Book a demo
CRMOperationsFinanceBillingPartnersPeopleControlAboutBook a demo
an aKillion company
CRMOperationsFinanceBillingPartnersPeopleControl
AboutBook a demo
Skip to content
an aKillion company
AboutBook a demo
Partners

Every account has two sides.Both of them are on this page.

Resellers, referrers, affiliates and introducers on one ledger, with their own terms attached to the relationship rather than held in a signed document nobody reopens. Commission is calculated when the money lands. Below is what that actually looks like: what each account brought in, what it cost, what the partner took, and what you kept.

Book the channel review The partner program
Margin after commission, month to date
Your costPartner takesYou keep
Meridian Group420 seats, $7,980 retail, partner on 20%$4,284 kept
$2,100$1,596$4,284
Northgate Facilities260 seats, $4,940 retail, partner on 20%$2,652 kept
$1,300$988$2,652
Bellamy Group180 seats, $3,420 retail, partner on 15%$2,007 kept
$900$513$2,007
Calder and Sons140 seats, $2,660 retail, partner on 15%$1,561 kept
$700$399$1,561
Voss Interiors95 seats, $1,805 retail, partner on 10%$1,149 kept
$475$181$1,149
Retail billed$20,805
Your cost$5,475
Partners take$3,677
You keep$11,653

Fifty six percent retained across the channel. Not a blended guess arrived at in a board pack, and not a number somebody rebuilt in a spreadsheet on the last Friday of the month. It is the sum of five rows, each calculated when the money arrived.

Illustrative figures from a demonstration workspace, not a customer result, and pricing shown is a working assumption to be validated rather than a rate card. Each row reconciles: retail less cost less commission equals retained, and the five rows sum to the totals.

Why channels actually die

Not from lack of interest. From five weeks and a figure they cannot check.

A partner sends you two customers, waits five weeks for a statement, asks twice, and receives a number with no workings. They do not complain. They stop sending customers, and nobody records why. So here is the statement, with the awkward line on it.

Meridian Group, monthly statementReseller, terms on the relationshipPublished on the 1st
420 seats at retail, billed monthly420 × $19.00$7,980.00
Reseller commission on retail20% of $7,980.00$1,596.00
Six seats cancelled on the 14th, prorated back6 × $19.00 × 20% × 17/31 days-$23.00
Tier uplift, crossed 400 seats2% on the 20 seats above the threshold+$8.00
Due to Meridian Group this period$1,581.00

The third line is the one that matters. Six seats cancelled mid month, so the commission on them comes back, prorated to the day, with the arithmetic written out. A partner who can check that themselves does not open a dispute, and most disputes turn out to be a request for detail wearing a complaint.

They are not all the same thing

Four relationships, four different answers.

Most businesses have three or four of these and treat them as one, which is exactly why commission runs go wrong. The differences that matter are who holds the customer, what the payment is calculated on, when it is paid and who answers the phone.

ResellerThey own the customer
Who holds the relationshipThe partner. You may never speak to the end customer.
What they are paid onThe spread between your wholesale price and their retail price.
WhenOn every transaction, for as long as the customer stays.
Who supportsThe partner, with your material behind them.
ReferrerThey make the introduction
Who holds the relationshipYou do, from the first conversation onward.
What they are paid onA share of what that customer pays, at a rate you set.
WhenOn payment received, for a defined term or for life.
Who supportsYou. The referrer is out of the loop after the introduction.
AffiliateThey send traffic
Who holds the relationshipYou do. There is often no conversation at all.
What they are paid onA recorded link or code, resolved at customer creation.
WhenFirst transaction, or a fixed window afterwards.
Who supportsYou, entirely.
StrategicTerms negotiated once
Who holds the relationshipShared, and usually written down badly.
What they are paid onWhatever was agreed in a meeting two years ago.
WhenWhenever somebody remembers to work it out.
Who supportsContested, which is precisely the problem.
Who has gone quiet

A channel does not announce that it is dying.

It just slows down, one month at a time, in a place nobody is looking. Each partner is measured against their own run rate rather than against each other, because a referrer who sends four a month is healthy and a reseller who sends four is in trouble.

