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Setting up

This page covers what happens when you install Sprout Affiliate, what it costs, how to create your first program, and how to check that referral tracking is working. Do that check, under "Confirming tracking is live" below. If the Web Pixel is missing, the app's Home page shows a red "Referral tracking is off" banner with a button to turn it back on. Nothing warns you when the theme app embed is off, so run the check anyway.

Installing

Sprout Affiliate installs from the Shopify App Store like any other app. During install Shopify asks you to approve the permissions the app needs. Each one is used for something specific:

• Orders (read and write): reads orders to work out commission, and writes a tag on referred orders so they are findable in your own order list.
• Products: reads products and collections for per-product commission rules and product-scoped programs.
• Customers: reads the buyer name shown on an order, which is what the self-referral check compares against the affiliate's name.
• Discounts: creates the affiliate discount codes your programs hand out.
• Customer events and pixels: required to create the referral Web Pixel, a small piece of tracking code Shopify runs on your storefront and checkout for the app. It is what turns a click on an affiliate link into a credited sale, and it is described under "How a sale gets credited" below.
• Online store navigation: creates the URL redirect behind an affiliate custom link, so /sarah lands on the same ?ref= destination the plain link uses. Custom links are a Professional plan feature.
• Store credit: issues Shopify store credit to affiliates whose payout method is store credit, so the app pays them instead of you handing it out.

What it costs

There is no subscription gate on install. The free plan is a real plan, not a trial.

Each paid plan has a 14 day free trial. Professional and Enterprise also have yearly prices ($499.90 and $1,199.90). Growth is monthly only.

Five things to know about the percentage fee before you subscribe. It accrues when a referred sale happens, not when you pay the affiliate. It is not charged on test orders, cancelled orders, or orders whose payment has not gone through. If a referred order is refunded later, the fee you were charged on it comes back as a credit, which comes off your next bill.

Because Shopify bills usage in the subscription's currency, the percentage is taken in the currency the sale happened in and the resulting fee is converted to USD.

And Shopify requires every app to name a ceiling for usage charges, so the app declares $10,000 per 30 day period, which is the figure you approve when you subscribe. That ceiling is the most Shopify will let the app bill you in a period, not an amount you pay.

What happens automatically on install

Two things run without you doing anything.

First, Sprout Affiliate puts its Web Pixel on your store. It goes on when you install the app, and every time you open the app after that, Sprout Affiliate checks the pixel is still there and puts it back if it is not. You cannot end up with two, and there is nothing here for you to set up or switch on.

Second, the app reads your shop details: name, primary storefront domain, currency, timezone, and billing country. Money and dates in the app then match your store rather than a default. If your notification email is still blank, it is seeded with your shop owner email, and you can change it in Settings.

The first time you open the app you are asked one question: where you are starting from (no affiliates yet, affiliates but no sales, or already getting affiliate sales). The answer is saved once and sends you straight to the page that matches it. "No affiliates yet" takes you to Programs, to build the one they will join. Either of the other two answers means you are already running a program somewhere else, so it takes you to Import, where a CSV brings your affiliates across along with the commissions they have already earned. You are asked only once: if this store has already created a program in Sprout Affiliate, approved an affiliate, or recorded an affiliate sale, the question is skipped and you land on the dashboard.

Creating your first program

A program sets the commission, the customer discount, and which payout methods affiliates can choose. Every affiliate you approve belongs to exactly one program. Their signup link, their commission rate, and their discount code all come from that program, which is why you build the program first.

1. Open Programs and select Create new program.
2. Give it a name, up to 60 characters. The name becomes the program's permanent web address, so a later rename does not break links that are already out there. Two programs cannot be created with the same name, though renaming one later can duplicate a name.
3. Set the commission. A percentage must be between 0 and 100. A flat amount must be greater than 0.
4. Set the customer discount, between 1 and 100 percent, or turn the discount off.
5. Choose at least one payout method. Saving fails without one.
6. Set the attribution window, the number of days after a click in which a purchase still counts for that affiliate, if you want to override the store default of 30 days. The field, Cookie duration (days), takes 1 to 365, and clearing it saves 30 rather than the store setting. For a referral that never expires, tick Infinite cookie duration instead.
7. Save. The editor stays open and switches to edit mode, so the next save updates this program rather than creating a second one.

Your signup link is on the Programs page next to each program, with a Copy button. It looks like app.sproutaffiliate.com/join/your-store?campaign=program-name. That page lives on the app's own domain, not your storefront, so it works even while your store is password protected.

On the free plan the Create new program button turns into a locked button once you have one program, and selecting it opens the Plans page.

The dashboard shows a four step checklist: set up your program and get your signup link, get your first affiliate, connect PayPal for automatic payouts, send your first payout. It disappears once all four are done. Connecting PayPal is not plan gated, but sending a payout through PayPal, and scheduled automatic payouts, need the Growth plan or higher. On the free plan the PayPal send button does not appear at all, and Mark all as paid is how you record payouts.

