You pay some affiliates yourself: by bank transfer, through a service that suits your country, or by hand for a single affiliate. A manual payout is how you tell AffiliateWP you have done it, so your records stay straight.
A manual payout records a payment. It does not make one. AffiliateWP marks the referrals paid and files a payout in your history. You send the money yourself, outside AffiliateWP.
Manual is also the one method that needs no setup. There is no payment provider to connect, and no limit on which countries it reaches.
What “paid” means on a manual payout
On Stripe or PayPal, Paid means AffiliateWP asked the provider to send the money and the provider accepted it. On store credit it means the balance really was added to the affiliate’s account in your shop. On a manual payout it means you told AffiliateWP you had paid.
The record looks identical either way. Same status, same payout in your history, same figures in your reports. So a manual payout is only as accurate as the payment you actually made.
Two consequences are worth knowing before you rely on it:
- There are no failure states. A manual payout cannot fail, because nothing was attempted. You will not get an email, a flagged row, or a retry, because there is nothing for AffiliateWP to observe.
- Only you can undo it. If you record a payout and then do not send the money, nothing in the product will notice. Delete the payout to set its referrals back to unpaid and make them payable again.
When an affiliate is paid manually
There are two ways an affiliate ends up here, and they look the same on screen.
You chose it. Manual is your site default, or you set it on that affiliate’s Edit Affiliate screen. Affiliates never pick manual themselves: it means you pay them outside AffiliateWP, so only you can assign it.
Nothing else could reach them. When the method an affiliate is on cannot pay them, because their country is outside what Stripe covers or because you switched that method off, AffiliateWP tries your other automatic methods first: PayPal, then store credit. An affiliate lands on manual when none of those can reach them either, or when manual is your site default.
Check who is on manual before a large payout. The Payout Method column at AffiliateWP » Affiliates names each affiliate’s method. A run of manual rows you did not expect is the signal that affiliates are falling back rather than being paid deliberately. Everyone in that run is marked paid when you record the payout, whether or not you send them anything.
Recording a manual payout
One referral
- Go to AffiliateWP » Referrals.
- Find the unpaid referral and click Record as paid on its row.
- Check the affiliate and the amount in the confirmation.
- Confirm.
The button says what happens on that row. On a manual affiliate it reads Record as paid, because nothing is sent. In the same position on a Stripe or PayPal affiliate it reads Pay and moves real money. The confirmation that follows matches the button, so the wording never claims a payment that is not being made.
Recording a payment you made outside AffiliateWP
On an affiliate who is not on manual, Record as paid sits in the row’s overflow menu, beside the Pay button. Use it when you have already paid someone by other means and want the referral to stop showing as owed.
It creates a manual payout whatever the affiliate’s own method is, so the referral goes paid and no money moves. A manual affiliate’s row does not list it, because that row’s button is already this action, and one action offered twice on a row invites a double payment.
Several affiliates at once
- Go to AffiliateWP » Payouts and click Pay Affiliates.
- Set the date range, any minimum earnings, and any affiliate filters.
- Preview the payout and check who is included.
- Confirm.
Every affiliate whose method resolves to manual is recorded as paid in that run. Affiliates on other methods are paid through those methods in the same run, so a single payout can move real money and write manual records at the same time.
A payout that runs on a schedule works differently: it skips affiliates set to be paid manually, because there is nothing to automate when you are the one sending the money. You pay them yourself, from the Payouts screen.
The CSV of who to pay
You do not have to generate the CSV, or go looking for it. Running the payout writes the file, and your browser downloads it as soon as the run finishes. The preview step tells you to expect it before you confirm.
You only get that download if the run actually contained manual payouts. If every affiliate in it was paid by Stripe or PayPal, there is no file, because there is nobody left for you to pay by hand.
You can get the file again later. Open the payout batch and use Download CSV on its summary panel. That rebuilds the file from the payout records, so it works on any later visit, and it is the way back if you lost the first download or ran the payout on another computer.
The CSV contains the manual payouts only, which is exactly what you want: it is the list of affiliates AffiliateWP did not pay, so it is the list you owe. Three columns, one row per affiliate: the affiliate’s email, the amount, and the currency.
Never upload a payout file to a payment service without checking what is in it. The CSV excludes Stripe and PayPal payouts on purpose. A file that included them would pay those affiliates a second time, on top of the payment the provider already made.
The file uses each affiliate’s Payment Email, falling back to their account email when that field is blank.
A wrong address is fixable after the payout. Update it on that affiliate’s Edit Affiliate screen, then download the CSV again: AffiliateWP reads the address fresh each time it builds the file, so the new download carries the new address. The amounts come from the payout itself, so they do not change.
Sending the money
AffiliateWP takes no part in this, so anything works. The three that come up most:
- Bank transfer. You make the transfers through your bank. If your bank accepts a bulk upload, the CSV is usually close to the shape it wants.
- A bulk payment service. Services that take a list of email addresses and amounts can often read the CSV directly, sometimes after you re-order the columns.
- A service specific to your country. If the way affiliates expect to be paid where you are is neither PayPal nor Stripe, use it. Manual exists so your records do not depend on which providers we support.
What a manual payout will not tell you
These are the questions a payout normally answers, and a manual one cannot.
| Question | Why AffiliateWP cannot answer it |
|---|---|
| Did the money arrive? | No provider was involved, so nothing reported back. |
| Did it fail? | Nothing was attempted, so nothing can fail. |
| Was it reversed? | Only if you delete the payout yourself. |
| What did it cost? | Whatever your bank or service charged. AffiliateWP never sees it. |
If you want those answers, pay through Stripe or PayPal instead, where the provider reports back and AffiliateWP records what it says.
Next steps
- How to pay your affiliates: choosing a method, and how AffiliateWP decides who is paid how.
- Paying affiliates with Stripe: pay from the Stripe account you already use.
- Paying affiliates internationally: which methods reach which countries.