Running an affiliate program in today's market requires a stable, scalable platform that is highly configurable and allows you to run your program how you see fit. Too Much Media's top product, NATS (Next-Generation Affiliate Tracking Software), lets you analyze and maintain affiliate relationships, deliver and track advertising tools, configure unlimited offers, and generate detailed reports.
It was built from the ground up to be highly configurable in order to let you run a fully featured affiliate program, providing excellent solutions for both new and existing affiliate programs.
Website: https://www.toomuchmedia.com/
Company Knowledge Base: http://tmmwiki.com/index.php/Main_Page
NATS: https://www.toomuchmedia.com/pp_nats.htm
Too Much Media Products: https://www.toomuchmedia.com/products.htm
This document will guide you in configuring CCBill Standard forms and FlexForms for use in combination with NATS4. This guide assumes that the reader is familiar with NATS4 and has already installed NATS4 on a dedicated server.
Avoid testing CCBill payments with a NATS4 test account - it won't work correctly.
Please select the appropriate configuration instructions below based on whether you want to setup NATS4 with CCBill Standard Forms or with CCBill FlexForms.
In order to set up CCBill you need to:
1. Log in to the CCBill Admin Portal.
2. Click Account Info > Account Setup.
3. Follow the on-screen instructions to set up the website. (Find detailed instructions here.)
4. Each page of the wizard permits the establishment of specific options when creating a new subaccount. Click Next to proceed to the next step and choose a new subaccount number.
5. The New Subaccount #field displays the next available subaccount number. Several successive pages of the Create Subaccount wizard will follow.
6. Click Prev to return to the previous wizard page.
You do not need to download the index page.
1. After setting up a subaccount, click Account Info > Sub Account admin again.
2. Select a site from the list of subaccounts.
3. Choose Basic from the navigation pane on the left.
4. Enter the following Denial URL:
http://linkdomain/signup/returnurl_ccbill.php?memberid=%%memberid%%&session=%%natssess%%5. Add the following Approval URL:
http://linkdomain/signup/returnurl_ccbill.php?status=approved&memberid=%%memberid%%&session=%%natssess%%You may still need to add the passthroughs if they are not added automatically (please be sure to test this). The passthroughs to add to the above URLs would be:
memberid=%%memberid%%&session=%%natssess%%1, After setting up the Basic settings, select Webhooks from the navigation pane.
2. Enter the following URL in the Webhook URL field:
http://linkdomain/signup/process_ccbillff.php1. Select Advanced from the navigation pane.
2. Make sure that both the Denial and Approval Post URL fields are left blank for each site that will be using CCBill FlexForms.
Ensure that the Traffic Manager is turned OFF. This feature cascades consumers between different payment types within CCBillFF's system and can cause NATS cascading to not work properly.
Navigate to User Management. If your site needs user management, set the following options, but make sure they match the NATS settings.
Please follow our FlexForms Quick Start Guide in order to easily create a payment flow.
If you need a more in-depth user guide, please refer to our FlexForms Overview.
To begin setting up CCBill FlexForms as a biller in NATS:
1. Browse to the NATS4 Billers Admin.
2. Scroll down to the Biller drop-down menu and select CCBillFF.
3. Click Add.
What if CCBillFF is not listed? If you don't see CCBillFF as a biller in NATS4, put in a support ticket, as you may need an updated version of NATS.
4. When prompted, fill in the Account Number, Advanced Dynamic Upgrades, API Username and API Password that were provided to you by CCBill under the Account Info section. If you have trouble identifying your account information, please put in a support ticket.
1, Browse to the NATS4 Sites Admin.
2. Create or edit a tour. (A tour is sample content on a site. Tours can be associated with a particular program and may feature a popup chain.)
3. Scroll down to the Biller Details section.
4. Enter your CCBillFF subaccount number into the CCBillFF Sub Account field.
5. Optionally, add a salt which will be used for dynamic pricing and will allow for Advanced Dynamic Upgrades.
6. Once finished, scroll down to Join Options for this Tour section.
7. Click the Edit Option Details for this Tour icon that corresponds to the join option you wish to use.
8. In the Biller Codes section on the next page, locate the CCBILLFF options. Enter your CCBill Flex ID (also known as Price IDs) for every payment method you wish to accept.
9. Optionally, configure Dynamic Pricing, a Currency, an alternative subaccount and/or Upgrade Type ID.
10. If the FlexID is not unique to the site, you can configure an optional TypeId for the join option.
11. Click Save when you have finished filling out the available fields.
CCBillFF is now be configured to process basic transactions through NATS4.