PayPal and store credit are the two methods the app delivers itself. Store credit is added to the affiliate's Shopify customer account when you send a payout, which means they need a customer account in your store using the same email address they signed up with. This happens unless you untick "Issue store credit automatically" in Settings, Payments. Bank transfer, check, and Venmo are paid by you outside Sprout Affiliate, and the app records them as paid.

How a sale gets credited

A sale is credited on one of two pieces of evidence: the affiliate's discount code on the order, or a recorded click on the affiliate's link. Each needs something different to be working.

The Web Pixel is Shopify's supported way for an app to be told about storefront page views and completed checkouts. On any storefront page view it looks for ?ref= in the URL, saves the code and the time of the click in the shopper's browser, in storage only the pixel itself can read, and when the checkout completes it sends both to the app.

The theme app embed does the same job differently: it writes the code and click time onto the cart as an order attribute called "Sprout Ref", which then arrives on the order. When both are present, the cart attribute is used first and the pixel report is the fallback. The attribution window applies to both, so a click older than the window pays nothing.

Confirming tracking is live

Every dashboard load asks Shopify directly whether the pixel exists on your store.

1. If tracking is off, a red banner appears at the top: Referral tracking is off. Select Turn it on. That installs the pixel immediately.
2. If there is no banner, the pixel is installed.
3. To prove it end to end, place a test order through an affiliate link. Test orders are deliberately attributed and tagged like real ones, because verifying tracking is most of the reason anyone places one. They are never charged a percentage fee.
4. Check the order in your Shopify admin. A referred order is tagged (Sprout_order by default, plus the affiliate's name, both changeable in Settings), and it appears under Referral orders.

Expect your test order to sit in the pending queue with the reason Test order. Orders that are not settled money (test, cancelled, or unpaid) never auto-approve, because approving one would pay real commission on a sale you never had. You can still approve it by hand.

Two limits here. First, the check confirms the pixel exists on your store; it cannot confirm that every shopper's browser ran it, so a shopper with strict privacy settings can still go uncredited. Second, the referral is stored in the shopper's own browser, so a shopper who clicks an affiliate link on a phone and then buys on a laptop is not credited. A discount code is read off the order itself, so neither limit applies to it, which is a good reason to give affiliates a code as well as a link.

The order figures on the dashboard, Referral orders, Payouts, and Analytics are served from a snapshot up to 30 seconds old and refreshed in the background, so a brand new order can take a page load or two to appear. Acting on an order (approving, rejecting, paying) clears the snapshot straight away.

On the free plan, referral orders past 200 in a calendar month are not attributed and earn no commission. They are not silently discarded: the Payouts page shows a warning saying how many went over the limit, and upgrading includes them.

Running several stores you own

If you run more than one Shopify store, you can link them and move between them without signing out. Open Stores in the app's left-hand navigation.

Linking is an authorisation, not a merge. Every store keeps its own install, its own subscription, its own affiliates, its own ledger, and its own payouts. Nothing is pooled, re-keyed, or moved. All the link buys is the right to read a store you have proved you administer, so a combined view and a store switcher become possible.

Linking a store

1. In the store you want to be the main one, open Stores and press Invite a store. You get a code.
2. Open the Shopify admin of the other store, go to Sprout Affiliate › Stores, and paste the code. Codes last 15 minutes and work once.
3. Go back to the first store and approve the request.

What the link does and does not do

• A group holds up to 10 stores.
• Only the store that created the group can invite or remove stores.
• A store belongs to one group at a time.
• Affiliates are not shared. An affiliate of one store is not an affiliate of another, and their link, code, and balance stay with the store they signed up to.
• Billing is not shared. Each store has its own plan and its own usage fee.
• Payouts are not combined. Each store pays its own affiliates from its own PayPal account.

Leaving

A linked store can leave from its own Stores page, and the main store can remove it. Either way nothing is deleted: the store keeps every affiliate, every referral, and every ledger row it had. It simply stops appearing in the other store's switcher.

Storefront widgets need one extra step

The on-store widgets (the "you're shopping with" bar, the discount popup, the floating badge) come from the theme app embed, listed in your theme editor as Sprout referral tracking. They render only after that embed is on. The same embed also writes the referral code onto the cart as the "Sprout Ref" attribute, which is the second of the two ways a link referral reaches an order, and it reports which pages a referred shopper viewed before buying. Turning it on is worth doing even if you never switch a widget on.

The app asks you to turn the embed on only once a program actually has one of those three widgets switched on. The to-do item, Turn on the storefront widgets, opens your theme editor with the embed pre-selected. Be aware that the app marks the task as done the moment you select Enable, not when you save your theme.

If you close the theme editor without saving, the reminder is gone but the widgets are still off. If widgets are not showing, go back to your theme editor, check App embeds, and confirm Sprout referral tracking is on and saved.