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Moving from another app

Everything a move needs is in Settings › Import. Each tab takes a CSV export from the app you are leaving. Pick that app under Coming from first: UpPromote, GoAffPro, Refersion, BixGrow, Social Snowball, LeadDyno, Tapfiliate, Shopify Collabs, or Another app. The picker decides which column names are recognised, so a file exported from UpPromote and one from Refersion both map without renaming headers. You can still set any column by hand before importing, and every import shows a preview of what it will write.

The order to import in

The tabs run in the order a move happens, and the page opens on the first one.

1. Programs, because every affiliate belongs to one.
2. Affiliates, each into the program named on their row.
3. Coupons, for codes that are not in your Shopify admin yet.
4. Past earnings, the commission history, and anything still owed.
5. Tax forms, the W-9 and W-8BEN details you already hold.

Programs come first for a reason. If an affiliate file names a program this store does not have, the import creates it so nobody arrives without one, but it can only create a placeholder: a percentage commission and no customer discount. Importing your programs first gives them the real commission, discount, cookie window, and tiers before anyone is attached to them.

The switch-over date

Most stores keep the old app installed for a while after importing, to pay out what it still owes. While it is installed and still recording commission, one sale can earn commission twice: once there and once here. The switch-over date is what prevents that.

It sits on the Affiliates tab, and it is the day Sprout Affiliate starts paying the affiliates you import. Before that day, nothing here credits them, not even a Sprout Affiliate link, because until you stop the old app it is still the one paying them. From that day, Sprout Affiliate credits their sales and the old app should not.

• The date is today by default, so an import you make now takes effect now.
• You can set it up to a year ahead, and you cannot set it in the past. Orders already placed belong to the old app.
• A later date starts at midnight, your store's time.
• One store has one switch-over. Whoever is still waiting for theirs moves with your next import, or with Change date on the moving checklist. A day that has already come never moves.

Stop new commissions in the old app on that day. The checklist keeps the step, and it is never ticked automatically, because nothing here can see whether the old app really stopped.

The welcome email

The affiliate import can email everyone it brings in. The email is your own approval email, in each affiliate's language, and it carries their sign-in details: a sign-in link, a password generated for them, or one password you set for everybody.

A welcome waits for the switch-over and goes out at 9 in the morning, your store's time, on that day. It hands the affiliate a link, and the link does not earn before then. Importing and emailing is limited to 300 affiliates a day, counted against the day the email actually goes. Importing without the email has no daily limit; a single file can carry 5,000 affiliates.

Before any mass email, check which address it comes from. Sending from your own domain has to be set up first, and the import says so when it applies.

Programs

A program file brings the name, the commission (a percentage or a flat amount per order), the cookie window, the customer discount, and the status. A discount comes across whether it is a percentage, a fixed amount, or free shipping. Commission tiers written in words, like 1-10: 10%; 11+: 15%, are read into a real tier ladder where your plan includes tiers. A program that already exists here is left exactly as it is.

Affiliates

An affiliate file needs a first name, a last name, and an email address. It can also carry the program, the commission rate, a coupon code, the PayPal address, the payout method, the status, and contact details such as company, phone, website, address, and VAT number. Sample columns are a download on the tab.

• Anyone still waiting for approval in the old app arrives as an application here, for you to approve.
• A coupon already used by another affiliate is left off, and the import names who it was.
• Anyone already here is skipped, so importing the same file twice adds nobody twice.
• Affiliates keep the payout method they were on, where their program offers it.

Coupons

Discount codes the old app created in your Shopify admin keep working, and Sprout Affiliate credits the affiliate who owns the code. Codes in your file that Shopify does not have are created for you, with the program's customer discount, and attached to the right affiliate. Up to 500 codes are created per upload, in the background, and each one's result is listed on the Coupons tab.

Past earnings, and money still owed

One file can hold every affiliate's history, matched by email address, link name, or a name only one affiliate has. Rows are dated, so they land in the right tax year.

What an old app has already paid is recorded as paid history. It shows on the affiliate's own pages as paid before Sprout Affiliate, and it is kept out of this app's performance reporting, out of payouts, and out of the 1099-NEC total, because it was paid and reported elsewhere.

Where the file has a paid status, commission the old app has not paid yet comes in as still owed, and joins that affiliate's next payout here. It is named on the payout statement the way the old app named it. Pay it in one app or the other, never both. The import says so before it writes anything, and it shows the total still owed in the preview. If a later file says the old app has since paid it, the balance comes off again, and the import's Remove button takes back anything unpaid.

A status the importer does not recognise is read as paid, so a word nobody understood never becomes money you pay a second time.

Tax forms

W-9 and W-8BEN details are stored encrypted, the same way an affiliate's own form is. Only the last four digits of a tax ID are ever shown. A form an affiliate has already signed here is never overwritten, and tax details can only be imported from the store they belong to.

What does not come across

• Old referral links. A link an affiliate posted while they were on the old app carries that app's own tag, which stops working when the old app does. Their coupon code keeps working, and their new link comes in the welcome or the "We've moved" email.
• Passwords. Nothing here can read them. Affiliates arrive with a sign-in link, or with a password the import sets.
• Settings in the old app, such as pixels or mailing-list keys. The moving checklist lists what to set up again: PayPal, Mailchimp, Klaviyo or Omnisend, and your registration page.

When the files are in, the checklist has the rest of the move on it: stopping commissions in the old app on your switch-over date, emailing the affiliates you imported, inviting the people on your list who are not affiliates yet, and the connections above.