Affiliate payouts look simple until your first currency mismatch, chargeback deduction, or platform fee lands somewhere no one expected. By month three, a spreadsheet-driven program is reconciling three different numbers: what the affiliate thinks they earned, what your payment processor says you owe, and what your accounting system recorded. This checklist isolates the nine places where that reconciliation breaks. 1. Chargeback and Refund Deductions Your affiliate earned a $500 commission on a sale. The customer issued a chargeback thirty days later. Who bears that cost? Most affiliate programs claw back the commission, but the timing and mechanism vary wildly. Some deduct immediately when the chargeback is filed. Others wait until it's resolved. Some programs have a grace period. What to audit: Does your program agreement specify when the deduction happens (chargeback filed, chargeback lost, or refund processed)? Are chargebacks deducted from the next payout or retroactively from a previous one? Do refunds issued within a window (e.g., 30 days) also claw back commission, or only chargebacks? Is there a cap on chargeback liability per affiliate per month? If your processor reports $12,000 in chargebacks last month but your affiliate statement shows only $8,000 deducted, check whether some chargebacks are still pending resolution or whether your program's grace period delayed them to next month. 2. Currency Conversion Timing An affiliate in Singapore earns USD 1,000. Your payout is in SGD. The exchange rate fluctuates daily. Do you convert on the day the sale closes, the day you generate the payout report, or the day the money actually moves? Each method produces a different number. If you report one rate to the affiliate but your bank executes a different one, the discrepancy looks like theft. What to audit: Document your conversion date policy (sale date, report generation date, or transfer execution date). Lock the rate you use in your reporting system and match it exactly to what your bank executes. If your processor (Stripe, Wise, Paddle) converts on transfer, ensure your payout report uses that same conversion date and rate, not a different one generated earlier. Test one payout: track the USD amount earned, the conversion rate you reported, the rate the bank used, and the SGD amount received. They must align. 3. Platform Fee Conflicts You pay your affiliate on a 30% commission. Stripe charges 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. Does the affiliate earn 30% of the gross or 30% of the net (after Stripe's fee)? And if you're using Paddle for billing, Stripe for affiliate payouts, and a third platform for subscriptions, which entity pays Stripe's fee? Spreadsheets rarely make this explicit. One row calculates gross revenue; another subtracts platform fees. A third calculates the commission. But no one owns the decision of which platform fee reduces which commission pool. What to audit: Write a one-sentence policy: "Affiliates earn X% of [gross revenue / revenue after processor fees / revenue after processor fees and refunds] ." If you use multiple processors, specify which fee applies to which revenue stream. For subscriptions, clarify whether the affiliate earns commission on the first month only or recurring months, and whether they earn on the gross subscription price or the net (post-discount) price. Map your commission calculation in your system (spreadsheet, affiliate platform, or invoicing tool ) to this policy and test it against three recent payouts. 4. Commission Math Mismatches A common slip: the spreadsheet calculates 30% commission, but the formula is wrong. Maybe it's =revenue * 0.3 instead of =revenue * 0.30 (though those are the same). More often, the formula mixes reference cells: one column sums net revenue, another subtracts chargebacks, but the commission formula references the wrong column. Or: the affiliate's dashboard shows them one number, but your payout report shows another, because the dashboard updates daily but payouts are monthly and include adjustments the dashboard doesn't reflect. What to audit: Manually calculate three recent affiliate payouts on paper. Use the raw numbers (transaction IDs, amounts, dates, fees) from your processor, not summaries from a dashboard. Trace the commission formula cell by cell. Does it reference the right revenue column? Does it exclude refunds and chargebacks already accounted for elsewhere? Compare the spreadsheet payout amount to what the affiliate actually received (check your bank statement). If they differ, the formula is wrong or a separate adjustment happened without documentation. If using an affiliate platform or invoicing tool with built-in commission calculation, audit its formula against your policy. Many tools default to "commission on gross" even if your policy is "commission on net." 5. Payment Rail Delays You trigger a payout on the 15th. Your bank executes it on the 17th. Stripe batches it on the 18th and settles on the 20th. The a