Referral Programme — Admin Guide

Welcome! This guide walks you through setting up and running your referral programme from start to finish. No technical knowledge required — if you can manage your Shopify store, you can run this.

What this app does

It turns your customers into a sales team.

Each customer who owns one of your products gets their own personal discount code. When they share that code with a friend, the friend gets a discount at checkout, and the original customer earns a commission. You stay in control of the discount amount, the commission rate, which products are eligible, and when referrers get paid.

In short: buyer gets a deal, referrer gets paid, you get a new sale.

Getting started — the five-minute setup

When you first open the admin area, you'll see a Setup Guide that walks you through everything below. You can also jump to any section directly using the tabs along the top.

1. Connect your Shopify store

Open Setup → Shopify Config and enter your store details. This lets the app create discount codes for your referrers and read your orders so it can track which sales came from which referral.

2. Choose your discount and commission

Open Setup → Discount Settings and decide:

• Buyer discount — what the friend gets at checkout. Either a percentage (e.g. 10% off) or a fixed amount (e.g. £5 off).
• Referrer reward — the commission percentage your referrer earns on each qualifying order.
• Commission basis — whether commission is calculated on the price the customer actually paid (after discount) or on the original list price. "Actual paid price" is the most common choice.
• Currency — defaults to GBP. Change it to match your store.

3. Pick which products are included

Open Setup → Products and tick the products you want to include in the programme. Only customers who own one of these products will be issued a referral code.

4. Tell your customers about it

Once setup is complete, eligible customers will see their personal referral code on their product page. They can copy it, share it via email, or send a direct link to a friend. The discount is applied automatically when their friend reaches checkout.

That's it — your programme is live.

Day-to-day usage

Earnings tab

Shows every individual sale that earned a referrer a commission, with the order details, the buyer discount used, and the commission amount. Filter by referrer or date to dig into the numbers.

Sync & Orders tab

Most of the time, new orders are picked up automatically. If you want to force a fresh check — for example, after running a big campaign — use the Sync button here. You can also look up any individual referral code to see who owns it and how it's been used.

Owners tab

A complete directory of everyone in your programme: who they are, how many sales they've driven, how much they've earned, and their PayPal email for payouts. Use this to spot your top performers.

Payouts tab

When you're ready to pay your referrers, this is where you do it.

1. Click Create new payout batch — this groups all unpaid commissions into a single batch, one line per referrer (so if someone has earned five times, you only pay them once).
2. Review the batch — you can mark individual lines as paid as you process them, or undo a payment if you change your mind.
3. Download CSV to import into PayPal's mass-pay tool, or use the PayPal email address shown to send payments manually.
4. Once everyone in the batch has been paid, the batch is complete and the rewards move out of "pending".

Configuration in detail

Page Content

Open Setup → Page Content to customise what your customers see — headlines, descriptions, and any promotional copy on the public referral page. Keep it on-brand and easy to understand.

Discount tiers (optional)

If you want to reward your most loyal customers more generously, you can set up tiered rewards. Tiers are based on a label you assign to each customer (for example, "Bronze", "Silver", "Gold"), and each tier can have its own buyer discount and referrer reward percentages.

If you're not sure whether you need this, skip it — the default settings work for most programmes.

Public product discounts

You can also offer a general discount on your product pages for visitors who arrived without a referral code. This isn't tracked to any individual referrer — it's just a way to convert browsers into buyers. Toggle it on in Discount Settings.

Customising what referrers can change

Referrers can update their own PayPal email address from their personal dashboard so payouts go to the right place. They cannot change anything else — discount codes, commission rates and order data are all locked down to you.

Tips for running a successful programme

• Start with a generous buyer discount. 10–15% off makes the offer feel real and gives the referrer something genuinely worth sharing.
• Don't be stingy with commission. A 10% referrer reward turns occasional customers into active promoters.
• Pay out regularly. Monthly payouts keep referrers engaged. Long delays kill enthusiasm.
• Watch the Owners tab. Your top 10% of referrers will likely drive most of your sales — consider thanking them personally or offering a higher tier.
• Keep the page copy human. The public referral page is your pitch to the friend. Make it warm, not corporate.

Troubleshooting

An order didn't appear in earnings. Check that the customer used a referral code at checkout. Orders without a tracked code don't generate commission.

Commission amount looks wrong. Open Discount Settings and check your Commission basis. "Actual paid price" calculates commission on the discounted total; "Listed price" calculates on the original price.

A referrer says their code isn't working. Open Sync & Orders → Look up referral code and paste their code in. You'll see whether it's active and which products it applies to. Re-issue if needed.

A customer's PayPal email is missing. Their payout line will flag this. Ask them to log into their dashboard and add it — they can do this themselves.

I ran the sync twice — will referrers be paid twice? No. The sync ignores any order it has already processed.

Need a hand?

If something isn't behaving the way you expect, the Setup Guide (top right of the Setup tab) walks through the configuration step by step and is the quickest way to spot a missing setting. For anything else, get in touch with your SmartLinks contact.