impact.com: reverse actions before they lock

impact.com does not call a tracked sale a transaction. It calls it an action, and an action has a locking date. Before that date you can reverse it — set the amount to zero — or modify it to a smaller amount. After it, nothing: "Actions can only be modified or reversed before their locking date."¹

This guide is for Shopify brands running a brand programme on impact.com: what a reversal is, how it differs from an Awin decline and a CJ correction, how to do one in impact's own screens or in bulk, and what AffCheck does — and does not yet do — for impact today.

Reversal, modification and decline: three words for three things

The verbs are not interchangeable, and using the wrong one in a message to a partner is a small, avoidable own goal.

Three differences matter in practice.

There is no network-wide default deadline. Awin publishes a maximum, CJ publishes the 10th. impact's locking period is a term inside each contract template: days, up to a maximum of 90 days-only, or a month-and-days rule such as "actions are locked 0 months and 47 days after the end of the month". Open-ended locking auto-locks after 730 days.³ Your deadline is in your own terms and nowhere else.

You are not expected to approve anything. impact's own documentation says "actions will automatically lock based on your contract terms, so you typically won't need to approve actions."³ The platform is built around silence meaning yes. The only thing you ever have to do in time is take something away.

A reversal is a modification with the amount set to zero. There is no separate "decline" object. The same batch template, the same required Reason field, the same limits — the only difference is the number in the Amount column.¹

What you do in the impact platform

Everything below happens in impact's own UI or through its own file drops. AffCheck never touches your impact account.

One or a few actions

1. Open Pending Payouts → Actions. This is where actions waiting to lock are listed, and where you approve, reverse or modify them.³
2. Find the action by order id or media partner.
3. Reverse it (full refund, cancellation, a sale that should never have been credited) or modify the amount (partial refund).
4. Give the reason. ITEM_RETURNED is the everyday one; CONS_FRAUD and CONS_ERROR cover the others.¹

The companion report is Action Listing by Locking Date: what locks when, which is the question you actually need answered in the first week of the month.³

A whole month at once

Batch modifications and reversals go in as CSV or XML built from impact's own templates. An order-level row carries the ActionId — or the Oid/OrderId plus the ActionTrackerId — the new Amount, where 0 means a reversal, and a required Reason code.¹

You submit the file by uploading it to impact's FTP/SFTP endpoint, having impact pull it from your own FTP, or by email, after switching the event type's returns processing to the automated mode under Settings → Event Types → [event type] → Returns Processing. The Actions or Conversions API is the third route.¹

Two limits worth knowing before you build a file: impact recommends fewer than 10,000 rows per FTP file, and a single action can be modified at most 1,000 times.¹

What AffCheck does for impact today

Plainly, so there is no surprise on validation day:

• It reads your impact export. The importer has a preset for impact's Actions export and looks for its own field names — the order id (Order Id, Oid), the sale amount, the Payout, the action status, the action date and the Media Partner Id. The batch-modification field names are documented; the Pending Payouts export layout is not, so if your file's headings differ AffCheck asks you once which column is which and remembers it.
• It flags. Every rule runs on impact rows exactly as it does on Awin or CJ rows: full refunds, partial refunds, cancellations, orders claimed twice — including an order claimed on impact and on another network, which is the one thing no single network can see — codes used by a partner they were not issued to, test and staff orders, and references with no matching Shopify order.
• It exports a generic CSV. One spreadsheet with the order reference, the action id, the media partner, the suggested action, the new sale amount, the commission at stake and the reason on every row.

There is no native impact batch file yet. AffCheck builds Awin's batch validation files and CJ's correction file natively; for impact.com — as for Rakuten, Webgains, Partnerize and Tradedoubler — you get the generic CSV and copy the values across into impact's own template, or work through the Actions screen with the list beside you. When an impact template file ships, it will be listed as a format on the export screen.

There is no impact locking date either. Because impact publishes no default, AffCheck leaves impact rows undated until you enter your own locking period; it will not invent a date. Once it is in, impact appears in the deadline list with every other network.

If you run the impact Shopify integration

impact's Shopify integration passes refunds and reversals made in Shopify through to impact, at item and order level, and impact updates the actions accordingly. Changes made in impact are not sent back to Shopify.⁴

That covers a lot of the single-network refund case, and if it is switched on you should expect the refund flags to be few. What it does not cover is what no one network can: an order claimed on impact and on a second network, a code used by a partner it was not issued to, a refund processed outside Shopify, and anything at all after the locking date. An independent check a week before your locking date is the point, not a second refund feed.

A routine that fits a locking date

1. Find your locking period. It is in the contract terms behind your programme, not on a help page. Write it down.
2. Run the check weekly, not monthly, if your period is short. Under a month-and-days rule the oldest actions in a month lock first.
3. Export Shopify orders from a few days before the oldest action, so late refunds on early orders are in the file.
4. Reverse the certain ones and modify the partials. Reversals for full refunds and cancellations; modifications for part returns; ITEM_RETURNED unless it genuinely was not.
5. Leave the duplicates until you have looked at both claims. A cross-network duplicate is a judgement, not a rule: de-duplication across networks has the method.
6. Write the reason like a person will read it. Fifteen decline and amend reasons you can copy.