Terms for Collaborators
How Siren's internal terminology translates to the language collaborators (affiliates, creators, instructors) actually use when they're participating in a program.
Last updated: April 10, 2026
Siren’s documentation is mostly written for the person running a program, not for the people earning from it. Internally, we talk about obligations, conversions, and engagements because those words describe the underlying data model accurately. The trouble is that collaborators don’t use those words. An affiliate asks “when do I get paid?” not “when will my obligation reach the complete state?”
This page has two audiences. If you’re a collaborator reading Siren-powered documentation or looking at a dashboard, you can use the table below as a translation guide for the words you’re seeing. If you’re a program owner writing onboarding emails, support responses, or help docs for your collaborators, you can use this page as a list of terms to avoid. The internal vocabulary is precise, but it’s also cold and bureaucratic. Collaborators respond better to the words they already use.
The translation table
Each row shows one Siren term and the words collaborators actually use for it. When you’re writing to a collaborator, pick from the right column.
| Siren term (program-owner side) | What collaborators call it |
|---|---|
| Obligation | Pending reward, earned commission, money owed |
| Fulfillment | Payout, payment, payment batch |
| Conversion | Sale credit, earned sale, successful referral |
| Engagement | Click, visit, touch, referral |
| Collaborator | You, affiliate, creator, partner, instructor, ambassador |
| Program | The deal you’re in, your commission structure, your plan |
| Program Group | Your tier, the program family you’re in |
| Approved (status) | Confirmed |
| Pending (status) | Awaiting review, pending payout |
| Rejected (status) | Cancelled, voided, reversed |
| Complete (status) | Paid |
| Tracking ID / Alias | Your code, your referral ID, your link |
| Opportunity | Your visitor, your lead |
| Distribution | Bonus payout, performance bonus, leaderboard prize |
| Coupon code | Your code, your promo code |
A few patterns to watch for when you’re writing to collaborators:
The words “conversion,” “engagement,” and “opportunity” all sound like analytics jargon to someone who just wants to know whether they made a sale. When possible, replace them with “sale,” “click,” or “visit.”
The word “obligation” is especially cold. It’s precise internally because an obligation is a debt on your books that hasn’t been paid yet, but to a collaborator it reads as stiff and legalistic. “Pending reward” or “earned commission” lands better.
The word “rejected” is technically accurate for both manual rejection and refund-triggered rejection, but it reads like the collaborator did something wrong. If a conversion is rejected because of a refund, say “reversed” or “cancelled” instead. Save “rejected” for cases where you’re declining a submission.
A note on refund language
Siren’s refund pipeline uses terms like “rejected obligation” and “cancelled conversion.” Those are accurate database descriptions, but they read as adversarial when a collaborator sees them in their dashboard. From their side it can feel like “the program owner just took my commission back and marked it rejected like I did something wrong.” That’s rarely the intent, but the vocabulary makes it sound that way.
A friendlier framing for collaborator-facing communication sounds like this: “If a customer returns the order, the matching reward is reversed automatically. Whether that reversed amount gets deducted from your next payout depends on our refund policy, which we’ll explain upfront so nothing is a surprise.”
The important move here is to explain your refund policy in the onboarding email rather than letting collaborators discover it through Siren’s internal status changes. If you wait until a refund happens to explain what a “rejected obligation” means, you’re having a stressful conversation instead of a routine one. The how refunds work doc covers the mechanics of what Siren does automatically, so you know what to describe in your own words.
Looking ahead
The new collaborator experience in an upcoming Siren version will use plain-language terms throughout the collaborator-facing dashboard, so much of this translation layer will eventually become invisible. Until then, this page is a stable bridge. Use it when you’re writing onboarding materials, answering support questions, or helping a collaborator make sense of what they’re seeing.
If you’re looking for the canonical definitions of the terms in the left column, every link in the table points to the concept doc for that term in the User Guide.