Adding a customer, creating a transaction and changing customer attribution

Who is this article for?

This article will be useful to you if are running your partner program on PartnerStack and want to add a customer or sale.

When would I need to add a customer?

There are potential cases (user error or integration issues) when link tracking might fail and a customer was not created in PartnerStack as a result. When this happens, you may want to add in those missed customers to keep tracking accurate and to issue commissions to your partners.

If you're adding in a customer and will be sending transactions through your payment webhook (i.e. Stripe, Recurly), you will need to ensure your customer_key and payment webhook  provider_key are added to the customer. Please see Tracking manually added subscriptions and recurring transactions for more information.

For a video walkthrough of using the Discovery & Recruitment tool see the Company dashboard: Video walkthroughs.

Add a customer

To add a customer to PartnerStack, follow these steps: 

1. Navigate to Performance & Commissions > Referrals on the left-hand side menu and click on "Add Customer"
   
   
2. In the window that opens, add the customer name, email and optionally, enter the customer_key and provider_key if you are integrated with a payment webhook
3. Select the partner you want to attribute the customer to
4. Click "Submit Referral"
   
   

This will also create the customer/referral on the partner's dashboard. 

If you're adding in a customer and are integrated with a payment webhook, you will need to ensure the customer_key and provider_key are added to ensure future transactions trigger commissions. Please see Tracking recurring transactions with a payment webhook integration for more information.

Create a transaction

Once the customer has been created, you can create a transaction so the partner gets a commission for the customer's purchase. You can also use these steps if sales for an already existing customer were not tracked through PartnerStack for any reason.

1. Navigate to the Referrals tab on the left-hand side menu and search for and select the customer you want to record a sale for. This will open the customer's details
   
   
   
   
2. Select the "Transactions" tab on the customer page and click on "Record a transaction"
3. Record the transaction amount for the customer
   
   
   
   
4. To complete recording the sale, click "Add"

If your offers generate commissions based on product keys or category keys, make sure you include the product_key or category_key while adding the transaction or no commission will be generated for your partner. Not sure if your offers rely on product_keys? Reach out to your Customer Success Manager or email Support@PartnerStack.com.

If you are issuing commissions on transactions, any relevant commissions will be generated for your partner after the sale is recorded.

To add a transaction without issuing a commmission

If you would like to create a transaction and do not want a commission to be generated, i.e. you created a manual commission for the partner, paid them externally, or you would like to add a historical transaction you can import the transaction and disable triggers for the import. 

For more information on importing transactions see the Best practices for importing data into your program support guide.

Tracking recurring transactions with a payment webhook integration

When adding in a customer, for recurring transactions to track properly, it is important to know whether your integrated payment method is a payment webhook.

If it is, for recurring transactions to track moving forward, the customer needs to have both a customer_key and a provider_key attached.

Transactions will not be tracked to the customer unless the customer_key and provider_key are attached to the customer. 

The customer key will be present in your internal systems and can be added to the customer in-app following the Add a Customer steps.

There are four ways you can ensure the provider_key is attached to the customer:

1. In the Referrals tab: You can add a provider_key when creating a new customer, or editing an existing customer
2. API: You can send a customer_create or customer_update event via API
3.  Import: You can import the customer with the provider_key. To learn more about importing, see Universal Importer. To import a customer with a provider_key, you would want to use the Customer import with the provider_key column added.
4. In your payment provider: Changing some information in the customer's profile within your payment provider will send a customer_create or update event.

Integrated with payment webhooks and not sure if your customer's provider_key has been added successfully? Reach out to support@partnerstack.com. 

Changing customer attribution

In some cases, you may find a customer has been attributed to an incorrect partner. If you need to change the customer's attributed partner, you can do this in the customer's settings.

1. In your Referrals tab click on the customer you would like to re-attribute
2. Click on the customer settings and select "Edit customer" from the drop-down
3. In the view that opens click the "X" to remove the incorrect partner
4. Type and select the name of the correct partner the customer should be attributed to
5. Click "Save"

Reattributing a customer will not reattribute any transactions or commissions that have already been generated for the partner. Future transactions for the customer will generate commissions for the newly attributed partner. 

Deleting a customer

1. Locate the customer on your Referrals tab and click on their name
2. In the detailed customer view that opens click on the Settings icon
3. Select "Delete customer" from the drop-down
   1. This will remove the customer entirely (including removing it from the partners' dashboard)

Deleting a Transaction

1. Click "Referrals"
2. Search for and click on the customer who made the transaction
3. In the customer detail view, click into the "Transactions" tab
4. Locate the transaction you would like to delete, and click the bin icon on the right
5. In the prompt that opens, click "Delete"