Use CCBill's back-end post system by setting up an upgrade subaccount for each site in the CCBill Admin.
1, Create a new subaccount in the CCBill Admin, and within the notes for adding the subaccount, note that this will be an upgrade account for one of your particular sites. CCBill will mark the subaccount as an upgrade account and set up the necessary upgrade join options.
2. Once set up, browse to the Sites Admin, edit a tour, and create or edit a join option.
3. Go to the biller details section and find the CCBillFF subsection. Enter the upgrade subaccount information in the provided field and click the Save Changes button. Repeat for each site.
4. Contact CCBill and let us know that you want to enable upgrades using the back-end posts. You must provide CCBill Support with your server's IP addresses for the subaccount.
5. On your CCBillFF account, go to advanced setup for the subaccount and enter the following URL in the Denial and Approval Post URL fields:
http://<linkdomain>/signup/process_ccbillff.phpReplace <linkdomain> with your site's linkdomain.
6. After CCBillFF upgrades are working, put the following link in your limited members area for user upgrades:
http://<linkdomain>/signup/upgradeplus.php?site=<siteid>&username=<username>Replace <linkdomain> with the linkdomain for your site. Replace <siteid> with your site's ID number. Replace <username> with the upgrading member's username.
If you experience any issues while setting up subscription upgrades, contact CCBill and a Merchant Support Specialist will assist you immediately.
CCBill FlexForms supports cross sells. Setting up this feature is a process similar to other billers where you need to create an incoming and outgoing xsell for internal cross-sales. For general instructions on setting up cross sells, please refer to NATS4 documentation.
If you set up usernames and passwords on your website, remove the Username and Password fields from your site's join form.
You need to enable CCBill password management if you use text password files. If you use NATS for authentication with MySQL Auth, then you can turn password management off.
If you have old sites that used flat password files and now use NATS, then you must keep the password management on and add the following line to your .htaccess file:
AuthMySQLAuthoritative OffContact us to manage the database with scripts called from NATS postbacks.
There are three settings that might affect cascading billing:
1. Go to Account Info >> Sub Account Admin and select your site's subaccount.
2. Select Form Admin from the navigation pane on the left and choose a form.
3. Click on Traffic, and set the Traffic Flow to None. Now denied transactions are sent to the denial URL immediately.
1. Go to Account Info >> Sub Account Admin and select your site's subaccount.
2. Select Form Admin from the navigation pane on the left and choose a form.
3. Click on Basic, and set the Denial Redirect Time to 3.
Activating the None option disables the automatic redirect.
If you have issues with affiliates receiving double payments for traffic they have referred, it may be due to the Multiple Redirects feature. Turn off the Multiple Redirects feature in order to prevent incorrect link-codes from being used to record double traffic.
1. Log in to the CCBill Admin.
2. Select Legacy Affiliate > Advanced Features.
3. Disable the Multiple Redirects option.
If you experience automatic redirects to a Signup with Bank Account page regardless of what's in your cascade, you probably have Decline Auto-Redirect enabled.
1. Log in to the CCBill Admin.
2. Navigate to Account Info >> Sub Account Admin.
3. Select your site's subaccount.
4. Select Form Admin from the navigation pane on the left.
5. Choose your form.
6. Select Traffic from the navigation pane and set the Traffic Flow option to None.
The invalid request error appears when the biller isn't set up correctly in the NATS Billers Admin. Go to the Billers Admin and double-check your biller account info. Remember not to include the subaccount ID in the account ID. If this is not the problem, ensure the subaccount was enabled and contact NATS.
If you have received an adding users error email from CCBill, there are three (3) possible scenarios:
1. If you use NATS to handle your password management (mod_auth_mysql or some other method using the NATS members table) then you can safely disregard this mail.
2. If you use standard flat password files, please contact our Merchant Support team in order to resolve the issue.
3. If you use both NATS and flat password files, please contact our Merchant Support team to fix the password file issue — even if members get access through NATS.
In order to set up CCBill you need to:
1. Log in to the CCBill Admin Portal.
2. Click Account Info > Account Setup.
3. Follow the on-screen instructions to set up the website. (Find detailed instructions here.)
4. Each page of the wizard permits the establishment of specific options when creating a new subaccount. Click Next to proceed to the next step and choose a new subaccount number.
