Invoices are how you pay your partners. Every billing cycle, Partner.io gathers all the commission and SPIFF payments you owe a partner and bundles them into a single invoice — one bill, per partner, ready for you to review and pay. You never raise an invoice by hand; the platform generates them for you on the schedule you set.
The short version: approve what your partners earn → Partner.io invoices you for it on your schedule → you pay, manually or automatically. This page explains every part of that flow.
An invoice is a bill you owe a partner for the commissions and SPIFFs they've earned. It groups every eligible payment from a billing period into one total, in the partner's currency, with a due date based on your payment terms.
Invoices matter because they turn a scatter of individual earnings into a clean, predictable bill: one document per partner, per cycle, that you can review, pay, and hand to your finance team. Partners never send you invoices — Partner.io creates them on your behalf, so what you owe is always calculated the same way and always on time.
Three things come together to produce an invoice:
Earnings. As your partners' referrals convert, they accrue commission payments and, where you've awarded them, SPIFF payments. Once a payment is approved and eligible, it's ready to be billed.
A billing cycle. Your payment schedule decides how often invoices are cut — daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly. At the end of each cycle, Partner.io sweeps up every eligible payment for the period.
One invoice per partner. Each partner with eligible earnings in that period gets a single invoice containing every one of their payments as a line item, totalled up.
You don't create invoices. There's no "New invoice" button — and that's by design. Invoicing is automatic so what you owe is never missed, double-counted, or entered by hand.
Before your first invoice can be generated, two things need to be in place:
# | Step | Where | Why it's needed |
|---|---|---|---|
1 | Invite your partners | Partners | Invoices are only generated for partners who've earned commission, so you need partners on board first. |
2 | Turn on a payment schedule | Payment Settings | The schedule sets how often invoices generate and your payment terms (e.g. Net 30). Without it, there's no cycle to bill on. |
Once both are done, invoices appear automatically at the end of each cycle — nothing else to do.
You'll find invoices under Payments → Invoices. The page gives you:
A filterable, sortable table of every invoice, so you can find what's outstanding, overdue, paid, or in progress at a glance.
Alerts at the top when you have outstanding or overdue invoices, with a one-click jump to review them.
Row and bulk actions — open an invoice, mark it paid, or mark several paid at once.
Use the Status filter to focus on what needs action, or the Partner and Partner Rep filters to see everything you owe a specific partner.
Tip: Overdue invoices are called out in a red banner at the top of the page. If you only have one, the banner takes you straight to it; if you have several, it opens the list filtered to just the overdue ones.
Column | What it shows | Notes |
|---|---|---|
ID | The invoice number | Click it to open the full invoice. |
Amount | The invoice total, in the partner's currency | Sortable. |
Status | Where the invoice is in its lifecycle | See statuses. |
Partner | The partner being paid | Filterable. |
Partner Rep | The individual rep being paid | Shown only when your program pays reps directly. |
Billing Period | The date range of earnings included | Defined by your schedule. |
Due | The date payment is due by | Created date + your payment terms. |
Paid | When the invoice was settled | Blank until it's paid. |
Created | When the invoice was generated | Starts the payment window. |
Open any invoice to see its line items — every commission and SPIFF it bundles — along with the subtotal, any tax, the total, and payment instructions.
Every invoice moves through a simple lifecycle:
Outstanding → Payment Processing → Paid
An Outstanding invoice becomes Overdue if its Due date passes before it's paid.
Status | Meaning | What happens next |
|---|---|---|
Outstanding | Generated and awaiting payment. | Moves to Payment Processing when you pay, or Overdue if the Due date passes first. |
Payment Processing | Payment has been initiated and is in flight. Bank transfers can take several business days to confirm. | Moves to Paid once the transfer is confirmed. |
Overdue | Past the Due date and still unpaid. | Moves to Payment Processing once you pay. |
Paid | Settled — funds have been transferred to the partner. | Final state. |
Note: Payment Processing only appears for online payments that take time to settle (like ACH bank transfers). When you mark an invoice as paid manually, it moves straight to Paid.
Invoices carry four dates. Knowing what each one means makes the table easy to read:
Date | What it is |
|---|---|
Billing Period | The range of payments included in this invoice, set by your schedule. Always populated. |
Created | When the invoice was generated — this kicks off the payment window. Always populated. |
Due | When you need to pay by, calculated as Created + your payment terms (e.g. Net 30 = 30 days after it's created). Always populated. |
Paid | When the invoice was settled and funds were transferred. Populated only once it's Paid. |
Open an invoice and you have a few ways to settle it, depending on how your program is set up:
Pay online. Where online payments are enabled and the partner has finished setting up to receive funds, you can pay the invoice directly from its page. The invoice moves to Payment Processing, then Paid once the transfer confirms.
