How to set up CollabPay – Beginner’s Guide

Be sure to check out our guide on how CollabPay works if you want to grasp an understanding of the workflow.

Video walkthrough

Features of CollabPay

• Add unlimited Collaborators to a product to earn
• Payout automatically using PayPal Payouts
• Set a percentage or flat fee to earn from sales
• Deduct tax & shipping before calculations
• Deduct gateway costs before calculations
• & much more

Benefits of CollabPay

• Save time & work on your business more – automate the process
• Avoid human error – let the app do everything
• No commission fees, just a monthly subscription
• Save money on admin/accountants, let the app do the work

How to set it up

1. Connect CollabPay to your platform

Learn how to connect CollabPay to:

• Connect to Shopify
• Connect to WooCommerce

2. Invite Collaborators

Now your next step is to invite Collaborators to join your store and connect to products. To invite a Collaborator:

a. Go to the CollabPay app

b. Go to the “Collaborators” page & click the “Invite collaborator” button

c. Enter the Collaborator’s name & email

Once you have entered the details, click “Save“.

An email will be sent to the Collaborator informing them of their invitation. This will allow them to open their own account where they can see all of their orders & earnings.

d. Click on the Collaborator & connect them to products

First, you will need to select products to attach them to. Click the “Connect to products” button in the “Products” section.

e. Attach using product names, tags, or vendors + bulk attach

You can attach Collaborators to products by using Product names, Tags, or Vendors. You can also bulk attach them to many products at once; see our tutorial on how to bulk attach using tags or vendors.

f. Select their earnings

Next, You will need to type 2 or 3 letters to show some products in the search results drop-down. Select the products/variants you want the collaborator to earn on.

Now, you will need to choose whether you want to use:

• Percentage
• Flat fee

Once you have decided on the earning amount, click “Save” and follow the next step.

g. The products will be connected with the chosen earnings

3. Set up your automatic payouts or use manual payouts

Manual payouts

You can manually pay your collaborators via your own ways such as bank transfer or Wise.com etc.

You can finalise the payout at any time by going to the Payout page and clicking the “Mark as paid” button.

Pressing this button will complete the payment and mark it as paid. The Collaborator will see this in their Collaborator account.

Automatic payouts

The next step is to set up your payout integration. Currently, we only have PayPal Payouts as an option, but Stripe is coming soon. You will need to contact PayPal and request access to the Payouts API.

You can learn how to contact PayPal and set it up here.

While you wait for PayPal to give you access, leave CollabPay installed, and it will calculate all of your Collaborators earnings. It won’t pay out any money until you get access to PayPay Payouts.

How does it work?

CollabPay connects with PayPal by simply logging in and connecting them. This allows CollabPay to automatically pay the earnings from your PayPal account, directly to the Collaborator’s PayPal account.

CollabPay does not take any commissions or hold your money. It only initiates the transaction from your PayPal account to the Collaborator’s account.

Go to Settings > PayPal Payouts

Here, you can log in with PayPal and link your account. This will connect your PayPal to CollabPay and allow CollabPay to automatically payout on your behalf.

Inform your Collaborators to add their PayPal payment address

Your Collaborator can log into their CollabPay account to add their PayPal email address that they will be paid to. They can do it by:

1. Login into PayPal
2. Go to “Settings“
3. Go to “Account“
4. Enter their PayPal email address into the “Payouts will be sent to this Paypal account” section

Note: The PayPal email box will not show if they are not connected to any products.

Be sure to send the Collaborators this Collaborator setup guide if they get stuck.

4. Customise your settings

Now you can customise your settings to suit your store best.

Account types & pricing

CollabPay consists of two types of accounts:

1. The Store owner account
2. The Collaborator account

The store owner’s account will show differently by including options to create Collaborators, attach Collaborators, add payout options, change calculation rules, and much more. Store owners are the only ones you pay for the CollabPay subscription.

The Collaborator account is quite limited and only shows relevant information as to what the collaborators are earning from. It will show the products they are attached to, orders they have had (without personal information from the order), payout address options, and profile options. Collaborator accounts are free and only work by connecting to Store owner accounts.

Shipping & taxes

The amazing thing about CollabPay is that you can account for tax and shipping costs. That means you can set it to deduct the tax and shipping amounts from the total price before it calculates the earnings.

This means you are both getting 50/50 on the profits of the sale. Then you, as the store owner, can hold the tax and shipping costs in your business account to pay for them.

• Learn more about the “Tax amounts” setting.
• Learn more about the “Shipping amounts” setting.

Gateway costs

The gateway costs are the transaction fees charged by your payment provider. These fees are included in all online transactions around the world and on every provider. Usually, the fees are around 2% of the total order and a small flat fee of around $0.30.

CollabPay gives you the ability to enter the gateway information and deduct it from the calculations before the earnings take place. That means the store owner can keep 100% of the gateway costs to cover the fees.

Learn more about gateway costs.

Payout frequency

The payout frequency is how often the Collaborators will be paid. You are able to customize this for each Collaborator. You have the option to pay them daily, weekly or monthly.

Integrations

The integrations are for connecting your CollabPay account to multiple stores or platforms. This allows you to only pay one subscription fee for your CollabPay account.

For example, if you connect a store on WooCommerce and a store on Shopify to your CollabPay account, that would be two integrations. If you had two Shopify stores, this would be two integrations.

The only thing to note is that you can only use one Payout option for one CollabPay account. If each integration has its own PayPal account to pay from, then you will need to create a CollabPay account for each integration.

Flat fee shipping calculations

If you want to pay shipping costs to the Collaborators, you can do this when you assign products to the Collaborator. When you are asked what type of earnings they will receive (% or flat fee), select “Flat fee” and then the “Shipping calculations” section will appear. Here is where you can add value for the Collaborator to earn.

For example, if you set the “Shipping calculations” for this Collaborator to be 100%, then 100% of the shipping costs of the product they are attached to will be paid to Collaborator.

5. Sit back and relax

Now you can sit back and relax. CollabPay will calculate all the earnings and automatically pay them to the Collaborators if you have set them up for automatic payouts.

If you get stuck with anything, please contact us, and we will get back to you ASAP.