How to decline Awin commissions for returns

Declining Awin commissions for returns is a four-part job: export what is still pending, find which of those orders were refunded or cancelled in Shopify, decide decline or amend for each one, and upload the result before the auto-validation period ends. This guide walks through each step with the exact menu paths, a spreadsheet formula that does the matching, and the upload settings that stop the batch file from failing.

It is written for the person who does validation at a Shopify brand on Awin: the affiliate manager, the ops lead or the agency account manager. Everything below applies to the advertiser side of Awin.

Before you start: your deadline

Every pending Awin transaction has a clock on it. Awin's help centre is plain about what happens when it runs out: “If a commission isn’t reviewed before the period ends, it will be automatically approved in line with your program’s auto-validation settings.”¹

So before you open a spreadsheet, find two dates:

• Your auto-validation period (AVP). It is set per programme. On Awin Access it can be up to 67 days; on Accelerate and Advanced the maximum depends on your sector and contract.² The guide to Awin's auto-validation period explains how to find and choose yours.
• Your oldest pending transaction. Its transaction date plus your AVP is the first deadline. Anything older than that date is already approved.

Work backwards from the earliest deadline. If you validate once a month, validate the oldest pending transactions first, not the newest.

Step 1: Export pending transactions from Awin

Where you export depends on which Awin interface your account uses.

Awin Classic: go to Reports → Performance → Transactions, filter Transaction Status = Pending, set the date range to cover everything still pending, and export as CSV or Excel from Options.

New Awin platform: go to Commissions → Review commission payments → Review pending, then export the list (Excel or CSV).

Whichever you use, keep these columns in the export: the Awin transaction ID, the order reference (the Shopify order number your tracking passes to Awin), the transaction date, the publisher, the sale amount and the commission. The order reference is the key that connects Awin to Shopify, so check that it is filled in on every row before you go further. Rows without one can’t be matched automatically.

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Awin: export pending transactions

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Step 2: Export refunds and cancellations from Shopify

In Shopify admin, open Orders, filter to the same date range as your Awin export (start a few days earlier, because tracking dates and order dates can differ around midnight and time zones), and choose Export → Export orders as CSV.

The columns you need from the Shopify export are:

Shopify’s order export has one row per line item, so the same order number can appear several times. Remove duplicates on the Name column (or use a pivot table) before matching, so each order appears once.

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Shopify: export orders as CSV

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Step 3: Match them

Put both exports in one workbook: Awin pending on a sheet called Awin, the de-duplicated Shopify orders on a sheet called Shopify. Normalise the order reference first: Awin may store 10482 while Shopify writes #10482. A helper column in the Awin sheet fixes that:

="#"&SUBSTITUTE(B2,"#","")

Then pull the Shopify status and refunded amount next to every Awin row. With the order reference in column H of the Awin sheet, and Shopify's Name, Financial Status and Refunded Amount in columns A, C and F:

=XLOOKUP(H2, Shopify!A:A, Shopify!C:C, "NOT FOUND")
=XLOOKUP(H2, Shopify!A:A, Shopify!F:F, 0)

Older Excel or Google Sheets without XLOOKUP can use =IFERROR(VLOOKUP(H2, Shopify!A:F, 3, FALSE), "NOT FOUND").

Now every pending Awin transaction has a Shopify status next to it. Filter the status column:

• refunded, voided or a filled Cancelled at → candidate for decline.
• partially_refunded → candidate for amend (Step 4).
• NOT FOUND → check by hand: a typo in the order reference, a test order, or a sale that never happened in Shopify.
• paid with no refund → leave it to approve.

Step 4: Decide decline or amend

Awin gives you three outcomes for a pending transaction: approve, decline and amend. The rule of thumb:

• Full refund or cancellation → decline. Awin’s own guidance is that a fully returned order is declined, not amended to zero.⁴
• Partial refund → amend. You amend the sale amount, not the commission: enter the new, final sale value and Awin recalculates the commission from your commission group. Awin says you can’t amend the commission yourself; a commission-only change goes through Awin support.⁵
• Only pending transactions can be amended. Once a transaction is approved, the amend option is gone.

A worked example: order #10497 was $184.00 with an 8% commission ($14.72). The customer returned half and was refunded $92.00. You amend the sale amount to $92.00, and the commission follows at $7.36. You don’t touch the commission figure.

Exchanges and store credit are a policy question: write the answer into your programme terms. With an exchange the customer kept the order value, so there is usually nothing to decline. With a refund to the card, decline or amend.

Step 5: Build the batch file

On Awin Classic you can validate in bulk with a CSV upload instead of clicking row by row. Awin provides three templates on the upload page: Accepted, Declined and Amended. Always download them from the programme you are validating, because Awin says amendments only process correctly when the file follows the exact structure.⁶

The fields Awin documents are:

Three rules catch most people out:

1. Dates use your programme’s locale format, the one shown in your Awin account.
2. No formulas. Paste values only before you save.
3. Save as .csv. For declines, pick one of the decline reasons listed in the template for the Status Note.

The column order and the exact header text come from Awin’s template, not from the help articles, so copy your rows into the downloaded template rather than building headers by hand.

Free toolAwin batch validation file builder

Paste order references, choose accept, decline or amend, and download the CSV in your browser.

Step 6: Upload it before the deadline

Upload under Commission → Validate → Batch Process Commission → Manual Upload. On the upload page:

• tick Contains column headings if your file keeps the header row;
• tick Remove duplicates;
• clear Leave amended commissions as pending unless you want to review amended rows again (otherwise amended sales are approved automatically after processing).

Then check the result: Batch Process History keeps each upload. Download the report from there and filter for rows marked Failed. The usual causes are a date in the wrong locale format, a missing required column, formulas left in cells, or headings left in a file where the box was cleared.

Decline reasons publishers accept

A decline with no reason starts an email thread. A decline with the evidence ends it. Awin names these as legitimate reasons to decline: the order was cancelled or fully returned; the sale came through a different marketing source; the publisher broke programme terms (for example unauthorised voucher code use or prohibited paid search); the order couldn’t be fulfilled; or the sale was fraudulent.⁷

Write the reason so a publisher can check it: “Order fully refunded on 12 Jan (refund #8812)” is better than “Returned”. Keep the refund ID and date in your working sheet in case the publisher queries it.

Wording for every case, including partial refunds, duplicates and voucher misuse: 15 decline and amend reasons you can copy.

If you use Awin’s Shopify app

Awin’s Shopify app has a feature called Shopify auto-validation. In Awin’s words: “Cancelled orders are automatically declined. Partial refunds or returns are applied as adjustments.” It has limits worth knowing before you rely on it: it is available only on Awin Classic, Awin must whitelist your myshopify.com URL first, only orders placed after activation are validated, and it works in batches after the returns period expires.⁸

So the app may already have declined some of this month’s cancellations. It won’t cover orders from before you switched it on, accounts on the new platform, the same order claimed by a second network, or a creator’s voucher code used by a coupon site. Running the steps above once is the quickest way to see what it caught and what it didn’t. The comparison of Awin’s Shopify auto-validation goes through it row by row.

When you are ready to do this every cycle without the spreadsheet, refund matching matches each pending transaction to its Shopify order and decline files produces the upload for you.