5. The New Subaccount #field displays the next available subaccount number. Several successive pages of the Create Subaccount wizard will follow.
6. Click Prev to return to the previous wizard page.
You do not need to download the index page.
1. After setting up a subaccount, click Account Info > Sub Account admin again.
2. Select a site from the list of subaccounts.
3. Choose Basic from the navigation pane on the left.
4. Enter the following Denial URL:
http://linkdomain/signup/returnurl_ccbill.php?memberid=%%memberid%%&session=%%natssess%%5. Add the following Approval URL:
http://linkdomain/signup/returnurl_ccbill.php?status=approved&memberid=%%memberid%%&session=%%natssess%%If you are using NATS version below 4.0.68.3, use the following in both of the Basic Denial URL and Approval URL fields: http://linkdomain/signup/signup.php?step=3&site=%%siteid%%&memberid=%%memberid
Select Advanced from the navigation pane on the left and enter the following URL in both the Denial and Approval Post URL fields:
http://linkdomain/signup/process_ccbill.phpIn the above Denial and Approval URLs, replace linkdomain with your linkdomain.
Ensure that the Traffic Manager feature is OFF. This feature may cause NATS cascading to not work properly.
Navigate to User Management. If your site needs user management, set the following options, but make sure they match the NATS settings.
Enter the option you want to sell with NATS in the Pricing Admin. Record each option's SKU I.D. number.
Clients who do not have access to Datalink need to contact Merchant Support and file a request. Besides that, in order to set up Datalink, you need one or more subaccounts. Before you start setting up Datalink, you also need your NATS server's IP address.
In order to set up Datalink:
1. Log in to the CCBill Admin Portal.
2. Hover over Account Info.
3. Click Datalink Services Suite.
4. Select Add User from the navigation pane on the left.
5. Ensure that Account is set to All.
6. Enter a Username and Password. (Password must be 6 to 8 alphanumeric characters, with at least one number, and one letter.)
7. Enter your NATS IP address. Click Add To Valid IPs to confirm your changes.
8. Click Store User.
Make sure that your Datalink account is set up to be used for all subaccounts.
To learn more about Datalink, follow these links:
If you need help in setting up Datalink, please contact Merchant Support.
To begin setting up CCBill as a biller in NATS:
1. Browse to the NATS4 Billers Admin.
2. Scroll down to the Biller drop-down menu and select CCBill.
3. Click Add.
4. When prompted, fill in the Account Number, Datalink Username, and Datalink Password provided to you by CCBill.
If you have trouble identifying your account information, don't hesitate to contact Merchant Support.
1. Browse to the NATS4 Sites Admin.
2. Create or edit a tour. (A tour is sample content on a site. Tours can be associated with a particular program and may feature a popup chain.)
3. Scroll down to the Biller Details section.
4. Enter your CCBill subaccount ID and Form IDs into the CCBill fields.
5. You can also add different subaccounts for each payment type if you want to use different values for a specific site, as opposed to other sites.
6. Once finished, scroll down to Join Options for this Tour section.
7. Click the Edit Option Details for this Tour icon that corresponds to the join option you wish to use.
8. In the Biller Codes section on the next page, locate the CCBILL options.
9. Enter your CCBill Payment IDs (also known as Price IDs) for every payment method you wish to accept.
10. Once you have done this, fill in your subaccount, form, and SKU I.D. information.
11. Click Save when you have finished filling out the available fields.
CCBill will now be configured to process basic transactions through NATS4.
Any option that contains CCB900 or CCBill Web900 applies to CCBill Web900.
Use CCBill's back-end post system by setting up an upgrade subaccount for each site in the CCBill Admin portal.
1. Create a new subaccount in the CCBill Admin and within the notes for adding the subaccount, note that this will be an upgrade account for one of your particular sites. CCBill will mark the subaccount as an upgrade account and set up the necessary upgrade join options.
2. Once set up, browse to the Sites Admin, edit a tour, and create or edit a join option.
3. Browse to the biller details section and find the CCBill subsection.
4. Enter the upgrade subaccount information in the provided field and click the Save Changes button. Repeat for each site.
5. Contact CCBill and let us know that you want to enable upgrades using the back-end posts. You must provide us your server's IP addresses for both the normal and upgrade subaccounts.
6. Find Advanced Setup for the subaccount and enter the following URL in the Denial and Approval Post URL fields:
http://<linkdomain>/signup/process_ccbillff.phpReplace <linkdomain> with your site's linkdomain.
