How to Pay Collaborators

How obligations accumulate

Every conversion that earns a reward creates an obligation, a record of money you owe a specific collaborator for a specific transaction. They build up under Siren > Obligations as sales come in. Each entry shows the collaborator, amount, payout, and status. An obligation shows “Awaiting conversion approval” until its conversion is approved, then “Approved”, which means it’s ready to pay. Programs that auto-approve conversions do this when the order completes, unless the reward is held because the sale is in another currency. Otherwise, approve conversions under Siren > Conversions by ticking them and clicking “Approve”, or with the “Approve” button on a conversion’s page, as Approve and Reject Conversions describes. On Siren Cloud, conversions are under Track > Conversions and obligations under Reward > Obligations.

For the underlying concepts, see What are obligations and What is a fulfillment.

Create a fulfillment

A fulfillment takes approved obligations, groups them by collaborator, and produces one payout record per person. If Steve has three obligations for $5, $8, and $12, the fulfillment turns them into a single $25 payout for Steve. Each currency gets its own fulfillment, so obligations in USD and in store credit end up in two.

Tick the obligations you want to pay and click “Create Fulfillments” in the bar that appears above the table. To see only what’s ready to pay, set the Status filter to “Approved” first. Obligations still awaiting conversion approval can’t be ticked. Before anything is created, a “Generate Fulfillments” dialog shows each fulfillment it will make, with the number of obligations and the total, and tells you how many of the ticked rows aren’t Approved and will be skipped. On Siren Cloud, when a currency pays out automatically through Stripe or PayPal, the dialog also names each collaborator whose payout will wait because they haven’t set up that method, as Set Up Automatic Payouts describes. On WordPress, this warning is coming in the next Siren plugin update.

After generating, head to Siren > Fulfillments and click in to see the individual payouts. Each obligation now carries a payout ID, and you can click that ID from the obligations screen to filter and see exactly which obligations a payout covered.

Pay people

When the fulfillment creates its payouts, some of them can go out without you. On a WordPress site running Siren Essentials and up, a payout in a store credit currency goes straight to the collaborator’s credit balance, which they spend at WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, or LifterLMS checkout, as Pay in Store Credit and Custom Currencies describes. On Siren Cloud, a store credit currency pays out as credit only in the cases that page describes. Otherwise you settle it yourself, as it explains. On Siren Plus and Pro, a payout in a currency you’ve set to Stripe or PayPal is sent to the collaborator’s connected Stripe account or PayPal email. Set Up Automatic Payouts explains how to choose a method for each currency and add your credentials.

Every other payout you pay yourself, by bank transfer, check, your own PayPal account, or whatever you use, and then record it in Siren. There are two ways to do that.

On Siren Cloud, the collaborator gets an email once per payout when the payout is marked paid, one at a time or with “Export & Mark Paid”, or paid automatically, so marking a payout unpaid and paid again doesn’t send a second one. Your organization starts with this “Payout sent” notification to collaborators switched on, and you can edit, switch off, or delete it under Settings > Notifications, as Notifications and Email describes.

If an automatic payout fails, for example because your Stripe or PayPal balance is too low, the Fulfillments list shows “Needs attention” beside the fulfillment, and the payout says why it failed. On WordPress, site administrators also see a notice on every admin screen, with a link to the payouts that need attention. On Siren Cloud, your Admins get an email instead. Fix the cause, then click “Retry” on that payout. You can also pay it yourself and click “Mark Paid”. “Mark Unpaid” makes it a payout you pay yourself, so it can’t be retried after that. See When a payout fails.

A payout to a collaborator who hasn’t started connecting Stripe or added a PayPal email doesn’t fail. It reads “Waiting” and goes out on its own once they finish, as Payouts waiting on a collaborator describes. On WordPress, these payouts fail instead, and so does a payout to a collaborator who started Stripe setup and didn’t finish. Click “Retry” on each one once the collaborator finishes, as Waiting or failed explains. Payouts that wait for the collaborator on WordPress are coming in the next Siren plugin update. On Siren Cloud, a payout to a collaborator who started Stripe setup and didn’t finish waits too.

Siren sends a payout for you only when a fulfillment creates it, so a fulfillment created before its currency had a payout method keeps its payouts “Unpaid”. On Siren Essentials and up, once the currency has a method, click into the fulfillment and click the “Send with” button beside its title, such as “Send with Stripe Connect”. It sends every unpaid or failed payout in the fulfillment that the method can pay. To send several fulfillments together, tick them on the Fulfillments list and click “Send automatically” in the bar above the table. Anyone who can mark payouts paid can send them. On Siren Cloud, that’s Admins and Platform Managers, and fulfillments are under Reward > Fulfillments. Send payouts that are still unpaid explains what Siren sends, what it leaves, and why.

Undo and adjust

You can flip a payout back to unpaid at any time. If a payment you sent yourself didn’t arrive, or a collaborator reports they never got it, mark it unpaid and the record reflects reality. Marking a payout unpaid only changes Siren’s record. It doesn’t reverse a transfer that Stripe or PayPal already made. If a customer requests a refund, Siren handles obligation cleanup automatically. See How Refunds Work for what happens to obligations and payouts when a transaction is reversed.

The fulfillment system gives you a complete audit trail. Every complete obligation links to a payout, every payout links to a fulfillment, and statuses reflect the current state of each payment. That paper trail is useful for accounting, taxes, and resolving disputes.