The Affiliate Program lets you build a team of sellers who pitch your paid plans to local businesses and earn a commission when those businesses pay for a subscription. This article covers the decisions to make before you invite anyone; everything is managed from Settings > Affiliate, in the Finance group.
Before You Start
Owners Only, and Only With Stripe Connected
The Affiliate entry appears in the settings sidebar only after you've finished connecting Stripe, and only for Owners — Staff members and the affiliates themselves can't open it. Commissions are calculated from the payments Stripe records on your connected account, so there's nothing to track until Stripe is live.
Prepare Your Coupon Codes First
Affiliates are tracked through coupons, and the affiliate form only lets you pick coupons that already exist, so create them first in Settings > Coupons (see the Apply Coupons article). A coupon can be held by only one active affiliate at a time: if you pick one that's already on another affiliate's card, saving fails with an error saying that coupon is already assigned to another active sale.
Turn On Allow Coupons for the Plans You Want to Sell
Only paid plans with coupon support can be made visible to an affiliate. To enable it, go to Plans, create or edit a plan, open the Price tab and turn on Allow coupons. Free plans can't be assigned to an affiliate at all.
Choosing a Reward Type
One-time
With a One-time reward, the affiliate earns a percentage only on the referred business's first payment. For example, if a business subscribes to a $1,000/year plan and the affiliate gets a 10% one-time reward, they earn $100 on that first payment — $900 goes to you. Every renewal after that goes entirely to you. The platform records exactly one commission per referred client for this reward type, no matter how many times that client pays afterward.
Recurring
With a Recurring reward, the affiliate earns a percentage on every payment, for as long as the client keeps paying. For example, on a $100/month plan with a 10% recurring reward, $90 goes to you and $10 to the affiliate every single month. In the platform's own words, the reward "is paid out as a percentage of the recurring payment, until the client cancels their subscription."
Deciding How to Pay Affiliates
Payments Happen Outside the Platform
You pay commissions yourself, manually, outside Climbo. The platform records what each affiliate has earned and what you've already paid, and stores the details you need to pay them, but it never moves money to an affiliate.
The Payout Methods You Can Choose From
For each affiliate you pick a Payout method — PayPal, Wise, IBAN or US Account Number — and then type the matching details into a free-text Payout details field (their PayPal email, their IBAN, and so on). For simplicity, we recommend settling on one payout method for all your affiliates — PayPal, for example. You can collect each affiliate's PayPal email through the platform, then periodically (say, once a month) check what each one is owed and pay them directly.
How Attribution Works: Coupon Codes
Each Affiliate Gets Their Own Codes
Each affiliate gets up to three personal coupon codes to give to the local businesses they refer. When a business pays using one of those codes, the payment is attributed to that affiliate. Since a coupon can belong to only one active affiliate, two affiliates can never share a code. Just don't hand an affiliate's code to a client they didn't refer, or that client's payments will be credited to the wrong person.
Attribution Happens on a Payment, Not on Sign-Up
Nothing is credited when a business signs up. Credit comes from successful payments: when a payment goes through with an affiliate's coupon, that business is added to the affiliate's client list and a commission is recorded. A business that starts a free trial with the coupon applied is credited only when the trial ends and the first payment actually succeeds.
Recurring Affiliates Keep Earning on Clients Already Credited to Them
Once a business appears in a recurring affiliate's client list, later payments from that business keep generating commission even when no coupon is on the invoice — for example after a Once coupon has run out, or on a renewal with no discount at all. This fallback only applies to recurring affiliates; a one-time affiliate is credited strictly through the coupon, and only once per client.
How Commissions Are Calculated
The Percentage Applies to What the Client Actually Paid
The commission is a percentage of the amount actually charged on the invoice — that is, *after* the coupon discount, not the plan's full list price. For example, if the affiliate's coupon gives the client 10% off a $100/month plan, the business actually pays $90. If that affiliate also earns a 10% recurring commission, it's calculated on that $90 — so they'd earn $9 a month, not $10. Stripe's own fees are not deducted before the calculation.
Each Payment Is Counted Once
For a recurring affiliate, one commission is recorded per paid invoice; for a one-time affiliate, one commission is recorded per referred client, on their first payment. The same payment never generates a commission twice.
Commission Currency
Each affiliate has a Currency, which is the currency their revenue, commission and payouts are shown in — it defaults to USD. Every plan you make visible to them must have a price in that currency; otherwise you'll get an error saying the plan's currency doesn't match the sale currency.
Setting up your program comes down to four decisions: reward type, reward percentage, currency and payout method. The Invite Affiliates, Affiliate Dashboard and Commission Payment articles cover the rest.