What is Closing the Month and Why is it Important?

by Zack Cilia

Last updated: 10-Aug-2026

Closing the month is an important step in the MyAffiliates payment process. It finalises the data for the relevant pay period and ensures that all commission calculations are completed before affiliates are paid.

When a client closes a month, MyAffiliates finalises and reprocesses the data for the relevant month or pay period. This generates the final commission amounts for the period and allows the client to review the results and identify any potential discrepancies or anomalies before payments are made.

Why Is Closing the Month Important?
Closing the month provides important safeguards and benefits for everyone involved in the payment process.

For Affiliates
Closing the pay period helps affiliates:

• Track settled commissions and have a clear record of the commissions finalised for each period.
• Maintain aligned statistics and reporting, including ensuring that postback trigger events reported internally and by MyAffiliates remain consistent.
• Protect earnings from large winner activity, as the End-of-Month process ensures the relevant calculations and safeguards are applied.
• Apply customer quarantine, where applicable. Customer quarantine is only evaluated and applied when the End-of-Month process is completed.
• Prevent accidental deal changes, as closed pay periods cannot have their deals or commission terms changed.
• Maintain data integrity, as data and statistics cannot be changed once the pay period has been closed.

For Operators
Closing the month allows operators to:

• Use a built-in MyAffiliates feature at no additional cost to support their financial and commission processes.
• Improve financial visibility and budgeting by having a finalised commission figure for each pay period.
• Ensure data alignment between the operator's source data and the statistics and commission data calculated by MyAffiliates.
• Ensure accurate data post changes, confirming that the final commission data reflects all intended deal changes and customer mappings applied during the pay period.
• Apply negative earnings correctly. Without the End-of-Month process, the operator is effectively working with tentative monthly commission figures, meaning negative earnings have not yet been fully applied to the final calculation.
• Apply customer quarantine, where applicable. Quarantine is only evaluated and applied when the End-of-Month process is completed.
• Prevent accidental deal changes, as closed pay periods cannot have their deals or commission terms changed.
• Protect data integrity, as data and statistics cannot be changed once the pay period has been closed.
• Reduce the risk of calculation errors, as deal approval requires managers to review and confirm the mathematical calculations of the applicable deals.
• Support auditing and financial reconciliation, ensuring that the operator's records can be reconciled against the proof-of-payment transactions reported by MyAffiliates.

For MyAffiliates
The End-of-Month process also provides important safeguards from the MyAffiliates side:

• Supports controlled data changes by providing a defined point at which the data and commission calculations are finalised.
• Minimises human error when manual data corrections or earnings reprocessing are required.
• Ensures correct commission calculations after negative earnings policies and customer quarantine have been applied.
• Provides a consistent and auditable process for finalising commission calculations before payment.

When Can a Month Be Closed?
A pay period cannot be closed if there are outstanding issues that need to be resolved. For example:

• Previous pay periods are still open
• Deals are pending approval
• Hidden transactions are present
• The current pay period is still open

Note: If customer data is missing, incomplete or currently being investigated with the MyAffiliates Support team, the pay period should not be closed until the issue has been resolved.
Closing the pay period finalises the data and commission calculations, so any outstanding data concerns should be addressed before proceeding with the payment process.
 

To check these issues, a Payment Readiness Report is available for the operator to run. Once the client has reviewed the Payment Readiness Report and resolved any outstanding issues, they can provide sign-off to proceed with closing the month.

Once the month is finalised and processed, MyAffiliates generates the final data required for the operator to calculate and pay affiliate commissions for that period.