How to Pay Commissions

Once commissions are calculated and approved, the final step is paying your partners.

For most portals, PartnerPortal is where commissions are calculated, reviewed, and exported. The actual payment is then handled in the company’s own AP, finance, or bill-pay systems.

Most customers use one of these two payout approaches:

This is the most common workflow.

In this setup:

• PartnerPortal calculates and tracks commissions
• your team reviews and approves the records inside PartnerPortal
• your finance or AP team exports those commissions into its own payment systems
• after the payment is complete, your team marks the commission records as Paid in PartnerPortal

1. Open the main Commissions page.

2. Filter to the commissions you are ready to pay.

3. Click Export Commissions.

4. Choose the format you need.

5. Export the file and complete the payment in your AP, accounting, or payment system.

6. Update the commission records in PartnerPortal so they reflect the final paid state.

PartnerPortal supports two commission export formats:

For most payout operations, AP-Ready is the better starting point.

The export modal supports:

• status filtering
• issue date range filtering

This is useful when you want to export only:

• commissions that still need approval
• commissions already approved for payment
• commissions from a specific month or quarter
• only paid history for reconciliation

AP-ready exports are designed for teams that pay partners outside PartnerPortal through AP or finance systems.

Those exports can include:

• Vendor Name
• Vendor Email
• Vendor ID
• Invoice Number
• Invoice Date
• Due Date
• Amount
• Currency
• Description
• Expense Account
• Tax Code
• Class
• Location
• Department
• Tracking Categories

If your AP system uses vendor identifiers that do not exactly match the partner’s name in PartnerPortal, fill in the partner’s external vendor details first.

That usually means adding:

• Vendor ID
• Vendor Email
• optionally a dedicated Vendor Name

These values improve matching in external systems and reduce manual cleanup after export.

If your team uses AP-ready exports regularly, set your accounting defaults in Payment Settings first.

The most important defaults are often:

• Expense Account
• Tax Code
• Class
• Location
• Department
• Tracking Category fields

PartnerPortal also supports an older automated payout workflow through PayPal.

In that setup:

• commission records follow the legacy status workflow
• the schedule’s Payment Type is set to PayPal
• scheduled commissions are typically sent automatically on the next nightly payment run once their issue date is reached

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

Set or update the AP Export Defaults in Payment Settings before exporting again.

Check the selected statuses and issue-date range in the export modal.

Update the partner’s external vendor details so the export uses the correct vendor name, email, or ID.

If you paid the commission outside PartnerPortal, update the commission record so its status reflects the completed payout in the app.

If you need to configure the upstream commission workflow first, see How to Manage Commissions and Payment Settings.