Settings

The Settings page is the control center for how your affiliate program behaves. It is where you define core business behavior, configure how new affiliates are handled, customize your registration experience, control referral tracking behavior, set business identity details, and adjust communication preferences.

In short, the Settings page is where you shape program rules, merchant preferences, and onboarding in one place.

How to think about Settings

A good way to use Settings is to treat it as layered controls working together. One layer covers system behavior, such as referral attribution windows, default assignment behavior, and approval preferences. Another covers information flow, such as registration form questions and what affiliates must submit before joining. Another covers business identity details used in communications (name, support email, and related fields).

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

Core business behavior

Settings → Business 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 click timestamp is stored. A longer duration can increase attribution continuity, while a shorter duration can make attribution windows tighter and more campaign-specific.

You can also configure how new affiliates are treated by default under Settings → New Affiliates, including whether the system should auto-approve new affiliates and/or auto-assign a program. This reduces manual setup work and helps keep affiliate onboarding consistent.

Prevent self-referrals lives under Settings → Extra features. When enabled, Affilitrak denies commission when the order customer email matches the affiliate’s email.

Because auto-assignment depends on the tiers you create, review the Programs guide before changing these defaults.

New affiliate onboarding behavior

Settings → New Affiliates 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

Settings → Registration Form 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 access and domains

By default, affiliates register and log in through the Affilitrak portal (for example via the registration link on the Affiliates page). You do not need a custom subdomain to run a program.

Settings → Custom Domains (portal subdomain and custom email sender) is only available when custom-domain access is unlocked for your shop, or if you already have domains configured. Most free shops will not see this section.

The affiliate-facing side of the portal is covered in the Affiliate portal guide.

Business identity

Settings → Business Identity lets you manage brand-level details such as brand name, logo, favicon, support email, and company address used across communications and related surfaces.

Affiliates use the Affilitrak portal by default. Uploading a logo does not fully white-label the free portal experience (Affilitrak branding remains). Treat Business Identity as store/contact identity for the program, not as a promise of a fully branded custom portal.

Currency and operational constraints

Currency configuration lives under Settings → Business Settings. 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, contact support to change it. For the payment workflow that uses this currency context, see the Payouts guide.

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 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 Settings defaults, then configure New Affiliates and Registration Form, then finalize Business Identity and communication preferences, and validate currency early. This order prevents rework because it sets policy first, then data collection, then presentation details.

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

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.

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 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.