Getting paid: invoicing, VAT and thresholds

The payment chain: month end, statement, invoice, transfer

Affiliate money moves on a fixed monthly rhythm, and almost every "where is my payment" question is answered by knowing which stage the rhythm is at. The chain has four steps and takes between two and seven weeks end to end.

So commission earned in March is typically in your account in the second half of April. A program paying "monthly by the 15th" is describing stage four, not stage one — a distinction worth knowing before you chase anybody.

Two structural points. The statement is generated from the operator's own reporting, so it is the document to reconcile against, not your click log; the gap between the two is normal and is an attribution question rather than a payment one. And the balance is a running account, not a monthly settlement: if this month does not pay, that is usually because of the threshold or the carryover, both covered below.

Self-billing: why most programs issue the invoice for you, and what to check on it

New affiliates often wait to be asked for an invoice. In this industry you usually are not: the standard arrangement is self-billing, where the program raises the invoice on your behalf and pays against it. You agree to it, often without noticing, when you accept the affiliate terms.

Self-billing exists because the payer needs a valid invoice for its own accounts and cannot rely on thousands of partners to issue correct ones. It is a recognised VAT mechanism with formal requirements — HMRC's guidance on self-billing (VAT Notice 700/62) is the clearest public description, and other European tax authorities set out equivalents.

What to check on the self-billed document when it lands:

• It says "self-billing" on its face. Required in most jurisdictions for the document to be valid.
• Your legal name and address are right, and match your registration. A trading name alone is a problem later.
• Your VAT number appears, if you have one, and is correct. This is the single most common error and it is yours to catch.
• The VAT treatment is stated, including a reverse-charge note where one applies.
• The period, currency and net figure match the statement for the same month.

If the program does not self-bill, you invoice them, and you need the same fields plus their VAT number and legal entity — which is often a different company in a different country from the brand you promoted. Ask for the entity details before the first invoice, not after.

Minimum payout thresholds and how balances roll forward

Nearly every program sets a minimum payout. The figure we see most often is EUR 100, with EUR 250 and EUR 500 appearing on some networks, occasional lower thresholds around EUR 50, and the odd bank-wire threshold as high as EUR 1,000. Below the threshold, nothing is sent and the balance rolls into the next month.

Illustrative worked example, on a EUR 100 threshold:

That is the healthy version. The two failure modes to check in the terms are: a balance that expires after a dormancy period rather than rolling forward indefinitely, and a per-payment administration fee that eats a small balance. Both exist, and both are disclosed if you look.

The two reasons a payment did not arrive: threshold or carryover

When a payment is missing and the reporting shows commission, it is almost always one of two things.

Threshold. Your balance did not reach the minimum. The account usually shows the pending balance plainly. Nothing is wrong.

Negative carryover. Under a revenue-share deal, a month where your players won more than they lost produces a negative figure. If the contract has negative carryover, that negative is carried into the following month and must be worked off before you are paid again. One large win can silence a payout for months.

Illustrative: a 30% revenue share, month one at negative EUR 2,000 of net gaming revenue, months two to four at positive EUR 900 each. With carryover, cumulative net revenue is negative EUR 1,100 after month two and negative EUR 200 after month three; you are first paid in month four, on EUR 700 of net revenue — EUR 210. Without carryover, you would have been paid EUR 270 in each of months two, three and four: EUR 810. Same traffic, one clause, nearly four times as much money.

This is the clause with the largest effect on affiliate income, which is why it has its own analysis in our piece on negative carryover and sits at the centre of the model in our revshare versus CPA versus hybrid guide.

Payment schedules, cut-off dates, and how long transfers actually take

Monthly is the norm. Weekly and twice-monthly schedules exist, mostly on CPA-heavy networks; quarterly is rare and worth arguing about before signing. What varies more than the frequency is the cut-off: a program that pays "by the 15th" may cut off approvals on the 10th, so commission approved on the 12th waits a full month.

Transfer time after the payment run: same day to two days for e-wallets, one to three days for SEPA bank transfers within the euro area, three to five for international wires, and longer across a weekend or a public holiday in the payer's country. If a payment is four working days late, check the payer's national holidays before writing an email.

One first-hand note on scale. We have held balances on networks that sat under the payout threshold for a full year — the account produced a real, tiny, non-zero commission line and never reached the point of being paid out. The paperwork burden did not scale down with the amount: the statement still had to be reconciled, the account still had to be kept alive, and the entry still had to appear in the books. Administration is close to a fixed cost per program, which is a real argument for working with fewer programs properly rather than joining twenty.

Payment methods, and what each costs you in fees and FX

The largest hidden cost is usually not the transfer fee, it is the conversion. Commission is typically denominated in EUR; if you spend in another currency, your bank's retail rate can sit meaningfully off the mid-market rate. On an illustrative EUR 1,000 monthly payout, a 2% spread is EUR 20 a month — EUR 240 a year, for doing nothing. A euro-denominated account, or a payment provider that converts at or near interbank, generally pays for itself within a few payouts.

