Laravel Affiliate Laravel Package

Product Decisions This Supports

• Build vs. buy for an affiliate/referral program: v1.3.0 strengthens the case for buying this Laravel package instead of building attribution, partner statements, and payout plumbing in-house. The package now covers automatic attribution, referral thresholds, partner statement rendering, and payout completion safeguards.
• Launch readiness for partner payouts: The release turns issuing-entity configuration into an explicit compliance gate. Generating, issuing, or completing a payout now fails with IssuingEntityNotConfigured when the entity code/legal name is empty or still set to pre-1.3.0 placeholder values. A PM should treat this as a release blocker until legal entity details are configured.
• Customization roadmap: Fixed publish tags now place Blade and Livewire overrides in Laravel-standard vendor paths, so UI customization work is no longer silently ignored. This supports decisions to invest in branded partner portal views.
• Partner statement UX: The default affiliate::partner-statement view now ships with the package, reducing launch friction. An empty configured value falls back to it, so PMs can ship a working statement page before investing in custom design.
• Engineering onboarding and support cost: New IssuingEntity validation, a dedicated exception, Laravel Boost guidelines, and an affiliate-integration skill reduce integration ambiguity. This supports decisions to standardize onboarding and lower support load.
• Upgrade sequencing: Published configs from older versions and previously published views can contain Acme defaults or live in ignored directories. PMs should schedule the v1.3.0 migration before the next payout cycle, not after.

When to Consider This Package

• Consider it when building a Laravel/PHP application that needs affiliate/referral attribution, partner statements, and basic payout lifecycle support without building a custom ledger and statement system.
• Consider it when the team expects to customize partner-facing views. The corrected publish paths make Blade/Livewire overrides predictable and maintainable.
• Consider it when the organization can supply explicit legal issuing-entity details via AFFILIATE_STATEMENTS_ENTITY_CODE, AFFILIATE_STATEMENTS_LEGAL_NAME, and related address/company/tax fields before payouts run.
• Consider it when the team uses Laravel Boost or wants packaged integration guidance. The new guidelines and skill can shorten onboarding.
• Look elsewhere when the product is not Laravel/PHP, when it needs a mature enterprise affiliate network with complex multi-tier commissions, advanced tax handling, or external partner marketplace integrations, or when the team cannot coordinate a config-and-view migration before the next payout.

How to Pitch It (Stakeholders)

For executives: This package is a low-cost accelerator for launching an affiliate/referral revenue channel in our Laravel product. v1.3.0 improves launch readiness by shipping a working partner statement view and by forcing explicit legal issuing-entity configuration before any payout can be generated, issued, or completed. That reduces compliance and reputational risk, but it requires a one-time configuration and view-migration step before the next payout cycle.

For engineering: Upgrade is meaningful but bounded. Set the statement issuing-entity environment variables, remove or update any published config/affiliate_statements.php containing Acme defaults, and move published views from the old resources/views/vendor/affiliate/{blade,livewire} paths to the new Laravel-readable paths. Handle IssuingEntityNotConfigured in payout flows and use the new validator/exception rather than custom checks. The new Boost guideline and affiliate-integration skill should be added to onboarding.

For product/ops: Confirm the legal entity details before enabling payouts, test the partner statement page with the default view, and verify payout completion only succeeds after entity configuration is valid. Delete unmodified published views so future package view updates are not masked.