ApproveThis manages your Refersion Integration approvals.

When Affiliate Marketing Meets Approval Sanity

Let’s get real: affiliate programs live or die by two things – how fast you onboard partners, and how clean your tracking stays. Refersion nails the tracking part. ApproveThis handles the human part. Together? They turn what’s usually a spreadsheet-and-email nightmare into something that actually works before your coffee gets cold.

We’re talking about bridging the gap between your affiliate managers scrambling to vet new partners and your finance team sweating every commission payout. Zapier’s the glue here – no devs needed, just connect the dots and watch approvals happen where the work already gets done.

Why This Combo Doesn’t Suck

Refersion’s good at what it does: tracking conversions, managing affiliates, keeping your influencer program from turning into an Excel apocalypse. But when you need actual humans to sign off on new affiliates, commission changes, or payout exceptions? That’s where things get sticky. ApproveThis doesn’t just “integrate” – it weaponizes your existing approval logic against the specific chaos of performance marketing.

Key thing here: Your approvers don’t need Refersion logins. Finance lead needs to vet high-commission affiliates? They approve via email. Legal needs to check compliance docs? They do it in ApproveThis without getting lost in Refersion’s interface. Saves seats, saves headaches.

Real Uses for Actual Businesses

1. Killing Rogue Affiliates Before They Cost You

The Setup: Every new Refersion affiliate triggers an ApproveThis workflow. Marketing manager gets first approval, then finance checks commission structure, legal verifies contract – all before the affiliate gets access.

Who Cares: Mid-sized DTC brands getting burned by sketchy affiliates. Imagine a skincare company scaling from 50 to 200 affiliates. Without this? Some intern’s manually checking each application. With it? Three departments approve in sequence automatically – no one person becomes the bottleneck.

ApproveThis Bonus: Use calculated fields to auto-flag affiliates requesting over 15% commission. Approval thresholds automatically reject anything above your max rate unless the CMO personally overrides.

2. Affiliate Onboarding That Doesn’t Require Babysitting

The Flipside: Start in ApproveThis when you’ve got a vetted influencer ready to onboard. Approved? Zapier pushes their details to Refersion instantly. No more copying/pasting affiliate info between systems.

Who Cares: SaaS companies running partner programs. Think a project management tool adding 30+ agencies as affiliates monthly. Sales team initiates the request, approvers check for conflict of interest, then Refersion gets perfect data every time. Bonus points: Auto-generate referral links immediately instead of waiting on marketing ops.

3. Commission Disputes That Don’t Require a Committee

The Cleanup: When an approval gets denied in ApproveThis (say, a contested conversion), Zapier automatically flags that conversion as canceled in Refersion. No more phantom payouts.

Who Cares: E-commerce teams dealing with return fraud. Picture a furniture retailer where 12% of affiliate-driven sales get returned. Normally, finance would manually claw back commissions. Now? Deny the approval → conversion canceled → commission adjusted. Done before the customer even finishes their return.

Setting This Up Without Losing Your Mind

1. Zapier account – you’ve probably got one already.
2. Connect Refersion and ApproveThis as apps in Zapier.
3. Pick your trigger: New affiliate? New approval request? Denied request?
4. Map the critical fields: Affiliate emails → approver list, commission rates → approval thresholds, etc.
5. Test with real data: Create a fake affiliate called “McLovin” and see if the approval chain works.

Pro tip: Use ApproveThis’ vacation delegation upfront. Because nothing kills momentum like your key approver being on PTO when 50 new affiliate apps hit.

Who Actually Benefits Here

Marketing Teams

Stop being the mediator between affiliates and finance. Set approval rules once, then let the system handle vetting. Real-time tracking means you know exactly why an affiliate’s stuck in limbo.

Finance Teams

Commission caps actually get enforced. No more “Oh, we approved a 25% rate by accident” moments. Plus, approved affiliates automatically sync to your accounting software (if you’ve got that Zap built).

Legal/Compliance

Every approved affiliate has their contract terms logged in ApproveThis. Searchable. Auditable. No more digging through Refersion logs when audit season hits.

Why This Isn’t Just Another Integration

Most approval tools make you choose between speed and control. This setup gives both. Refersion handles the affiliate lifecycle; ApproveThis handles the human decisions. Together, they prevent these scenarios:

- Overpaying commissions because someone rubber-stamped a bad rate
- Losing hot affiliates because approval took 2 weeks
- Compliance fires because nobody checked affiliate T&Cs

It’s about making your affiliate program scale without adding 3 new hires. Especially crucial when you’re growing from 100 to 500 employees – that’s when approval processes either become assets or anchors.

Time to Stop Approving Manually

Look – if you’re managing affiliates through any combination of Slack threads, Google Sheets, and “reminder” emails, that’s not workflow management. That’s hoping nothing breaks. ApproveThis + Refersion via Zapier turns approvals from a necessary evil into an actual system that works while you’re busy.

Get started with ApproveThis (free trial available), or if you’d rather see it live, book a 15-minute demo. We’ll show how to connect Refersion in real-time – no sales fluff, just how it fixes your specific approval bottlenecks.