VAT: the reverse charge, cross-border services, and registration thresholds

Affiliate commission is payment for a service — advertising or marketing services supplied to the operator. That classification, not the gambling context, is what drives the VAT treatment.

For business-to-business supplies of services across borders inside the EU, the general place-of-supply rule puts the supply where the customer belongs, and the customer accounts for the VAT under the reverse charge. In practice: you invoice a VAT-registered business in another member state, you charge no VAT, and you write a reverse-charge note on the invoice. The EU's summary of cross-border VAT rules sets out the general position, and the counterparty's number can be checked on VIES. For UK-based affiliates the equivalent framework is in HMRC's place of supply of services guidance.

What changes when the program is inside or outside your own country

• Same country as you. Ordinary domestic VAT applies if you are registered; you charge it, they reclaim it.
• Another EU member state, business customer. Reverse charge: no VAT charged, note it on the invoice, report it in your own return and in any recapitulative statement your country requires.
• Outside the EU or UK entirely — Malta-based groups are inside the EU, but Curaçao, Gibraltar and the Isle of Man are not. Generally outside the scope of your domestic VAT, but the reporting still exists and the rules differ by country.
• Not VAT-registered yet. Registration thresholds vary widely — the UK publishes its threshold on the VAT registration page, and several EU states set theirs far lower. Cross-border B2B supplies can trigger registration duties before you reach any domestic threshold, which surprises people.

The general shape of the EU rules is on the European Commission's VAT pages. Where your specific position sits is a question for an accountant in your own country — see the last section.

Business structure: sole trader versus company, and when the switch is worth it

Most affiliates start as a sole trader or the local equivalent, because it is free or nearly free and takes a day. A company costs money to form and money every year to keep, in accountancy fees as much as in filing fees.

The signals that usually justify the switch:

• Income is consistent enough that the annual cost of the company is a small percentage of it.
• Programs are asking for a company entity, a VAT number or a registered address before approving you — some do.
• You want the liability separation, or you are working with a partner and need a structure to hold the split.
• Your local tax regime treats company profits materially more favourably than personal income at your level, which is the point where the arithmetic decides rather than instinct.

Switching later is normal and not expensive. Switching early, before there is income, mostly buys you filing obligations.

The records to keep, and for how long

Three documents should exist for every single payment. If one is missing, ask for it while the month is recent, because affiliate platforms routinely purge old statements or lose them at a platform migration.

• The commission statement — the program's own report for the period, showing gross figures and deductions.
• The invoice — self-billed or yours, matching the statement figure exactly.
• The remittance advice or bank record — proof the money arrived, and how much survived fees and conversion.

Alongside those, keep the signed affiliate terms as they stood when you joined — the commission rate, carryover position and threshold at that date — plus any email where a manager confirmed a custom rate. Retention periods differ by country; several European regimes require six or more years for business records, so keep everything for at least that long unless your accountant tells you otherwise. Download quarterly rather than trusting the platform. We have lost statements to a platform migration, and there was no way to get them back.

The vocabulary on these documents is defined in our affiliate glossary — self-billing invoice, remittance advice, minimum payout and deduction all have entries.

Currency: earning in EUR, spending in something else

Two decisions make the FX problem small. First, hold a euro account if most of your commission is euro-denominated, so conversion happens when you choose rather than on every arrival. Second, book the income at the rate on the date the invoice is raised, and record the realised difference separately when it converts — most tax authorities require the former and expect the latter as an FX gain or loss. Doing this from month one keeps a year-end reconciliation to minutes.

This is not tax advice — when to get a professional involved

Everything above is how affiliate payments work operationally, drawn from running affiliate accounts across several networks. It is not tax or legal advice, and it cannot be: VAT registration duties, income tax treatment, allowable expenses and the sole-trader-versus-company question all turn on where you are resident and what else you earn.

Get a professional involved at any of these points: before your first cross-border invoice, when annual income approaches any registration threshold, before forming a company, and whenever a program asks for a tax form you do not recognise. An hour of advice is cheaper than a year of misfiled returns, and the answers are stable once you have them. The compliance side of the same coin — what you are allowed to publish in each market — is covered in our affiliate compliance guide for the UK, Germany, Sweden and Spain, and the shorter answers to the questions that come up most often are on our frequently asked questions page.

What we would do this week

1. For every program you are in, write down three numbers on one page: minimum payout threshold, payment date, and whether the contract has negative carryover. Most affiliates cannot answer all three from memory, and all three decide when money arrives.
2. Download the last twelve months of statements and self-billed invoices from every program account, into one folder per program per year. Platforms lose them; you will not.
3. Book one hour with an accountant in your own country, with those documents open, and ask exactly two questions: do I need to register for VAT at my current level, and how should cross-border affiliate commission be reported on my return?