Uploading an agreement gets its terms into Partner Partner — see Uploading a Partner Agreement for that step. Approving it is what puts those terms to work.
This article covers the one action every uploaded agreement needs — the draft-to-active approval — and the two things it sets in motion: your own Receipts, and a Program + Tier draft on your tech partner's side that only they can publish.
1. Before You Approve
Every uploaded agreement starts as a draft. Before you approve it, review what Partner Partner extracted — rate, payout cadence, and renewal date — against the agreement itself.
If anything couldn't be read with confidence, you'll see it called out directly on the agreement, for example:
⚠️ Gaps flagged — review before approving, with the specific items listed (a missing effective date, an unclear dispute window, and so on)
✅ Nothing flagged — all fields extracted with high confidence
Treat a gap like you would a typo in a contract summary — worth a second look before you sign off, not a sign that anything is wrong.
2. Approving: Draft → Active
Once you're satisfied the terms are right, approving the agreement flips its status from draft to active. You'll see the change reflected immediately, on the agreement's review panel and in its row on the agreements list.
This one action is the gate. Nothing about the agreement's terms is used anywhere else in Partner Partner until it's active.
3. What Approval Starts: Your Receipts
The moment an agreement goes active, Partner Partner starts checking your ongoing partner data against its terms — and surfacing what's worth bringing to your partner conversation as a Receipt, evidence attached. Against an active agreement, that includes things like:
Whether a renewal is coming up
Whether payments are landing on the cadence the agreement specifies
Whether the rate you're actually being paid matches the agreement
Whether commission continues — or correctly stops — after any tail period the agreement defines
Whether your current tier assignment matches what the agreement specifies
Each of these Receipts carries a confidence label and links back to the source agreement, so you can always see where a finding came from. For how agreement-derived Receipts differ from the Receipts built from your ongoing commission data, see How Agreement-Based Receipts Work.
4. What Approval Also Starts: A Program + Tier Draft
Approving an agreement does one more thing behind the scenes: Partner Partner drafts a Program and Tier on your tech partner's side, seeded from the terms you just approved — for example, a tier carrying the commission rate your agreement specifies.
This draft is owned entirely by the tech partner. It is not visible to your partners, and it does not appear as a program anywhere in your own account — because it isn't yours to publish.
5. The Governance Line: Approving Is Not Publishing
This is the part worth being precise about.
Your approval activates the agreement and starts your Receipts. Your tech partner's publish action is a separate step, owned by them, that makes a program and its tiers visible to their partners. One does not cause the other to go live.
Action | Who does it | What it affects |
Approve an agreement | You (the agency) | The agreement's own status — draft → active. Starts Receipts against it. |
Publish a program | Your tech partner | The program's visibility to partners. Drafted from your approval, but only they can publish it. |
Until your tech partner publishes, the drafted program and tier exist only on their side, in draft. Nothing you do in your own account changes that. For what happens on the tech partner's side and how they publish, see Publishing Your Program & Partner Tiers.
Related: Uploading a Partner Agreement · How Partner Tier Health & Accountability Works (once a program is published and you're assigned a tier, that's where you'll track it) · How Agreement-Based Receipts Work · Publishing Your Program & Partner Tiers