Work through the review queue
How the review queue groups flags by reason, what the four totals mean, how to decide a row or a whole group, and what a changed suggestion is.
By The AffCheck team · Updated
The Review screen is where a cycle is actually done. Every pending transaction that a rule flagged is here, grouped by reason, with the facts it was raised from and a decision you make yourself.
What is in the queue
One row per flag. A transaction gets at most one flag, so a row is a transaction: the order, the network, the publisher, the reason, the commission at stake and the date the network auto-approves it.
Rows are grouped by reason in priority order — test orders, cancellations, full refunds, unauthorised voucher use, duplicates, partial refunds, then not-found — so the clearest declines are at the top and the judgement calls are further down. The queue shows up to 400 rows at a time; the totals bar always counts everything the filter matches, not just what is on screen.
Decided rows stay visible for as long as your plan's history window allows — 30 days on Free, 60 on Starter and Growth. Undecided work never ages out: a pending commission is the job, not history.
The four totals
The sticky bar at the top has four buckets:
| Bucket | What it counts |
|---|---|
| Declines | Rows suggested for, or decided as, a decline — the full commission |
| Amends | Rows suggested for, or decided as, an amend — only the difference |
| Approve | Rows you approved, plus every pending transaction no rule flagged at all |
| Check | Rows the engine will not call: it found something odd and says so |
A row counts in your decision when it has one and in the engine's suggestion otherwise, which is why the bar moves as you work. Totals are per currency and are never converted or added across currencies: two currencies mean two figures, side by side.
The Approve bucket carrying the transactions nobody flagged is deliberate. Those rows are not in the list — there is nothing to look at — but leaving them out of the total would make "what is this cycle worth?" a smaller number than the truth.
Deciding one row
Three buttons per row: decline, amend, approve. A fourth action, skip, removes a decision you already made; it is not a decision of its own.
Nothing is sent anywhere. A decision is a row in your own workspace, and it is what a decline file is later built from.
Amending instead of declining
An amend asks for one number: the sale amount the order finally came to. It is pre-filled with the amount AffCheck worked out from the Shopify refund, and while you keep that number the commission at stake is the engine's own figure. Type a different amount and the commission is rescaled exactly — commission minus commission times the new amount divided by the old one, on integers, with no floating-point arithmetic anywhere near your money.
This matches how the networks work: on Awin you amend the sale amount and Awin recalculates the commission; on impact.com a modification sets a new amount. A full refund is a decline, not an amend to zero.
Deciding many rows at once
Tick rows and the bulk bar appears, or use "Select all" to take everything the current filter matches — including the rows beyond the 400 on screen. The selection is a description, not a list of ids, so "select all 412" really does decide 412 rows.
Confirm all suggested applies the engine's own suggestion to every selected row, in one database transaction: all of them or none. It never decides a row in the Check bucket, and the bar tells you how many stayed behind. The engine said it could not tell; confirming those for you would put words in your mouth.
The evidence drawer
Press the evidence button on a row (or E) and the drawer shows the receipt: the Shopify order and its refund amount and date, the network row and its spreadsheet line, the publisher, and the rules that fired.
Copy reason puts a publisher-ready sentence on your clipboard — "Order #1041 fully refunded on 12 Jan (refund of £84.00, per Shopify export of 18 Jan)" — ready to paste into the network's reason box. A specific reason is what keeps a decline from turning into a support thread.
Filters are the URL
Search, rule, network, due date and state all live in the address bar, so a filtered queue is a link you can send to a colleague. The same filter is what a bulk action sends as its selection.
When a suggestion changes
Re-importing can change what the rules say about a row you already decided. AffCheck never overwrites your decision. Instead the row keeps it and carries a note — "the suggestion changed since you decided" — with what the engine would say now. You look, and you decide whether to change your mind.
Rejected suggestions are measured
When you decide something other than what was suggested on a decline or amend, that is recorded as a rejected suggestion. It is the number that tells us the rules are wrong, and it is one of the numbers this product is judged on. Disagreeing with a suggestion is useful, not a problem.
On a phone
Below tablet width the queue is a read-only card list: order, network, partner, reason, the engine's sentence, the commission and the auto-approval date. There are no per-row decision buttons, because the Monday email is opened on a phone and a mis-tap there declines someone's commission.
There are two actions instead: Confirm all suggested, behind a sheet that spells out what it would write per action and per currency and asks you to type confirm; and Email me this link, which sends the filtered queue's URL to your inbox for when you are at a desk.
Keyboard users at a desk: the six shortcuts.
FAQ
Questions, answered
Does confirming a row send anything to my network?
No. A decision is a row in your own workspace. Nothing reaches a network until you upload a file yourself.
Why did “Confirm all suggested” skip some rows?
Rows the engine only dares to review — the Check bucket — are never decided in bulk. The engine did not claim to know what they are, so confirming them would put words in your mouth.
Can I change a decision?
Yes, until you have used it in a file. Decide the row again, or skip it to remove the decision altogether.
Related
- Reason codes R01 to R07 explained What each AffCheck reason code means, which Shopify facts it was raised from, what it suggests and what to write in the network’s reason box.
- Keyboard shortcuts in the review queue The six keys that move, select and decide rows in the review queue on a desktop, and when they are deliberately inert.
- Upload your decisions to your network Where each network takes declines, amends and corrections, which file format it expects, and what to check before your first upload.
- Deadlines and validation periods How AffCheck dates every pending transaction, where each network’s default period comes from, and why the dates are the network’s UTC calendar day.
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