Lessons on Learning ShareASale

One of the common points of concern from ShareASale clients is that they are afraid that they are missing something or are not learning things quickly.  As someone who has been around for 3 years, I continually learn new ways to utilize a report or tool.  I can honestly tell you that you are right on track in your ShareASale Education.

Two of the reports that were particularly vexing for me before I understood the intricacies of our reporting were the Affiliate Timespan and Activity Summary reports.  These reports look similar on the surface but are in actuality report different information.

The Affiliate Timespan report provides the user an overall summary of the activity that has occurred for any affiliate over a given time period.

I often use this report to get a quick snapshot of the overall performance of a merchant program in a given year.  The reason I like this report is that it shows the Sales broken down by type (i.e. Sales, Two Tier, Bonuses, Leapfrogs,etc.)  It is also a great way to see the overall commissions paid our less any voids, the conversion rate, and the EPC of the program.

It is important to keep in mind when running this report for a given month, such as July, it may contain data from transactions that occurred in a different month.  This is because the activity, such as editing or voiding a transaction occurred in the month of July.  Therefore, this report will not always match the Transaction Detail or Activity Summary reports in terms of values like the Net Sales amount.

The Activity Summary report is my go to report for a quick summary of transactions in a given month.  For example, if a merchant wants to know their Total Net Sales for the month of March, I would pull this report.

This report is a summary of the Transaction Detail report and as such shows the user specifically only the transactions for a given month and their status.  This allows it to be a great report to pull for a quick summary of the Transaction Detail report data.

My takeaway from learning about these two reports was that it is tremendously important to think about the information you are seeking and then search for the ShareASale report that includes those details.  It has definitely saved me a great deal of time.

As a tip, there is no real “Right” or “Wrong” way to go about learning the intricacies of ShareASale.  However, there are some best practices that should be followed:

• Attend a Webinar
• Tinker around in the interface (check out our reports and tools)
• Explore the Help Center
• Give us a call or shoot us an email if you need help to shareasale [at] shareasale.com