Affiliate Program Terms and Conditions: 9 Clauses SaaS Needs

Most affiliate program terms and conditions get written after the first dispute, which is the most expensive time to write them. An affiliate claims a sale your tracking never recorded, or a coupon site turns up holding a third of last month's commissions, and you discover your terms say nothing about either. This post has one goal: a working set of affiliate program terms covering the nine clauses that cause real disputes in a SaaS program, with example wording for each.

This is not legal advice. Treat the wording below as a draft and have a lawyer review your final affiliate agreement before you publish it.

The same clauses apply to referral program terms and conditions for customer-referral schemes, usually in a lighter form. If you're not sure which one you're running, read Affiliate vs Referral Program: Which One Fits a SaaS Business? first.

Step 1: Define what you pay and which sales count

Clause 1: Commission rate and recurrence. State the rate, the base it's calculated on, and how long it runs. "Recurring" on its own is ambiguous: lifetime of the customer, 12 months, or until the affiliate leaves?

Affiliates earn 30% of the net amount (excluding taxes, refunds and credits) of each payment made by a Referred Customer, for 12 months from that customer's first payment. Plan upgrades during that period are included.

Run the numbers before you pick. A $49/mo plan at 30% recurring pays the affiliate $14.70 a month, or $176.40 over 12 months. Write "lifetime" instead and a customer who stays three years costs you $529.20. Both can be right; the point is choosing on purpose. The math is in What Is a Good Affiliate Commission Rate for SaaS? and Recurring Commission Affiliate Programs: Judge Churn, Not Rate.

Clause 2: Cookie window and attribution model.

A sale is attributed to an Affiliate when the Referred Customer clicks the Affiliate's referral link and makes a first payment within 30 days of that click. If a customer has clicked more than one affiliate's link, the most recent click receives credit. Our tracking records are final. Purchases made after the window, on a different device, or after cookies were cleared are not eligible.

That last sentence prevents the most common support ticket you'll get. Name the attribution model explicitly (last click or first click), because affiliates who do top-of-funnel reviews care a lot about which one you use. Choosing the window itself is covered in Affiliate Cookie Duration: How Long Should Your Window Be?.

Clause 3: Hold period.

Commissions remain pending for 30 days after the qualifying payment. A commission is approved only if the payment has not been refunded or disputed during that period.

Your hold must be at least as long as your refund window. With a 30-day money-back guarantee and a 14-day hold, you will approve commissions on sales that refund in week three.

Step 2: Protect the money after the sale

Clause 4: Refunds and chargebacks (clawback).

If a payment is refunded or charged back, the related commission is cancelled. Partial refunds reduce the commission proportionally. If the commission has already been paid, the amount will be deducted from your future commissions. If a chargeback is resolved in our favour, the commission is reinstated.

Example: a $600 annual plan at 20% creates a $120 commission. The customer gets a $300 partial refund, so the commission drops to $60. If you'd already paid the $120, you net -$60 against the next payout. Anderro handles refunds this way by default: a refund on an unpaid commission cancels it, a partial refund reduces it proportionally, a refund after payout becomes a negative adjustment on the next payout, and a Stripe dispute reverses the commission until a won dispute restores it. Whatever tool you use, the clause should describe what the software actually does.

Clause 5: Self-referral and coupon sites.

Affiliates may not earn commission on purchases for themselves, their employer, or any account they control. Affiliates may not publish discount codes or coupon listings for [Product] unless we issued the code to them directly. Commissions generated in breach of this clause are void.

Coupon sites often sit at the last click before a purchase the customer was already making, so you can end up paying for sales they didn't cause. Self-referral is the cheaper fraud but the more frequent one. Detection patterns for both are in Affiliate Fraud Detection for SaaS: Six Patterns, Six Controls.

Clause 6: Trademark bidding ban.

Affiliates may not bid on [Brand], [Product], or any misspelling or variation of them on any paid search platform, including Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising, or use them in display URLs or domain names. Commissions from traffic that breaches this clause are void.

Without this, an affiliate can buy your brand name in search, intercept people already looking for you, and collect 30% of revenue you would have earned anyway. If you find an affiliate bidding on your brand three months in and the ban isn't written down, you may have a hard time refusing to pay for those three months. Check with your lawyer.

Step 3: Set payout, exit and change rules

Clause 7: Payout threshold, methods and schedule.

Approved commissions are paid monthly, by the 15th of the following month, via PayPal or Wise, once your approved balance reaches $50. Balances under $50 roll over to the next cycle. You are responsible for your own taxes and any fees charged by your payment provider.

Threshold matters more than people expect. An affiliate with one $79/mo customer at 20% earns $15.80 a month and crosses $50 in month four ($63.20). Set the threshold at $100 and the same affiliate waits seven months, and many part-time affiliates lose interest before then. If you run on Anderro, these clauses map to settings: cookie window 7 to 90 days (default 30), hold period 7 to 90 days (default 30), payout threshold defaulting to $50 with $30 as the floor, and payouts via PayPal, Wise or Paystack on a monthly, quarterly or manual schedule.

Clause 8: Termination and unpaid commissions.

Either party may end this agreement at any time by written notice. If we end it for any reason other than a breach, approved commissions and commissions still in their hold period will be paid on the normal schedule. Recurring commissions stop on the termination date. Commissions earned in breach of these terms are forfeited.

Separate termination for convenience from termination for breach. Affiliates accept losing future recurring income; they don't accept losing money already earned.

Clause 9: Changes to terms.

We may update these terms by giving 30 days' notice by email. Changes apply only to payments made after the effective date. Continuing to promote [Product] after that date means you accept the updated terms.

The "only to payments made after" line is what makes rate cuts survivable. Retroactive changes are the fastest way to lose your best affiliates.

Where affiliate program terms go wrong

The failure I see most is a mismatch between the document and the software. A founder copies terms from a bigger program that promise a 60-day cookie, while their tracking is set to 30. Every lost referral in days 31 to 60 becomes a complaint you will likely end up paying.

The other recurring mistakes:

• No recorded acceptance. Put a required checkbox on the affiliate signup form and store the terms version and timestamp.
• "At our sole discretion" everywhere. One discretion clause for fraud is reasonable. Ten of them tell serious affiliates you'll find reasons not to pay.
• Undefined "net amount." If you don't say whether tax, discounts and credits are excluded, affiliates will assume the gross figure.
• Payment source left vague. Commissions should come from server-side billing events (Stripe, Paddle, your API), not browser pixels. See Stripe Affiliate Tracking: Attribute Subscriptions Without a Pixel.

Before you publish, put your draft next to your tracking dashboard and confirm four numbers match exactly: commission rate, cookie window, hold period and payout threshold. If any differ, change one of them today.