Description
Summary I sell digital marketing products both directly and through an affiliate program. My current tech stack includes SamCart, Skool, Zapier, Stripe, paypal. I also use Hyros, Kit, Unbounce. Am considering Trolley for tax compliance and automated payouts. I'm looking for an expert to design and automate the affiliate onboarding and payout workflow, including: Affiliate application and onboarding Digital contract execution and legal attestations Collection and secure storage of payment information Collection and management of W-9/W-8 tax forms Automatic affiliate account creation and referral link generation Automated payout processing Year-end tax reporting (e.g., 1099s) and compliance The ideal solution should minimize manual administration, provide a seamless experience for affiliates, and integrate cleanly with my existing systems while being scalable as the program grows. Below is an AI generated example workflow:Here's the whole thing end to end, split into the two loops it actually runs as: onboarding each affiliate once, then the recurring sales-to-payout cycle. I'll mark what's automatic versus what you touch by hand. Phase A — Onboarding (happens once per affiliate) Applicant clicks your front-door form link (Fillout/Jotform). That's the only way in — SamCart auto-approve stays off, and you no longer share the raw SamCart signup link. They complete the application fields and tick the four required checkboxes: agree to the agreement, certify they purchased and completed the course, agree to FTC disclosure, and certify their info is accurate. The form auto-stamps email, timestamp, IP, and agreement version. Your acceptance record is now created and stored. (automatic) Submission fires Zapier, which matches their email against your SamCart buyers sheet (that sheet is auto-populated by a SamCart "new order" Zap). If they're a real buyer, Zapier queues them for your review; if not, it routes them to a reject/hold path. (automatic) You do the one human check: glance at their Skool progress to confirm the course-completion box they ticked is actually true, then approve. At your scale you batch this, not one at a time. (manual — touchpoint #1) On approval, SamCart creates the affiliate and issues their unique referral link. A SamCart "affiliate added" trigger hands that link to Zapier, which sends the onboarding email (referral link + disclosure rules + your Skool affiliate-hub invite) and invites them into Trolley as a recipient. (automatic) In Trolley, the affiliate completes their W-9 or W-8BEN. Trolley validates the TIN and marks them payable — and until that's done, Trolley holds any payment. (affiliate does it; Trolley automates the rest) At the end of Phase A the affiliate is fully live: link in hand, agreement and attestation on file, tax form validated. Phase B — Sales to payout (recurring) The affiliate promotes with their link and disclosure; a referred customer buys on SamCart, and Stripe processes the charge. (automatic) SamCart attributes the sale, calculates the commission (including recurring rebills), and remains the single source of truth for who earned what. If a sale later refunds or charges back, SamCart claws the commission back automatically. (automatic) On your payout cadence (monthly is typical), you run the cycle: in SamCart, generate the commission/payout report for the period and export the payee-and-amount CSV. (manual — touchpoint #2, a few minutes) Upload that CSV to Trolley as a payment batch. Trolley pays each affiliate by their chosen method (PayPal, Wise, or bank), applies any required withholding on foreign affiliates, and skips anyone whose tax form isn't complete. (you upload; Trolley pays) — if you'd rather not touch it at all, this handoff can be automated via Zapier/Trolley's API instead of the CSV, since there's no native SamCart-to-Trolley connector. At year-end, Trolley generates and files the 1099-NEC (US, now at the $2,000 threshold) and 1042-S (foreign) automatically. (automatic) So your only two manual touchpoints are: the Skool completion check before approval, and the monthly SamCart-CSV-to-Trolley upload (and even that one is automatable). Everything else runs on its own.