Bonuses let you add a one-off amount to an affiliate's open balance without tying it to a conversion. Use them to reward a top performer, pay a contest prize, or correct a payout. A bonus can also be negative, which reduces what you owe the affiliate.
Bonuses are paid out through the usual billing flow: they count towards the affiliate's open balance and move into the next settlement with the rest of the affiliate's commissions. This article covers creating, managing and settling bonuses.
How bonuses work
Every bonus belongs to one affiliate and has a value, a currency and a Billable at date. From that date, the bonus counts towards the affiliate's open balance and can be settled.
A bonus has one of two statuses:
Unsettled — The bonus is part of the affiliate's open balance, or waiting for its Billable at date. You can still edit or delete it.
Settled — The bonus is included in a settlement. It is locked and can no longer be edited or deleted.
Create a bonus
You can create a bonus from the bonuses overview or directly from an affiliate's detail.
From the bonuses overview:
Navigate to Affiliates → Bonuses.
Click Create bonus.
Fill in the fields described below.
Click Save.
From an affiliate's detail:
Navigate to Affiliates → Affiliate list and open the affiliate.
Open the Bonuses section.
Click Create bonus. The affiliate is already selected for you.
Fill in the remaining fields and click Save.
Bonus options
You'll see the following fields when creating or editing a bonus:
Affiliate — The affiliate who receives the bonus. You can't change the affiliate once the bonus is created. To move a bonus to a different affiliate, delete it and create a new one.
Value — The bonus amount. Use a positive number to add to the affiliate's balance or a negative number to deduct from it. The value can't be zero.
Currency — The currency of the bonus. It defaults to your primary currency, and you can pick any other currency enabled for your account.
Billable at — The date and time from which the bonus counts towards the affiliate's open balance and can be settled. It defaults to the moment you create the bonus. Set a future date to schedule the bonus for a later payout.
Note — An optional internal note of up to 1,000 characters, such as the reason for the bonus.
💡 The note is internal. Your affiliates don't see it. In their settlement, a bonus appears only as a Bonus line with its amount.
View and filter bonuses
Navigate to Affiliates → Bonuses to see all bonuses across your program. The list shows each bonus's creation date, Billable at date, affiliate, value, note, status and, for settled bonuses, a link to the settlement it belongs to.
You can narrow the list by:
Created at — When the bonus was created.
Billable at — When the bonus becomes billable.
Affiliates — One or more specific affiliates.
Settlement ID — Bonuses included in a specific settlement.
The Bonuses section in an affiliate's detail lists only that affiliate's bonuses. Click Show all bonuses to open the full overview filtered to that affiliate.
Edit or delete a bonus
Click a bonus in the list to open its detail. While the bonus is unsettled, you can change its value, currency, Billable at date and note, then click Save. To delete an unsettled bonus, click the trash bin icon in the list or in the bonus detail and confirm. The bonus is removed from the affiliate's open balance. Once a bonus is settled, its detail is read-only and the delete action is disabled. If you remove the affiliate's record from the settlement, the bonus becomes unsettled again, returns to the open balance, and you can edit or delete it. Every bonus you create, change or delete is recorded in the activity log.
Pay out bonuses
Bonuses are settled together with the rest of the affiliate's open balance. Navigate to Affiliates → Open balance and settle the balance as usual. See The Billing Overview for the full settlement process.
A few things to keep in mind:
Only bonuses with a Billable at date on or before the settlement date are included. When you pay affiliates up to a certain date, bonuses billable after that date stay in the open balance for a later settlement.
If the bonus currency differs from the affiliate's payment method currency, Trackdesk converts the bonus using the available exchange rate when you settle.
In the settlement detail and on the affiliate's invoice, bonuses appear as a separate Bonus line next to the affiliate's other earnings.
After the bonus is settled, its status changes to Settled and the bonus links to its settlement.
Manage bonuses via API
You can also create, update, delete and list bonuses through the Trackdesk Public API, for example to pay bonuses from your own reward system. The same rules apply as in the app: the value can't be zero, the currency must be enabled for your account, and settled bonuses can't be changed. When you create a bonus via the API without a billable date, it becomes billable immediately.
API access to bonuses follows the same plan availability as the billing and settlements API. See our pricing page for details, and Handling Affiliate Billing via API for how billing works through the API.