Referrals

Run your invite-a-friend programme from one screen: track how many referrals are pending or qualified, see how much wallet credit (store credit) has been paid out in rewards, investigate suspicious sign-ups, and approve, cancel or revert individual referrals.

Where to find it: Admin → Referrals (/admin/referrals).

How the referral programme works

1. Every customer gets a unique referral code when they register.
2. They share the code (or their referral link) with friends.
3. A new customer enters the code in the optional Referral Code field during registration. The field validates when they finish typing and leave the field, confirming the referrer's name, so typos are caught before sign-up.
4. The referral starts as Pending. It becomes Qualified when the new customer (the referee) has spent the qualifying amount — wallet-credit spend doesn't count — and has met any verification requirement you've set.
5. When a referral qualifies, both the referrer and the referee receive the reward as wallet credit.

Referrals the platform considers suspicious — for example the referrer and referee sharing sign-up details — are flagged for fraud and held as Pending for you to review, rather than being paid automatically. See Investigate flagged referrals.

Programme rules (reward amount, qualifying spend, verification, limits) are configured in Site Settings, not on this page — see Configure the programme.

Read the summary cards

Five cards at the top of the page give you programme health at a glance:

• Total Referrals — every referral ever recorded, whatever its status.
• Qualified — referrals that have met the requirements and been rewarded.
• Pending — referrals still waiting to qualify (including any held for fraud review).
• Total Paid — the total wallet credit paid out in referral rewards, as a £ figure.
• Conversion Rate — the percentage of all referrals that have gone on to qualify. A low rate can mean your qualifying amount is set too high, or that people are sharing codes with sign-ups who never buy.

The cards refresh automatically after you update a referral's status.

Find a referral

Use the search box above the table to look someone up by name, email address or referral code. The search matches both sides of a referral, so typing a customer's name finds referrals where they are the referrer or the person who was referred. This is the quickest way to answer "has this person already signed up through a referral?" — search their name and check the Referee column.

You can narrow the list further with the filters next to the search box:

• Status — All, Pending, Qualified or Cancelled.
• Fraud state — all fraud states, flagged for fraud, or not flagged.
• Page size — show 25, 50 or 100 referrals per page. Use the pagination controls under the table to move between pages.

Changing the search or any filter takes you back to the first page of results, and Clear filters resets the search and filters in one click (page size stays as you set it).

Read the referrals table

Each row shows:

• Referrer — the customer who shared their code: name, email, and their registration IP address on a small line underneath.
• Referee — the new customer who signed up with the code, with the same name / email / registration IP layout. Having both IPs side by side makes self-referrals easy to spot.
• Status — a coloured badge: Pending (yellow), Qualified (green) or Cancelled (red). A referral that has been flagged and stopped shows a single red Held — fraud review badge instead; hover it to read the reason the platform recorded, such as the referrer and referee sharing a registration IP address. A flag icon alongside a Pending, Cancelled or Qualified badge just means the referral carries a fraud flag; it is not waiting on you. On a Pending row it means you have already reviewed and released the hold — hover it and the tooltip starts with Released after review. Every referral you cancel is flagged automatically, so on a Cancelled row the icon tells you nothing in itself — hover it to read the note recorded at the time.
• Progress / Reward — what this shows depends on the status (see below).
• Date — the date and time the referral was made.
• Actions — an eye icon to open the full details panel, and a pencil icon to update the status.

Check how close a referral is to qualifying

The Progress / Reward column changes with the referral's status:

• Pending — a progress bar with a percentage, plus the referee's spend so far against the qualifying amount for that referral (for example £6.50 / £10.00). When the bar reaches 100% the referral qualifies, subject to any verification requirement. If your qualifying amount is 0, the bar stays at 0% — qualification then depends on the referee's first purchase and verification, not on how much they spend.
• Held — fraud review — the same spend figures, but the bar is red and a Held for review line sits underneath. A held referral can sit at 100% indefinitely: it has met the spend but will not pay out until you review it — release it (or qualify it) to pay the reward, or cancel it.
• Qualified — the reward paid (for example +£5.00) and the date it qualified.
• Cancelled — simply shows Cancelled; no reward is paid.

