Social Sales orders are NOT being reflected under my name!!!

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Hey guys, there shouldn't be any ongoing issues with social sales, per my earlier updates. As my last post said, 18 days ago, we have the remaining tasks to complete for this in the pipeline:

1. Back-rewarding referrers who were affected by that old issue.
2. A bigger overhaul of the reporting for social sales. Some things are not problems, they're just confusing bits of info that we're not displaying correctly. We might also overhaul the whole system while we're at it. That'll take some time.

Update-a-rama:

Payout calculations are fine. We need to overhaul how we report potential and actual earnings, so the calculations are based on the right data. I know it's frustrating to wait for a fix, but it's better to do it right instead of patching bandaids over each individual reported error. We don't have a timeline. It's looking like mid-to-late summer at the earliest for the tech team to be able to devote the hours needed for an overhaul.

In the meantime, I do have a few explanations. Some things that we just haven't explained are making this feel like a worse problem, so I'd like to clear up any confusion I can.

Do not get worried if your Pivot Power or Plug Hub potential earnings are "missing". This is not a problem with social sales. It's because there's an stage between potential earnings and available balance that we don't display, and it always comes up when a product first begins to sku select & ship. Visit Patti's disappearing potential earnings thread for the full explanation.

The Overview section is not actually a total of the Product Referrals section. Here's what each thing means in that section:
-Referrals is the sum of all general and product referrals.
-Product Referrals equals the sum of all product referrals listed (Sandi, I tested this on your account, and it matched up).
-Registrations is how many new accounts were created after a general or product referral link was clicked.
-Ideas is how many ideas were submitted after a general or product referral link was clicked.
-Orders is the number of orders placed after a referral link was clicked.
-Commitments is the number of commitments placed after a referral link was clicked.

Those last two count number of orders. The product referral section counts number of units (which can be more than one in each order or commitment). That's why the Overview doesn't match up to the Product Referrals.

As for the earnings columns, the calculations are running correctly. However, they're pulling from different data sources, so the end result doesn't make sense. One major reason is that Quirky only started to differentiate between orders and commitments with the site redesign in Oct 2010. Before that, the social sales dashboard only had to pull & interpret data from one place. Now there are several more steps in that process. Another major reason is that Quirky introduced a shopping cart feature which allows multiple items/skus in each order. This has added more complexity to the social sales number crunching as well.

None of that is an excuse. I just wanted to give some context so that you can understand what we're dealing with. Continue to post anything new that you notice. I'll be tracking it all. If it's calculation based, I will be compiling those reports for the tech team's overhaul. If it's something else, I will either explain, ticket for a fix if it's doable, or add it to the overhaul list.

Peace!

Hey Quirks, happy Friday! Looks like you've noticed at least one change to the Social Sales dashboard. Here's what's up:

1. Paging added. We did it to improve website performance, and it is here to stay. I'll gather and forward suggestions to increase usability: add sorting function and/or display products alphabetically.

2. A Pending Earnings column was added to both the Overview and the Product Referral sections. This column captures info from product commitments and calculates based on the price at which commitment was placed.

More to come as we work on the associations of orders and commitments. Most are working, so it's taking time to dig through the code and figure out why some are not working. Again, don't worry. Our goal is to go back and award everything that is due to each person. We'll be able to do that because referrals are registering fine, so we will have a record of what should have happened.

Hey all,

We've made progress on the social sales system, but there is no immediate solution. I'm providing a comprehensive breakdown of known issues/questions, and our answers to each one. The main thing we've learned is that this is a deeper issue than we'd originally imagined. It will take time to resolve. We have a plan for going back to reward referrals. That will also take time, but we have full intentions of honoring the social sales rewards that are due to each person.

Some issues being reported are not errors. For those, I'm including an explanation of how social sales is designed to work in those instances. If you want to suggest a change, please create a new idea thread. That way, your suggestion won't get lost in the shuffle.

Issue: Inflated referral numbers
Answer: During testing, we found that some sites (like tinyurl.com) ping Quirky multiple times when creating a shortened link. We cannot control what other sites do, so we've made Quirky shortened links available. You can get yours by logging in to your account, going to a product page, and clicking on the light blue button which says "Spread the word and earn 10% on sales!"

Issue: Referral credit awarded to another user's account
Answer: Clicking on a referral link drops a cookie into your system. That cookie then converts into an association with the user account that the link came from (not just a specific computer/browser). Once you've clicked on a referral link and logged into your account, your actions point back to that referral account. Doesn't matter if you clear cookies, or use a different computer. The referral link that was clicked first will get the referral credit for the next 30 days. (I know many of you have requested a change, please start a new Get Satisfaction idea thread for that.)

Issue: Credits for orders/commitments not given
Answer: There are a few things going on. First, some reported "lost referrals" are being credited to other accounts because their links were clicked first. That's not an error (see above). Second, there is a problem associating some order/commitments to the referring account. We're focusing a lot of time and resources on testing this part of the system. We need to pinpoint the conditions causing this error. Once we find that out, we can work on fixing it for good.

Issue: Extend the 30 day referral limit
Answer: Visit the thread for this idea (http://support.quirky.com/quirky/topi...) to voice your opinion.

Please continue reporting things that are not explained by this list. Jess & I are collecting all reports and working closely with the tech team. We cannot promise a specific timeline for resolving this. However long it takes, we will be going back and rewarding what was due to each social seller.