What happens when an order is refunded or partially refunded?

Both full refunds and partial refunds are handled by the plugin.

When an order is refunded, the commission for that order is recalculated. For partial refunds, only the commission on the refunded amount is removed.

What happens to the affiliate's unpaid commission (PRO)

This depends on whether you use the "Delay Commission" option under "Payouts":

• No commission delay (the default): the commission is taken off the affiliate's "unpaid commission" balance straight away. This happens even if the commission for that order has already been paid out, so the balance can go below 0.00. The affiliate then earns it back from new commission before they can request another payout.
• Commission delay set: commission is only added to the balance once the delay has passed and the order is still completed, so a refund inside the delay window never reaches the affiliate's balance. If an order is refunded after its commission has been granted, it isn't deducted automatically. Use the Deduct link in the "Coupon Affiliate" box on the order instead (see below).

Cancelled and failed orders work the same way. With no delay, moving a completed order to cancelled or failed removes its commission from the balance. With a delay set, a cancelled or failed order with no refund recorded against it won't show a Deduct link, so if you want to recover the commission, lower the affiliate's "Unpaid Commission" amount with Quick Edit on their coupon.

To avoid granting commission on orders that are later refunded, set "Delay Commission" to the length of your refund policy, plus a few days for returns to arrive:

Amount-only refunds (PRO)

If you type a total into the refund box without allocating the refund to specific line items, there are no products for the plugin to recalculate from, so the commission stays as it was.

When the commission already granted to an affiliate is higher than the order's current calculated commission, the "Coupon Affiliate" box on the order edit screen flags it with a one-click Deduct link. Click it to remove the difference from the affiliate's unpaid commission balance and update the order's recorded commission.

Free version

The free version doesn't track unpaid commission balances, because payouts are a PRO feature. Refunds still reduce the commission shown for the order in the affiliate's statistics and your admin reports.

For more detail about how an order's commission was calculated, see Commission Breakdown on Orders.