View a referral's full details

Click the eye icon in the Actions column to open the Referral Details panel. It shows three sections:

• Referrer — name, email, and registration IP.
• Referee (Referred User) — name, email, and registration IP.
• Status & Progress — the status badge, Code Used (the referral code the referee entered), Referee Spent, Qualifying Amount, Reward Amount, Referred At, and Qualified At (once qualified). If the referral has been flagged, a Held for fraud review block at the bottom spells out exactly why the platform stopped it — the full reason text, not just a yes/no. While the referral is held, the block also carries a Release button (approve it without paying early — see below) and a More options button that opens the full review choices. Once you have released a referral, the block instead records the date you released it; the flag stays visible for your records.

Use this panel when you need the exact code a referee used, precise timestamps, or a clean side-by-side IP comparison during a fraud review.

Update a referral's status

Click the pencil icon in the Actions column. For most referrals this opens the Update Referral Status modal: choose a status — Pending, Qualified or Cancelled — optionally add notes (for example your fraud-review reasoning), and click Update Status. The table and the summary cards refresh straight away.

For a referral that is held for fraud review, the pencil opens a Review Held Referral modal instead, with three clearly-explained outcomes:

• Release — approve the referral. Nothing is paid early: the reward still only pays out once the referred user spends the qualifying amount (and meets any verification requirement). This is the right choice for a false alarm, such as two family members in the same house.
• Qualify now — pay both rewards immediately, even if the qualifying spend hasn't been met. Use this only when you deliberately want to pay early.
• Cancel referral — reject it. No reward is paid.

Notes are saved with the update. Release notes are added to the flag's reason text, which you can read back in the details panel; other notes are not displayed back on this page afterwards, so keep a copy of anything you'll need to refer to later.

Approve a held referral (Release)

If a referral was flagged and held, and your review satisfies you it's genuine:

1. Click the pencil icon on the referral's row (or Release in the details panel).
2. Choose Release and optionally add a note recording why.
3. Click Confirm.

The referral goes back to earning normally — the reward pays out on its own once the referred user reaches the qualifying spend. If they had already reached it while the referral was held, both rewards are paid the moment you release it; the confirmation message tells you which happened. Released referrals keep their flag icon as a record of the review.

Cancel a fraudulent or duplicate referral

1. Click the pencil icon on the referral's row.
2. Set the status to Cancelled.
3. Add a note recording why — matching IPs, duplicate account, shared sign-up details.
4. Click Update Status. The referral shows as Cancelled and no reward is paid.

Undo a change by reverting to Pending

Picked the wrong status? Open the same modal and set the referral back to Pending. It returns to the normal qualification flow as if you hadn't touched it.

Investigate flagged referrals and self-referrals

The fraud flag is read-only on this page — the platform applies it when a referral looks suspicious (such as the referrer and referee sharing sign-up details), and a flagged referral is never rewarded automatically, even if it meets the qualifying amount. It sits as Pending until you decide.

A number badge on Referrals in the sidebar tells you how many referrals are currently held and waiting on you (it shows 9+ above nine). Allow up to a minute for it to catch up after you release or cancel one; it disappears when none are left. Held referrals are usually rare, so the badge is what stops one sitting unnoticed for weeks.

A practical review routine:

1. Click Referrals in the sidebar when it carries a badge (or set the fraud filter to Flagged for fraud at any time).
2. Read the reason on the row — hover the Held — fraud review badge, or open the details panel with the eye icon for the full text. It names what the platform matched on, such as a shared registration IP.
3. Compare the registration IPs shown under the referrer and the referee. Matching IPs strongly suggest a self-referral.
4. Check the Code Used, spend and timestamps in the details panel for anything else that looks off (instant qualification, throwaway-looking email addresses).
5. Decide with the pencil icon: Release if it's a false alarm (the reward still only pays once earned), Cancel referral for fraud, or Qualify now if you deliberately want to pay out immediately — adding notes either way.

What the customer sees while you decide

Once their friend has met the spend, the referrer sees a neutral Under review badge with the line Being checked by our team on their account's referrals page, in place of the usual spend progress. They are never told what triggered the review, so nothing you read here is visible to them — but they can see that something is happening rather than staring at a stalled Pending row. If a customer asks why their reward has not arrived, that is what they are looking at.