7. After upgrades are working, put the following link in your limited members area for user upgrades:
http://<linkdomain>/signup/upgradeplus.php?site=<siteid>&username=<username>Replace <linkdomain> with the linkdomain for your site. Replace <siteid> with your site's ID number. Replace <username> with the upgrading member's username.
If you experience any issues while setting up subscription upgrades, contact CCBill and a Merchant Support Specialist will assist you immediately.
If you setup usernames and passwords on your website, you need to remove the Username and Password fields from your site's join form.
You need to enable CCBill password management if you use text password files. If you use NATS for authentication with MySQL Auth, then you can turn password management off.
If you have old sites that used flat password files and now use NATS, then you must keep the password management on and add the following line to your .htaccess file:
AuthMySQLAuthoritative OffContact us to manage the database with scripts called from NATS postbacks.
If you are receiving a cross sale from a non NATS source, you will need to pass your Ref Code into the CCBill purchase page as one of the following custom variables, natsxsell, natsxsell1, or natsxsell2.
If you have any questions about how to add a custom variable to your join links, or buttons, please contact CCBill for assistance.
There are three settings that might affect cascading billing:
1. Go to Account Info >> Sub Account Admin and select your site's subaccount.
2. Select Form Admin from the navigation pane on the left and choose a form.
3. Click on Traffic, and set the Traffic Flow to None. Now denied transactions are sent to the denial URL immediately.
1. Go to Account Info >> Sub Account Admin and select your site's subaccount.
2. Select Form Admin from the navigation pane on the left and choose a form.
3. Click on Basic, and set the Denial Redirect Time to 3.
Activating the None option disables the automatic redirect.
If you have issues with affiliates receiving double payments for traffic they have referred, it may be due to the Multiple Redirects feature. Turn OFF the Multiple Redirects feature in order to prevent incorrect linkcodes from being used to record double traffic.
1. Log in to the CCBill Admin.
2. Select Legacy Affiliate > Advanced Features.
3. Disable the Multiple Redirects option.
If consumers are automatically redirected to a "Signup with Bank Account" page regardless of what's in your cascade, you probably have the Decline Auto-Redirect enabled. Disable the feature to automatically redirect surfers on a decline.
1. Log in to the CCBill Admin.
2. Navigate to Account Info >> Sub Account Admin.
3. Select your site's subaccount.
4. Select Form Admin from the navigation pane on the left.
5. Choose your form.
6. Select Traffic from the navigation pane and set the Traffic Flow option to None.
If you had CCBill Affiliates promoting linkcodes for the master account (subaccount 0000), the NATS redirect script will determine the NATS site via the HTML parameter of the CCBill affiliate linkcode.
To ensure that the HTML parameter is sent to the NATS redirect script, you must enable append data on redirect in the CCBill Admin.
1. Log in to the CCBill Admin.
2. Select Legacy Affiliate > Advanced Features.
3. Click the Enable link for the Append Data on Redirect option.
The invalid request error appears when the biller isn't set up correctly in the NATS Billers Admin. Go to the Billers Admin and double-check your biller account info. Remember NOT to include the subaccount ID in the account ID. If this is not the problem, ensure the subaccount was enabled and contact NATS.
If you have received an adding users error email from CCBill, there are three (3) possible scenarios:
1. If you use NATS to handle your password management (mod_auth_mysql or some other method using the NATS members table) then you can safely disregard this mail.
2. If you use standard flat password files, please contact our Merchant Support team in order to resolve the issue.
3. If you use both NATS and flat password files, please contact our Merchant Support team to fix the password file issue — even if members get access through NATS.
| ERROR | DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|
| Authentication failed. 01 | Too many failed login attempts. |
| Authentication failed. 02 | Invalid user name, incorrect user name, no user name provided, invalid password, incorrect password, no password provided, incorrect clientAccnum/clientSubacc, or user is set up for a different clientAccnum/clientSubacc than provided. |
| Authentication failed. 03 | Inactive login. |
| Authentication failed. 04 | Incorrect/non-configured IP address. |
| Authentication failed. 05 | Three or more failed logins within the last hour. |
| Authentication failed. 06 | Invalid user name, incorrect user name, no user name provided, invalid password, incorrect password, no password provided, incorrect clientAccnum/clientSubacc, or user is setup for a different clientAccnum/clientSubacc than provided. |
| Authentication failed. 07 | Incorrect IP address. |