Customers introduced, last eight monthsTwo flagged, one worth a call about widening terms
Bellamy Network12 this month
Outperforming their own run rate by a third. Worth a call about widening the terms.
Meridian Group9 this month
Steady and improving. No action needed, which is itself worth knowing.
Kerrison Associates4 this month
Flat for eight months. Not a problem, but not a growth channel either.
Harlow PartnersNone this month
Six months of decline ending in nothing. They did not complain. Nobody ever does.
Voss ReferralsNone this month
Never really started. Worth deciding whether to invest in it or close it politely.

Paying accurately and on time is the entire programme. Everything else in channel management is secondary to it, because partners who are paid promptly with visible workings send more, and they send better, since they will put their own reputation behind it.

What partners covers

One ledger for every kind of relationship.

Every relationship type in one ledgerResellers, referrers, affiliates and introducers, each with their own terms, their own view and their own customers, rather than three spreadsheets and an understanding.
Attribution that holds upThe customer is linked to whoever brought them at the moment they are created, so the conversation about who gets paid never becomes an argument six months later.
Commission calculated on the eventWhen the money actually lands, using the terms attached to that relationship, rather than reconstructed at period end from memory and an email chain.
Statements drafted and publishedWith the workings visible, so a partner can check the figure themselves instead of asking you to.
Margin after commission, everywherePer partner, per customer and overall. What the channel is genuinely worth once you have paid for it, which is the number that decides whether to grow it.
A workspace each partner logs intoUnder your brand. Their customers, their pipeline, their statements. They stop emailing you for updates because they can see them.
How this gets set up

Four decisions, then it runs itself.

01Define the relationship types you actually haveMost businesses have three or four, not one, and the differences between them are the whole reason commission runs go wrong.
02Put the terms on the relationshipRate, basis, timing and any floor or cap. Once terms live on the record rather than in a signed document, every calculation downstream stops being manual.
03Turn on attribution at creationCodes, links and manual introduction records. Customer creation is the only moment attribution is uncontested, so that is where it gets captured.
04Give partners their own viewBranded and self serve, showing their customers and their statements. This single change removes most of the inbound admin a channel generates.
Where this connects

The channel touches the money at both ends.

FinanceMargin after commission, and what the channel is worth
Partner programThe rate card, and what a book of business is worth
CRMWhere attribution is captured, at customer creation
For channel leaders

Bring your last commission run.

The spreadsheet, the adjustments and the partner who queried it. We will rebuild it on the ledger and show you what the statement would have said instead.

Book the channel review See the rate card
KastorBook a demo

See your own week run on one record.

Bring one department and a real week of work. In about thirty minutes we put it through Kastor: an enquiry arriving, moving through your stages, becoming a signed agreement, becoming an invoice, and landing in margin. The same record the whole way, with agents doing the parts nobody should be doing by hand.

  • Your enquiry to cash loop on one record, with the handovers taken out
  • Agents that write the invoice and chase it, not agents that answer questions
  • What your receivables number is today, and what it looks like after
  • Your model running inside your own environment, with the data staying there
No trial signup and no card details One follow up, then we stop Your data stays in your environment We bring the questions, you bring one real week

Request your demo

Five fields and a consent box. We reply within one business day.

How did you hear about Kastor?
Privacy policy and Terms.

We use this to prepare the call and to reply. We do not sell it on or add you to a list you did not ask for.

What happens next

Three steps, and no sales process hiding behind them.

A demo request usually buys you a discovery call, then a qualification call, then a demo. This is one call, and the useful part of it happens in the first ten minutes.

01

A reply within one business day

Two or three times to choose from, and one question back so the call starts in the right place rather than starting at the beginning.

02

Thirty minutes on your own numbers

Not a slide deck. One department, one real week of work, and the loop running against it while you watch. Bring whoever argues with the numbers.

03

You keep the map either way

A written view of every point where your current setup asks a person to carry something between two systems. That is yours whether you go further or not.

Before the call

Three pages worth reading while you wait for the reply.

Lead to cashThe single argument the whole demo is built on
SecurityWhere your model runs and where your data stays
ControlWhat the owner sees when everything runs on one record

Not ready to book anything?

Fair enough. Read the lead to cash page instead. It makes the whole case in about six minutes and asks nothing of you. When it stops being theoretical, the form is still here.

Read that first