Broker commissions & payouts
DISTRYB pays the broker business, not the individual — commissions route to the broker org's connected account.
How it works
- Accrual — when an order the broker is attributed to is fulfilled, the commission is recorded.
- Payout — earned commissions are transferred to the broker org's Stripe account on the payout run.
Commissions keep accruing in full whether or not anything else is in place — the gates below decide when the transfer happens, never whether you earned it.
Two things have to be true before money moves
- A state broker license on file, wherever you work.
- Stripe connected, so there is somewhere to send it.
Whichever you finish last is what releases the payment, and neither needs anyone at DISTRYB to do something for you.
Licensing
Some states require a broker's license to solicit sales — Illinois is one (235 ILCS 5/5-1). Until yours is on file, commission keeps accruing in full and payment waits.
Add it under Licenses in your dashboard. It counts immediately, marked self-reported until the state registry confirms it, and it is the same record the payout run checks — so filing it is what releases the money. You don't need a location to hold one: choose This business if you have no premises.
If you are cleared to sell while unlicensed
DISTRYB can clear a broker to work while their license is pending. That is permission to sell, not permission to be paid: you operate normally, commission accrues in full, and the payment waits for the license. Your Commissions page says so plainly rather than telling you that you are unlicensed.
Payout holds
A hold placed for a missing license lifts itself once the license is on file — you do not need to ask. A hold placed by DISTRYB for any other reason stays until we lift it, and says why.
You'll see the status on the Partnerships page: Payout ready, Payout on hold, or Stripe not connected.
Connecting Stripe
From the broker dashboard (or via an admin invite), connect Stripe to receive payouts. The account is created on your organization, and once Stripe enables payouts you're ready to be paid. If your license was already on file, connecting is the last step and the next payout run pays you.
If a commission was paid in error
It happens — a duplicate payout, an order credited to the wrong broker, an order amended after it paid. When it does, here is exactly what we will and will not do.
We never take money out of your bank account. A correction can only reach two places: what is still sitting in your Stripe balance, and what you earn next.
There are three outcomes, and you are told which one in writing, with the amounts, at the moment it happens:
| What it means | |
|---|---|
| Returned | The money was still in your Stripe balance and has been returned from there. |
| Withheld | It had already gone, so it comes out of your next commission instead. |
| Written off | DISTRYB absorbs it. You keep the money and owe nothing. |
| Paid to you | The correction went the other way — you were owed more, and we sent it. |
A single correction can be part returned and part withheld — we take back what is still there and withhold the rest.
It can happen more than once, and each time only for what is wrong then. If an order is edited twice after your commission was paid, the second correction is handled the same way as the first -- sized to the new difference, not the old one.
A correction is only ever for the amount that was wrong. The commonest cause is an order being edited after your commission had already been paid: if the order got smaller, only the difference is recovered, never the whole commission. If it got larger, you are owed more — and because the payout run only looks at unpaid orders, nothing would ever have sent it. We now notice, tell you, and pay it.
When something is withheld, the payout that applies it says so too: you will see "$X commission has been paid to you for order W-1042, after $Y withheld for the correction agreed earlier", rather than a smaller number than you were expecting with nothing to explain it.
The one exception, and how it works
If a correction is larger than what is left in your Stripe balance, we would normally withhold the difference from future commission. In one situation that is the wrong answer: if the original payout was in a previous tax year, withholding from this year leaves both years' 1099s wrong.
In that case we may return the full amount instead, which can leave your Stripe balance temporarily negative. We will tell you before we do it, not after — it requires a written acknowledgement from the person at DISTRYB making the correction, recorded against their name, and it cannot be done as a routine action.
What we will not do
- Take anything from your bank account.
- Correct a commission without telling you the amounts.
- Let a distributor claw back your commission on their own. Corrections to paid commission are made by DISTRYB, not by the party on the other side of the deal.
If a correction looks wrong to you, reply to the notice or contact accounts@distryb.com. Your Commissions page carries the record.
Track commissions over the API: API: Commissions.