Settings

The Settings page is the control center for how your affiliate program behaves and how your affiliate portal looks. It is where you define core business behavior, configure how new affiliates are handled, customize your registration experience, control referral tracking behavior, manage branding, and adjust communication and portal configuration so the app matches your workflow and your brand.

In short, the Settings page is where you shape program rules, merchant preferences, and affiliate-facing experience in one place.

How to think about Settings

A good way to use Settings is to treat it as three layers working together. The first layer controls system behavior, such as referral logic, default assignment behavior, and approval preferences. The second layer controls information flow, such as registration form questions and what affiliates must submit before joining. The third layer controls presentation, including brand assets and visual identity used in your portal and related communication surfaces.

When these layers are configured together, the app behaves consistently and affiliates get a cleaner, more professional onboarding and portal experience.

Core business behavior

Settings includes key options that directly affect how referrals and operations work. One important example is referral cookie duration, which defines how long a referral remains eligible for attribution after the referral cookie is set. A longer duration can increase attribution continuity, while a shorter duration can make attribution windows tighter and more campaign-specific.

You can also control protections such as preventing self-referrals, and configure how new affiliates are treated by default, including whether the system should auto-assign a program to newly created affiliates. This reduces manual setup work and helps keep affiliate onboarding consistent.

New affiliate onboarding behavior

The Settings page gives you centralized control over how new affiliates enter your program. Instead of configuring each affiliate one by one, you can define defaults that apply automatically, such as assigning a default program for new affiliates. This is especially useful when you have a standard commission structure and want every new signup to start from the same baseline.

This part of Settings is where operational consistency is created. It ensures that as your affiliate count grows, onboarding remains predictable and does not depend on manual follow-up for every new profile.

Registration form and collecting better affiliate data

The registration form configuration in Settings is how you collect richer information from affiliates before or during signup. You can enable a custom form, set a title and description, and add your own questions with short-text or long-text input. Questions can be marked as required, and the form can be enforced before registration if you want stronger qualification and cleaner data collection from day one.

This capability is particularly useful when you need more than basic name and email, such as social handles, content channels, audience details, shipping region coverage, or campaign preferences. Instead of gathering this manually after approval, you can capture it directly in your onboarding flow.

Portal setup and domain behavior

Settings also manages portal configuration, including portal setup flow and subdomain/domain behavior. This is where you prepare the affiliate portal address that affiliates will use to register and log in. Proper portal setup improves trust and conversion because affiliates interact with a branded, expected destination instead of a generic link.

When portal configuration is complete and verified, your portal experience becomes easier to share and more reliable for onboarding traffic.

Branding and visual customization

The Branding section in Settings lets you align the affiliate experience with your store identity. You can manage brand-level assets and profile fields such as brand name, logo, favicon, support email, and company address, along with related visual settings used across portal and communication surfaces.

This matters because affiliate confidence is strongly influenced by presentation quality. A portal that clearly reflects your business identity reduces confusion, improves trust during signup, and creates a more cohesive brand experience for affiliates over time.

Currency and operational constraints

Settings contains currency configuration used across the app. In normal operation, currency is straightforward to set early and maintain consistently. After purchase history exists, currency changes may be restricted to protect reporting consistency and payout/accounting integrity. This is designed to avoid historical data mismatches and prevents avoidable reconciliation errors later.

Operationally, this means currency should be treated as an early setup decision. If a change is needed after transaction history exists, you will have to contact the support team to change it for you. But don't worry, our support team is active 24/7 and we also offer fast response rates for all our users.

Email and communication-related configuration

Settings includes controls tied to communication behavior and system messaging preferences. These options influence what affiliates receive, when they receive it, and how those communications reflect your brand and support details. While payouts and commissions are operational outcomes, communication settings are how you keep affiliates informed and reduce support load.

When communication settings are tuned well, affiliate questions drop and onboarding/payout workflows run more smoothly.

Recommended setup order

The Settings page works best when configured in sequence: start with business behavior defaults, then configure onboarding and registration fields, then finalize portal and branding, and finally validate currency and communication preferences. This order prevents rework because it sets policy first, then data collection, then presentation.

A practical outcome of this approach is that affiliates enter a program that already has clear rules, complete data requirements, and a polished interface.

Common mistakes and how to avoid them

Most configuration issues come from enabling features without matching dependencies. For example, enabling advanced onboarding behavior without required form fields can produce inconsistent profile quality, and changing high-impact settings late can introduce process friction for existing affiliates. Another common issue is under-configured branding, which can reduce trust and conversion in portal registration flows.

The safest approach is to treat Settings changes as program policy changes, not cosmetic toggles. Make deliberate updates, verify downstream effects in portal and affiliate flows, and keep configuration coherent across sections.

Day-to-day maintenance

You do not need to edit Settings every day, but it should be reviewed regularly as your affiliate program matures. A monthly review cadence works well for most stores: confirm referral and onboarding defaults still match strategy, confirm registration questions still collect useful data, and confirm branding/support details are still current.

This light maintenance keeps your affiliate program scalable without constant manual intervention and ensures that both internal operations and affiliate-facing experiences remain aligned.