnerPortal waits before revenue becomes eligible for payout
• lead expiry time: how long won leads can stay inactive before expiring while automatic generation is active
• payment type: manual or an enabled payment integration such as PayPal

For the exact settings and labels, see Commission Schedule.

The statuses you see depend on your portal’s payment workflow.

Most export-based workflows should use the modern status model:

• Needs Approval: ready for review before payout
• Approved: approved to pay or export
• Do Not Pay: intentionally excluded from payout
• Paid: completed outside or inside the platform

Older portals, especially PayPal-driven ones, may still use legacy statuses such as:

• Pending
• Scheduled
• Processing
• Complete

These legacy statuses remain especially relevant for PayPal-driven portals because they line up more naturally with an integration-managed payout flow.

If your team is moving to a more finance-oriented workflow, modern statuses are usually easier to understand and report on.

The Run Commission Generation Now button is a one-time manual trigger for the most recently completed commission period.

This is most useful when:

• revenue was missing earlier and has now been added
• mappings were fixed after the usual run
• settings changed and you want to regenerate the latest period
• an integration was connected after the schedule was already in place

Running it does not replace your ongoing schedule. It is a one-time catch-up action.

If you are looking for where to configure or trigger it in the app, see Run Commission Generation Now.

Everything above this point is mostly about creating, reviewing, and tracking commission records.

PayPal is different because it adds the actual send-the-money step.

If PayPal is the selected payment type in your commission schedule, PartnerPortal can handle more of the payout flow for you.

Important differences:

• PayPal autopay requires the legacy commission-status workflow. Portals with PayPal autopay cannot switch to modern statuses.
• Scheduled commissions with Payment Type = PayPal are typically sent automatically on the next nightly payment run once their issue date is reached.
• In that setup, the commission record is not just a finance-tracking record. It is also part of the actual payout operation.

Without PayPal, most customers still use PartnerPortal to calculate and track commissions, then send the money outside the platform.

For the full PayPal setup, partner PayPal email requirements, and integration steps, see PayPal.

This usually means one of these is true:

• no eligible revenue was found for that period
• the lead’s commission setup was not configured as expected
• the legacy accounting source had no usable mapped revenue for the lead

If the amount looks wrong because the commission rule itself seems unexpected, review the override hierarchy in How to Set Up and Manage Commission Tiers.

Check whether:

• the revenue is still under review
• the revenue falls outside the current commission period
• the payout delay has not elapsed yet
• automatic generation is turned off

In most portals, that is expected. Unless you use PayPal, PartnerPortal tracks what is owed but does not actually move the money for you.

If you need to configure the workflow, see Payment Settings. If you need the operational payout flow, see How to Pay Commissions.