What creators see
Creators never touch wp-admin, so everything they learn about a payout reaches them two ways: a page on their own dashboard, and an email when you record one.
Both are read-only. By the time a creator hears about a payout the money has already left your account, so there is nothing here for them to accept, dispute, or act on. The point is that they stop having to ask.
The Payouts page
Section titled “The Payouts page”A Payouts section appears in the creator’s frontend dashboard, between Campaigns and Pledges. Anyone who can run a campaign on your site sees it; backers do not.
It lists the payouts you have sent them, newest first, ten to a page:
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Sent | The date you told Ignition the money left. Test payouts carry a Test badge. |
| Amount | What you actually sent. |
| Method | Check, Bank transfer, Cash, or Other. |
| Reference | The reference you typed on the record form — the text they can match against their bank statement. An em dash when you left it blank. |
Under each row, The N payments this covered expands into the detail: every payment the payout settled, grouped by campaign, each one showing the date the money moved and the backer’s name. This is what lets a creator reconcile one deposit in their bank against the pledges that produced it.
Once there is more than one payout, a Total sent to you row closes the table with the lifetime figure — one row per currency, never added together.
A creator with no payouts yet sees:
No payouts yet.
When [your site’s name] sends you money it has collected for your campaigns, each payment will be listed here.
What is not on the page
Section titled “What is not on the page”- Your private note. It is never rendered, never sent, and never reachable from the frontend.
- Reversed payouts. A payout you have reversed disappears from the creator’s page, along with the entry that reversed it. What is listed is what stands.
- What they are still owed. The page is a record of what has been sent, not a running balance.
Test payouts are shown
Section titled “Test payouts are shown”Unlike the wp-admin screens, this page lists live and test payouts together, with a Test badge on the test ones. A creator rehearsing a campaign with test money can see the rehearsal payout you told them about, without wondering why the email points at an empty page.
The payout-recorded email
Section titled “The payout-recorded email”Recording a payout emails the creator. It is a notice, written in the past tense, because the money has already gone.
The default subject is “Payout sent: $4,182.55”. The opening line depends on how you sent it:
| Method | Opening line |
|---|---|
| Bank transfer | [your site’s name] sent you [amount] by bank transfer on [date]. It can take a few days to appear in your account. |
| Check | [your site’s name] sent you a check for [amount] on [date]. It may take a few days to reach you. |
| Cash | [your site’s name] paid you [amount] in cash on [date]. |
| Other | [your site’s name] sent you [amount] on [date]. |
Then a summary table — Amount, Date sent, Method, Reference (only when you entered one), and Covers, which reads “33 payments to Salish Sea Kelp Survey”, or “33 payments across 4 campaigns”, or just the count if every campaign behind it has since been deleted — and a View your payouts link to the dashboard page.
Your private note never appears in it.
Switching it on and off
Section titled “Switching it on and off”The email is listed as Payout Recorded on the Emails tab under Ignition → Settings, where you can preview it, edit its subject and body, or switch it off entirely. See Email notifications.
Creators can also switch it off for themselves. It appears as Payout sent — “When the platform records a payout to you” — under Emails about campaigns you manage in the Notifications section of their account page, on by default, and every one of these emails carries an unsubscribe link. See Account settings.
If you customise the subject or body, five extra placeholders are available: {payout_amount}, {payout_date}, {payout_method}, {payout_reference}, and {payouts_url}.
Knowing whether it went
Section titled “Knowing whether it went”The confirmation you see after recording a payout tells you whether the email actually went out — it names the creator when it did, and says nothing when it did not. Reasons it might not: the email is switched off site-wide, the creator has unsubscribed, or their account no longer exists.
Reversing a payout sends no email. Creators are told when money is sent, not when a record is corrected.
Related
Section titled “Related”- Recording a payout — the form that triggers the email.
- Payout history — your side of the same record.
- Email notifications — every email the platform sends.
- Account settings — where a creator manages their own notifications.