When a conversion is recorded, PalDock looks for commissions that apply to it. This page explains which ones are found, how many of them run, and why a matching commission still might not create a transaction.
Step 1: matching the conditions
A commission matches when every one of its conditions either matches the conversion or is left empty. Empty means “any”.
- Offer
- Advertiser on workspace commissions, or the affiliate on partner commissions
- Conversion type
- Source, read from the original click or lead, not from the conversion that arrived last
- Channel, when the offer uses Pingtree
- Commission group of the affiliate who owns the conversion
Step 2: how many commissions run
PalDock collects every commission that matches. What happens next depends on where the conversion came from.
- Clicks and leads created by PalDock from an affiliate link, iFrame, or API: all matching commissions run. One lead can create several transactions at once, one per commission.
- Everything else, meaning pixel, postback, Tracking API, and manual import: only one commission runs, even if several match.
If the tracking request contains a Commission ID, that commission is used. It still has to match the conditions above, so a Commission ID that belongs to a different offer or conversion type will not be applied and no transaction is created.
See Multiple Commissions for the Same Conversion Type.
Step 3: which one runs when only one can
When only one commission can run and several match, a filled condition beats an empty one. PalDock compares them in this order:
- Offer
- Channel
- Conversion type
- Source
- Commission group
A commission limited to one offer therefore beats a commission that applies to all offers. If two commissions are still equal, commission order decides and the first one in the list wins.
The commission is chosen before its status is checked. If the winning commission turns out to be inactive, no transaction is created and the next commission in the list is not used instead.
Step 4: the partner commission
Once the workspace commission is chosen, PalDock picks the partner commission below it. The affiliate gets the commission set for their commission group. If that group has no commission set, the one without a group is used.
This happens for every workspace commission that runs, so the workspace transaction and the matching partner transaction are always created together.
Step 5: the final checks
A commission that was chosen still creates nothing if any of the following is true.
- The commission is inactive.
- The conversion falls outside the commission’s active period. The dates are compared against the time the conversion happened, not the time the tracking arrived. A postback that comes in late still uses the commission that was valid when the conversion was created.
- The recurrence limit for that commission has already been reached.
- The conversion is not valid, for example because it was rejected or marked as a duplicate.
- The conversion was created by a commission itself. Conversions that PalDock creates to hold a transaction of a different transaction type never trigger commissions again.
Why no transaction was created
Check these in order in the conversion log.
- No commission matches the conversion type.
- A Commission ID was sent that does not match the rest of the conditions.
- The commission that won is inactive or outside its active period.
- The recurrence limit was reached.
- The conversion was deduplicated on the advertiser’s external ID.
