Explanation of different transaction statuses

If you create an account on ShopDonation, you can view all of your purchases that have resulted in donations in a complete overview. This is the case for a personal account as well as for a cause account that you manage.

The purchases you see in this overview can have the following statuses:

- Pending
- Rejected
- Approved
- Paid out

Pending

As soon as a purchase arrives at ShopDonation, the status is most likely pending. This status means that we have not yet received the commission, because the purchase can still be returned or canceled by the buyer. Some products have a return period of one month or longer. Hotel bookings are not paid until the hotel visit has actually taken place. That is why after a purchase you can still see this status for a while.

Approved

This means that the webshop has approved the purchase and will pay the commission to ShopDonation. The donation is now guaranteed.

Paid out

This means that the donation has been paid to the chosen cause. The cause will be able to confirm that they have received this amount.

Rejected

If the purchase is indeed returned or canceled, the purchase will be given the status "rejected" and the donation will be deducted from the total of your chosen cause. You can still see the purchase transaction in the overview in your account.

Another case in which a purchase can later be given the status “rejected” is the following: some webshops initially allocate a purchase with the status “pending”, to multiple websites like ShopDonation, while there is ultimately only one website that will actually receive the commission.

Clicks from other websites

Purchases can also be rejected if the buyer has made multiple clicks from multiple affiliate channels (such as a discount code website or a comparison website) to the webshop. Only after investigation does the webshop clarify which channel the commission is allocated to, which leads to one winner and several losers. The losers are given the status "rejected" and thus they receive no commission.

Who gets the commission?

How the winner is determined depends on many factors. Some webshops pay the commission according to the first click that sent a shopper to their website, while others pay the commission according to the last click that sent the shopper to their website. In recent years, more and more complex formulas have been used to determine who gets the commission, and many webshops are also changing their policies regarding the allocation of the commission. This makes it almost impossible for us to keep track of and explain it in a simple way to the shoppers on our website.

An easy way to avoid your donation being miss-allocated

• Do not click via another website to arrive at the webshop that you want to shop at.
• If a previous click has already been made, delete the cookies before you go to ShopDonation and/or use an incognito window.
• Always turn off Adblocker on ShopDonation to prevent "missed purchases" from happening.
  
  More information about missed purchases and how the transaction system works can be found here.

If you do not agree with the rejection from the webshop, let us know via the contact form and we will then contact the relevant webshop to follow up on the purchase status. ShopDonation wants to monitor the data we receive from the webshops together with the shoppers, so that the commissions are correctly allocated to our channel and we can pay the correct donations to your cause.

If you have a good reason to think something is wrong, we will be happy to find this out for you. We may still be able to allocate the donation for you!

Transparency

ShopDonation gives complete transparancy by disclosing all transactions that come in and are paid out by ShopDonation to all parties involved. An overview:
 

• All transactions that ShopDonation receive from the webshops can be viewed by ShopDonation's users.
• For each cause anyone can see how much they have raised at any time.
• Individual users can verify the status of their purchase and can contact ShopDonation if they suspect that something is incorrect.
• Cause owners can see from which purchases the donations were generated*.

* At the same time, cause owners cannot see a user’s private information, such as the email address of users who have shopped for their cause. Only a username will be visible, which can be made completely anonymous according to the user’s wishes.

Together with the shoppers, we check whether all purchases arrive correctly in our system. ShopDonation is the only platform where users can receive an email confirmation of a donation after making a purchase, in addition to the live overview in the user account. As a result, missed purchases do not go unnoticed and the highest possible percentage is still converted into donations by ShopDonation.

Payouts

All payouts are systematically transferred to the causes on a quarterly basis and can be verified through our system, by both the shoppers and the cause itself. This is because each accepted purchase through ShopDonation displays when the donation will be paid out, or when it was already paid out. Every possible discrepancy can therefore be checked by all parties involved, back to the first purchase since the beginning of ShopDonation.

We are proud to have made this system as transparent as possible. We are very aware that any kind of ambiguity can create the wrong impression, and that any wrong impression can be disastrous for our precious concept.

That is why we have structured the system how we would have like to see it ourselves, were we in the cause or shopper’s shoes. If you still have questions or feedback, please don’t hesitate to let us know.