Before the spend is met, a held referral looks like any other Pending referral to the customer. That is deliberate: telling someone their referral was flagged the moment their friend signed up would let anyone gaming the system work out what we check for, and simply try again. It also means the badge is not a reliable count of what customers can see — always work from the Referrals page, not from what a customer tells you.

If you suspect the same person is behind multiple accounts beyond this one referral, review them in Account Flags, which covers linked-account detection across your site. That system is separate: a linked-accounts case has no effect on referral payouts, and a held referral is not evidence of one.

Configure the programme in Site Settings

The rules of the programme live in Site Settings, in the Referrals section:

• Enable Referral System — turn the programme on or off. When it's off, the referral code field disappears from registration.
• Qualifying Amount (£) — how much the referee must spend (excluding wallet credit) before both people get their reward. Set it to 0 to remove the spend requirement.
• Verification Required — make the referee verify before the reward is released (see below).
• Reward Amount (£) — the wallet credit granted to both the referrer and the referee when a referral qualifies.
• Max Referrals Per User — the maximum number of successful referrals per customer; leave empty for unlimited.
• Fraud Warning Message — warning text displayed on the registration and referral pages to discourage fraudulent behaviour.

What a new site starts with: a £10 qualifying amount, a £5 reward to each person, Email verified, and a cap of 25 referrals per customer. These are starting points, not recommendations. Review them against how you actually want to run the programme before you turn it on. Sites created earlier keep their existing values.

Require verification before rewards

The Verification Required setting gates the reward on the referee verifying, on top of any qualifying amount — both must be satisfied:

• None — no verification needed. The referral rewards on the qualifying spend (or, if that's 0, on the referee's first purchase of any amount).
• Email verified — the referee must verify their email address. This is the weakest check, since addresses can be spoofed or created with throwaway accounts. The lower your qualifying amount, the easier it is to game — at 0 it can reward almost any new sign-up.
• ID verified — the referee must pass ID verification. This is the strongest check, because each person can only verify once, and it's the safest way to run a zero-spend programme. Rewards may arrive a little later, as ID checks are approved manually — see ID Verification.

Set the qualifying amount to 0 alongside a verification requirement to reward on verification alone. Pair it with ID verified rather than Email verified if you do: 0 plus email means both people are rewarded as soon as the referee confirms an email address, with no purchase at all, and the settings screen will warn you when you pick that combination.

What your customers see

• Referrers have a Referrals section in their account showing their unique code with a copy button, a shareable referral link, their stats (total, qualified, pending, total earnings) and a list of their referrals.
• New customers see an optional Referral Code field during registration (only while the programme is enabled). A valid code confirms with the referrer's name; an invalid one shows an error. If you've set a fraud warning message, it appears beneath the field.
• Rewards land in each person's wallet as credit once the referral qualifies — see Wallets for how customers spend it.

Get notified

Subscribe to the New Referral and Referral Reward Granted events under Webhooks to get an alert — in a private team channel or as a push notification — whenever someone signs up with a referral code or a reward pays out. The alerts never mention fraud flags; check this page for anything held for review.

Troubleshooting

A customer says their referral reward hasn't paid out. Find the referral (filter Status to Pending) and check the Progress / Reward column. Common causes: the referee hasn't reached the qualifying amount yet — remember wallet-credit spend doesn't count; the referee hasn't completed the required email or ID verification; or the referral is flagged for fraud (red flag icon) and is being held for your review. If everything checks out, approve it via the pencil icon by setting it to Qualified.

Both the referrer and the new customer received credit — is that right? Yes. The reward amount is granted to both people when a referral qualifies.

A referral looks like a self-referral. Compare the registration IPs shown under the referrer and referee in the table or the details panel. If they match — or the details otherwise don't add up — cancel the referral with a note explaining why. Consider checking the accounts in Account Flags too.

Someone's applying to be referred — have they already used a referral? Search their name or email in the search box. If a referral appears with them in the Referee column, they've already signed up through one.

I set the wrong status. Open the Update Referral Status modal again and set the referral back to Pending (or to the correct status). The summary cards recalculate immediately.

The progress bar is stuck at 0% for every pending referral. Your qualifying amount is probably set to 0 in Site Settings — with no spend requirement, the bar has nothing to measure. Those referrals qualify on the referee's first purchase and any verification requirement instead.