A discount code you created by hand in your store will not pay the creator commission
If creating a discount code in GRIN fails, it is tempting to go into your ecommerce store and create the code by hand so the campaign can go ahead. The code will work: shoppers get their discount and the order goes through normally. But GRIN has no record of a code that was only ever created in your store, so it cannot connect those orders back to anyone.
That means sales made with a hand made code do not attribute to the creator and do not generate commission. Nothing errors and nothing warns you. The code simply earns the creator nothing, and there is no report that shows the shortfall, because from GRIN's side those orders were never tied to a creator in the first place.
This matters most in the window right before a campaign goes live, which is exactly when code creation problems tend to get worked around. If your team created any codes outside GRIN while something was broken, treat that as the first thing to check, not the last.
What you'll need
- Your Brand connected to your ecommerce store. Codes cannot be tracked or matched at all until the Brand is integrated with your store.
- The list of codes your team created by hand, and which creator each one was meant for.
How to check whether a code is tracking
- Open the creator's profile in GRIN and look for the discount code on their record.
- If the code is not on the creator's record in GRIN, it is not tracking, no matter how well it works in your store.
- If you still use Campaigns (accounts that joined before January 23, 2023), you can also review views and conversions in the Campaign Work Room Links and Payments tabs, described in reviewing affiliate link and discount code activity. That article does not apply to Activations. There is no Activations equivalent in the catalog yet, so on Activations the check is the creator profile only.
How to get codes that already exist in your store linked to creators
GRIN has two documented ways to adopt codes that already exist in your store, and which one applies depends on when you are doing it.
- If you are setting up a new discount code group and the codes already exist in your store, choose I have already created them when the group asks how new codes should be assigned. This is set in Group Options and cannot be changed after saving, so decide before you save. The full setup is in creating discount code groups with Shopify.
- If the codes are spread across creators you are importing or updating in bulk, use Importing Contacts. Under Import Details there is a Link Creators to Discount Codes setting; selecting Automatically link creators to match discount codes in your integrated store tells GRIN to match the codes in your file against the ones in your store. That is a CSV contact import, not a dedicated store-code import article. A dedicated how-to for importing existing discount codes is not in the catalog yet.
Both of these link codes going forward. Neither one reaches back and recovers commission on orders that already came through an unlinked code, so the sooner a hand made code gets linked, the less there is to reconcile by hand.
Why it works this way
Attribution in GRIN runs off records GRIN owns. When a discount code exists in GRIN and is assigned to a creator, GRIN can recognise orders placed with that code and credit them. A code that only exists in your store is invisible to that process, so those orders arrive as ordinary orders with no creator attached.
It is also worth knowing which of your two tracking methods is being credited. By default GRIN gives attribution to discount codes, and enabling Affiliate link attribution moves payouts, conversions, and tracking to affiliate links instead. You can check and change that in your Shopify connection settings.
If code creation keeps failing in GRIN
Creating the code in your store by hand is not a safe workaround, because of the attribution loss above. Reach out to GRIN Support with the creator, the code you were trying to create, and which store you were creating it in, and we can tell you what the store is rejecting and get the code created in a way that tracks.