Pay by bank transfer and mark it paid. Pay the partner through your own bank, then use Mark as Paid to record it. The invoice moves straight to Paid. Each invoice shows the partner's bank details so you know where to send funds.
Mark several as paid at once. Select multiple invoices in the table and use the bulk Mark as Paid action — handy after a batch bank run.
Important: Mark as Paid is only available while an invoice is Outstanding (or Overdue). Once an invoice is already processing or paid, the action is disabled so a payment can't be recorded twice.
If auto-pay is available on your plan, you can have Partner.io settle invoices for you the moment they're generated — no manual step at all. Turn it on in Payment Settings.
For auto-pay to run on a given invoice, a few things need to be ready. If any are missing, Partner.io skips that invoice and records why, so you can fix it and the next cycle goes through:
If auto-pay is skipped… | It usually means… |
|---|---|
No payment method | You haven't added a payment method to pay from. |
No default payment method | You have methods, but none is set as the default. |
Partner can't receive payments yet | The partner hasn't finished setting up to accept payouts. |
Conditions not met | The invoice didn't meet the rules you set for automatic payment. |
Tip: Auto-pay is optional. With it off, invoices simply wait as Outstanding for you to pay manually — nothing is ever paid without you unless you turn auto-pay on.
By default, invoices live in Partner.io for you to manage. If you'd like copies sent to other people — say your finance team or an AP inbox — add their email addresses under Invoice Recipients in Payment Settings. They'll receive a copy of each invoice as it's generated.
Let's follow one invoice end to end. Say you bill monthly with Net 30 terms, and a partner — Northstar Agency — has been referring customers all through May.
Throughout May, Northstar's referrals convert. Each earns a commission, and you also award them a SPIFF for a big deal. As you approve these, they become eligible to be billed.
On 1 June, your monthly cycle runs. Partner.io bundles every eligible commission and SPIFF from May into one invoice for Northstar, totals it in their currency, and sets it Outstanding. Its Billing Period is 1–31 May, its Created date is 1 June, and with Net 30 terms its Due date is 1 July.
You review it. Opening the invoice, you see each commission and SPIFF as a line item that adds up to the total. Everything checks out.
You pay. You run a bank transfer to Northstar and hit Mark as Paid — the invoice moves to Paid and its Paid date is stamped. (Had you turned on auto-pay, this would have happened automatically on 1 June.)
Next month it repeats. June's earnings roll into a fresh invoice on 1 July, and so on.
That's the whole rhythm: earn → bundle → pay, once per cycle, per partner.
A partner earned nothing this period. No invoice is generated for them — invoices only exist where there are eligible earnings.
No invoices are appearing at all. Check that (a) you've invited partners, (b) they have approved, eligible commissions or SPIFFs, and (c) a payment schedule is turned on. Missing any one of these means there's nothing to bill yet.
An invoice went Overdue. It passed its Due date unpaid. Pay it as soon as you can to keep partners happy; paying moves it out of Overdue.
A payment is stuck in Payment Processing. This is normal for bank transfers, which can take several business days to confirm. It moves to Paid automatically once the bank confirms.
Auto-pay didn't run. Open the invoice to see the recorded reason (see the auto-pay table), fix what's missing, and it'll be attempted again.
The Partner Rep column is missing. It only appears when your program is set up to pay individual reps directly.
Can I create an invoice manually? No — invoices are always generated automatically from eligible earnings on your schedule. This keeps what you owe accurate and consistent.
How do I change how often invoices are generated? In Payment Settings, open Payment Scheduling and set your frequency (daily through yearly) and your payment terms.
What's the difference between the Billing Period and the Due date? The Billing Period is the range of earnings the invoice covers. The Due date is when you need to pay it by — the Created date plus your payment terms.
What goes onto an invoice? Every eligible commission and SPIFF a partner earned during the billing period, each as its own line item, totalled in the partner's currency.
Do partners see these invoices? Yes — invoicing is on their behalf, so the invoice reflects what you owe them. You can also copy additional email addresses via Invoice Recipients.
Can I pay several invoices at once? Yes. Select them in the table and use the bulk Mark as Paid action.
What happens if I never turn on auto-pay? Invoices simply stay Outstanding until you pay them manually. Nothing is ever paid without you.
