Nordlet

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Nordlet for affiliates

Invoice affiliate commission in any currency, apply the right cross-border VAT treatment and match the payments that come in.

An affiliate is a business that earns commission by sending customers to other companies, usually through links on a website, a newsletter or social media. The commission is paid by the merchant or by an affiliate network.

The money often comes from companies in other countries, in more than one currency. That raises two questions for the books: which VAT applies to the invoice, and how to record a payment in a foreign currency.

Nordlet has no features made only for affiliates. It has general invoicing, VAT, currency and bank features that an affiliate business uses. This page describes those.

What Nordlet does

  • Creates sales invoices for your commission, with your own number series.
  • Sends the invoice by e-mail as a PDF.
  • Repeats an invoice on a schedule, for example when a merchant pays you a fixed monthly fee.
  • Issues an invoice in a currency other than your company's own, and stores the exchange rate of the invoice date on it.
  • Imports bank statements and matches each payment to its invoice.
  • Registers the bills you pay, for example for advertising or software, and lets you forward them to your company's e-mail address in Nordlet.

VAT on cross-border commission

VAT is the tax added to the price of a sale. Commission is a payment for a service, and the VAT rules for services depend on where the customer is and whether it is a business.

The new-invoice page has a VAT scheme field. These options matter most for commission:

  • Domestic: the merchant is in your own country. Your country's VAT rates apply.
  • Intra-EU B2B services (reverse charge): the merchant is a VAT-registered business in another EU country. The invoice carries no VAT and the PDF prints "Reverse charge". With reverse charge VAT, the buyer accounts for the VAT instead of you.
  • Out of scope: the merchant is outside the EU. The invoice carries no VAT and the PDF states that the supply is outside EU VAT.
  • Automatic: Nordlet picks the scheme when you save, from the partner's country, VAT number and the supply type you choose.

Before you invoice a business in another EU country, Nordlet can check its VAT number in VIES, the EU's VAT number database. A number that is not valid, or a name that does not match, opens a review on the partner.

The EU VAT guide lists every scheme and the law behind it.

Payments in other currencies

  • Each invoice keeps its own currency, and your books stay in your company's base currency. See multi-currency accounting.
  • When you issue the invoice, Nordlet stores the exchange rate of that date on it.
  • When you match the payment, Nordlet posts the difference between the invoice rate and the payment as a currency gain or loss.
  • The payment does not have to be in the invoice's currency. Euros received on a euro account can settle an invoice in US dollars.
  • Statements come in as camt.053 or MT940 files, as Stripe exports, or through a direct bank connection. The bank imports guide shows each way.

Frequently asked questions

Do I charge VAT on commission from a network in another EU country?

If the network is a VAT-registered business in another EU country, the usual treatment is reverse charge: your invoice shows no VAT and the network accounts for it. Nordlet's automatic option picks this from the partner's country and VAT number. Your own tax adviser decides the case for your business.

Does Nordlet revalue open foreign-currency invoices at month end?

No. Currency differences are posted when a payment is matched. Revaluing open balances at the end of a period is done with a manual journal entry.

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