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Overview
You have Everflow Pay. The next job is getting your Partners set up in it, because a Partner who has not finished their own setup cannot be paid, however well the rest of your program is running.
The good news is that this is the fast half. Your own activation was reviewed. Your Partners are not. A Partner fills in one form from inside their Partner Platform, and once they submit their banking information they become payable automatically, usually within minutes. There is no test deposit and no waiting period.
The part worth getting right before you send the first invitation is what they will be asked for, because it is not what most people assume.
What Your Partners Actually Do
Everything a Partner needs is inside the Partner Platform they already log in to, under Company Settings then Billing. They pick Everflow Pay as their payment method and work through a short wizard called Everflow Pay Configuration. It has three steps, shown across the top as they go: General, Banking, and Review and T&C.
A Partner who came to you through the Everflow Marketplace sets up from the Marketplace Platform instead, and their form is laid out a little differently. The two articles to send Partners directly are Setting Up Your Everflow Pay Account for direct Partners and Configure Your Payment Settings On The Marketplace Platform for Marketplace Partners.
What Every Partner Fills In
The first step, General, is the longest one and it collects three things: their business information, their tax ID, and a point of contact for payments.
Step two is their banking details, and step three is a review screen with the terms and conditions to agree to before they submit. When they are done, their Billing page shows the setup marked complete and finishing at Ready To Receive Payments, and their Payment Method Status reads PAYABLE. That status is the one thing worth teaching them to look at, because it is the difference between being set up and being payable.
What Depends On You, Not On Them
Here is the sentence to hold on to: whether a Partner completes a US tax form depends on where your business is registered, not on where they are. A Partner comparing notes with a Partner in someone else's program can get a different answer and both can be right.
If Your Business Is Registered Outside the United States
Your Partners never complete a US tax form. There is no tax form step in their setup at all, wherever in the world they are. US tax collection does not apply to a business registered outside the US, so no W-9 or W-8 is requested and no tax profile is created for them.
If Your Business Is US-Based
Your Partners complete a US tax form only when your account is configured to require tax verification. When it is, their setup gains a Tax Information stage: a US-based Partner completes a W-9, and a Partner outside the US completes a W-8. A W-8 is routine rather than exotic. It is simply the form a non-US person files, and there are several versions of it depending on the Partner's circumstances.
What To Tell Them Before They Start
Three things save most of the support tickets this generates.
If a Partner is stuck at NOT PAYABLE after they believe they have finished, that last point is the first thing to check, and Payee Account Types & Statuses in Everflow Pay covers the rest of the statuses they can be sitting in.
How To Use This Series
Think of this guide as your roadmap for Partner onboarding. Each article below builds on the one before it, from choosing Everflow Pay as your default through to reading a payment status when something looks wrong. Read them in order the first time. After that, use them as reference.
If you have not activated Everflow Pay yet, start one step earlier.
→ What Is Everflow Pay?, what it does and what it costs.
→ How To Set Up Everflow Pay, applying for it and getting activated.
→ Funding Your Everflow Pay Account, because a Partner cannot be paid from an empty wallet.
→ Setting Up Your Everflow Pay Account, the partner-facing walkthrough you can send them.
