Paid me in full, then took 40 of those conversions back off the next invoice

March cycle: 214 conversions, paid in full on the 15th, money cleared, cycle closed.

April statement arrives with an adjustment line reversing 40 of March's conversions at $28 each. $1,120 taken off a cycle that had already been paid out and settled.

I want to be precise about what I'm objecting to, because I am not arguing that reversals shouldn't happen. My question is narrower: is there any other network where a closed and settled cycle gets reopened, or is this one doing something the rest of them don't? Every network I've worked with reverses against the pending balance in the current cycle. This is the first time I've seen one reach backwards into a paid one.

If someone can show me this is normal I'll drop it and eat the $1,120.

it's normal. the money's paid, the ledger isn't closed. those are two different things

What does the IO say about the reversal window? Post the clause with the name taken out.

Clause reads: 'Network reserves the right to adjust Affiliate balances in respect of conversions subsequently determined to be invalid, without limitation as to time.'

'Without limitation as to time' is doing an enormous amount of work in that sentence and I did not read it carefully enough in December.

there's your answer then

that clause is in literally every network t&c i've ever signed though! is anyone reading these

Caveat: this has happened to me twice and both times were the same vertical, so take it for what it is.

Practically, the distinction that matters isn't paid versus unpaid - it's documented versus undocumented. Both times I got one, the network could name the reason: one was a chargeback batch coming back from the advertiser, the other was a sub ID they had already warned me about in writing a month earlier. In both cases the money was gone and arguing wasn't going to move it.

What I changed was carrying a reserve. I now treat roughly 10% of any month with a new advertiser as not-yet-mine for 90 days. It doesn't stop the reversal. It stops the reversal from being a cashflow event, which is the part that actually kills people. That's the only real defence I've found in six years.

There is a second-order problem worth raising, and I know it is not the interesting part of the thread.

If you have already reported the March payment as income and the reversal lands in a later period, you now have a negative adjustment sitting in a period that may not have offsetting income against it. Depending on where you file, this is either trivially handled or quietly annoying. It is trivially handled in most places; I mention it only because people tend to discover it the following April rather than in July, when the paperwork still exists.

Keep the adjustment statement. It is the only document that connects the two periods.

A 10% reserve on a new advertiser is the first concrete thing in this thread. What's the number for one you've run for a year?

Two or three percent. Honestly a feeling, not a measurement - never had one from a long-running advertiser.

Bumping with an outcome, since the thread never got a clean one.

They kept the $1,120. I got a partial explanation four weeks later: the advertiser had disputed a batch and the network passed it straight through without looking at it. No conversion-level detail was ever produced and I stopped asking around week six.

What changed on my side is that I now pull the reversal clause before signing anything, and I've walked away from two networks over it since. Two of the five I currently run with cap the window at 60 days in writing, and one of those volunteered it before I asked.

So it isn't universal, whatever grindstone says. It's just the default when nobody negotiates it, and almost nobody negotiates it. Not solved. Priced in.