How to Pay Collaborators

How obligations accumulate

Every conversion Siren approves creates an obligation, a record of money you owe a specific collaborator for a specific transaction. They build up under Siren > Obligations as sales come in. Each entry shows the collaborator, amount, transaction, and status. Until you act, they sit as “pending.”

For the underlying concepts, see What are obligations and What is a fulfillment.

Create a fulfillment

A fulfillment takes pending obligations, groups them by collaborator, and produces one payout record per person. If Steve has three obligations for $5, $8, and $12, the fulfillment turns them into a single $25 payout for Steve.

You can either select specific obligations with the checkboxes or click “Create fulfillment from pending” to scoop up everything at once. Either way you’ll see a summary screen with the total, the number of obligations included, and the per-collaborator breakdown before you commit.

Go to Siren > Obligations

Review the pending obligations from your programs.

Select obligations or click "Create fulfillment from pending"

Check specific obligations to include, or grab every pending obligation at once.

Review the fulfillment summary

Confirm the total, the number of obligations, and the per-collaborator breakdown.

Click "Generate fulfillments"

Obligations are marked complete and grouped into payout records, one per collaborator.

After generating, head to Siren > Fulfillments and click in to see the individual payouts. Each obligation now carries a payout ID, and you can click that ID from the obligations screen to filter and see exactly which obligations a payout covered.

Pay people

Siren tracks what you owe and organizes the records, but the actual money moves outside Siren through whatever method you use (PayPal, bank transfer, check, etc.). There are two ways to handle the handoff.

Go to Siren > Fulfillments and click into the fulfillment

View the payouts generated for each collaborator.

Pay individually: select a payout, click "Mark as paid", and click Apply

Use this when sending payments one at a time.

Pay in bulk: click "Fulfill payouts" and download the CSV

The CSV has collaborator details and amounts. Import it into your payment processor. All payouts are automatically marked as paid.

Mark a payout as unpaid if needed

If a payment fails or a collaborator says they never received it, set the payout back to unpaid.

Undo and adjust

You can flip a payout back to unpaid at any time. If a payment fails or a collaborator reports they never got it, just mark it unpaid and the record reflects reality. If a customer requests a refund, Siren handles obligation cleanup automatically. See How Refunds Work for what happens to obligations and payouts when a transaction is reversed.

The fulfillment system gives you a complete audit trail. Every obligation links to a payout, every payout links to a fulfillment, and statuses reflect the current state of each payment. That paper trail is useful for accounting, taxes, and resolving disputes.

Transcript

Pending obligations build up under Siren > Obligations as conversions happen. When you’re ready to pay, you create a fulfillment, which groups obligations by collaborator and generates one payout per person. You can either hand-pick obligations with the checkboxes or click “Create fulfillment from pending” to bundle every pending obligation in one shot.

Once the fulfillment exists, each payout can be marked paid one at a time, or you can click “Fulfill payouts” to export a CSV (handy for importing into your payment processor) and mark every payout in the fulfillment paid in bulk. If something goes wrong after the fact, like a failed payment or a collaborator saying they never received it, you can mark a payout unpaid at any time. Every obligation, payout, and fulfillment stays linked, so you’ve got a clean audit trail end-to-end.