Points are held first, paid on completion
When an order comes in with a referral code, the reward is reserved, not paid. You will see it as Pending on the Recent Activity tab. The points only land in the referrer's balance once the order is actually completed.
This is deliberate. If rewards were paid the moment an order was placed, every cancellation would mean taking points back off someone who may already have spent them. Holding until completion means a cancelled order simply costs nothing.
For an order rung up in person, "completed" is immediate — the sale is done when it is paid. For an online order, it is when the order reaches Completed or Delivered.
What each status means
- Pending — the order is placed, the reward is held against your caps and budget, no points have moved.
- Awarded — the order completed and the points are in the referrer's balance.
- Released — the order was cancelled or rejected. Nothing was ever paid, and the reserved amount goes back to your budget and the referrer's daily allowance.
- Reversed — the order was refunded after the points had already been paid, so they were taken back.
- Skipped — a code was entered but the order earned nothing. The reason is recorded; see below.
Cancellations and refunds
Cancelled or rejected order: the hold is released. No points were paid, nothing to take back.
Fully refunded order: the points are clawed back. If the referrer has already spent some of them, we take what is there rather than pushing their balance negative — the shortfall is noted on the record so you can see exactly what happened.
Partially refunded order: the reward stands. The order still happened.
If you cancel an order and then un-cancel it, the reward is restored, provided your budget and caps still allow it.
Why an order didn't earn
The Didn't Earn tab lists every order that carried a code but earned nothing, with the reason. This is worth checking regularly — a cap quietly throttling your best referrer shows up here first, and nowhere else.
The usual reasons:
- The code hit its daily limit — your Max points per referrer per day is doing its job. If it fires often on a genuine partner, the limit is set too low.
- The program budget is used up — no further orders earn until you raise it. There is a warning banner on the page when this happens.
- A referrer cannot use their own code — recognised by customer record, mobile number, or email, so checking out under a different name does not get around it.
- The customer has hit their limit for today — the anti-farming cap, default one referred order per customer per day.
- The order is below the referral minimum.
- Referral code not recognised — a typo, or a paused referrer.
Orders that never earn
Some orders are excluded no matter what code is on them: refund records, and orders generated automatically by a recurring or standing order. A recurring order would otherwise pay a referrer forever from a single referral.
Reading the numbers
The stats along the top of the Referral Program page cover the last 30 days: points paid to referrers, bonus points given to customers, the value of orders that came in through codes, and how many rewards are still awaiting completion.
The budget bar shows how much of your total program budget is committed — including holds on orders that have not completed yet, which is why it can move without any points having been paid.
On the Referrers tab, Today shows each person's points against their daily cap, so you can see at a glance who is about to be throttled. The receipt icon opens their full order-by-order earnings history.
Correcting a reward
Any awarded reward can be reversed by hand from the Recent Activity tab — useful for a fraudulent or mistaken order. The same clamping applies: if the points are already spent, we take what remains and record the shortfall.
What this costs you
Nothing at the point of sale — referral codes never reduce an order total. The cost is the points themselves, realised when someone redeems them. Your Loyalty Program page shows Points Outstanding and what they are worth at your current redemption rate. The program budget is what keeps that number bounded, which is why we ask you to confirm before running without one.