(PRO) Affiliate Email Reports

The "Affiliate Email Reports" module automatically emails each of your affiliates a report every week, month or quarter, with their statistics for the period that has just finished. A PDF copy of the report can be attached to the email.

The report was rebuilt in version 8.4.0. See the version 8.4.0 release notes for the full list of changes.

Getting Started

To get started, enable "Affiliate Email Reports" in the "PRO Modules" section of the plugin settings, then open the "Reports" settings tab.

How Often Reports Are Sent

Choose Weekly, Monthly or Quarterly. Reports are sent on the first day of the week, month or quarter, and cover the period that has just finished. You can also choose the time of day they go out (using your WordPress timezone).

You can let affiliates turn reports on or off from the settings tab of their affiliate dashboard. Reports are on by default for every affiliate, or you can turn that off to make reports opt-in.

Reports are sent in batches in the background, so a large program won't run past the PHP time limit. A status panel on the settings screen shows the next run, how many reports were sent, how many failed, and why. You can set how many reports are sent per batch.

Report Templates

There are three templates to start from:

• Modern: The full report, including products and traffic sources.
• Minimal: Headline figures and a link to the affiliate dashboard.
• Classic: The original three blocks of statistics.

After choosing a template, every section and every individual statistic has its own on/off switch. Anything you switch off isn't calculated at all, so a shorter report is also quicker to generate.

What a Report Can Include

• A headline earnings banner.
• The affiliate's main sales, referral and commission statistics for the period, each with the percentage change against the previous period.
• Extra statistic cards: average order value, earnings per click, items sold, commission per order, paid this period and paid to date.
• Best selling products.
• Traffic sources: referring sites, landing pages and campaigns.
• New vs returning customers.
• Payout activity.
• Their leaderboard position.
• Their sub-affiliate network totals, if you use Multi-Level Affiliates.

A report never shows more than the affiliate dashboard does. If you've hidden commission, referral URLs, products in the orders list, customer names, campaigns, payouts or the multi-level network from the affiliate dashboard, those sections are left out of the report automatically. The matching switches are greyed out in the settings, with the reason shown.

Customisation

You can customise:

• The accent colour.
• How many statistic cards sit on each row.
• The subject line and the wording of every heading (see below).
• The header text shown under the greeting, and the footer text at the end of the report.
• The dashboard button text.
• A plain text version of the email, for email clients that prefer one.
• The email header image, which replaces your WooCommerce email header image for report emails only.
• Whether a PDF version is attached, its paper size, and a footer with page numbers.

Wording and Merge Tags

The Wording panel has every heading and message in the report, including the report title, the email subject line and the Greeting at the top of the email ("{display_name}," by default, or leave it empty to remove it).

You can use these merge tags in all of the wording fields:

• {first_name}, {last_name}, {display_name}, {username}, {email}
• {coupon}: the affiliate's coupon code
• {period}, {period_type}, {prev_period}: the period the report covers, and the one before it
• {commission}, {sales}, {orders}, {clicks}, {unpaid}: figures for the period
• {dashboard}: the affiliate dashboard link
• {site}: your site name
• {title}: the report title (subject line only)

Previewing and Testing Reports

Click the "Preview" button on the settings screen and enter a coupon code. This shows the real report for that affiliate, both the email and the PDF, without sending anything.

You can also send an example report to your own email address to check how it looks in an inbox. The dialog tells you whether the PDF was attached, and why if it wasn't.

PDF Files and Other Options

Report PDFs are saved with an unguessable filename, and a shop manager can view or download any affiliate's current report from the settings screen.

There are also options to:

• Skip affiliates who had no activity in the period.
• Delete generated PDFs after a set number of months.
• Block direct web access to the saved report files.