Welcome and thanks for joining!
Table of Contents:
Payment Setup
Once you’ve signed up for the site you’ll want to tell us how to pay you by going to the “Payout Setup” page on the left side of the portal, under account settings.
Native ACH
Beginning in Spring 2024 we are launching our own native ACH payout system. You’ll add your bank info in the portal on the payouts tab and we will send a test deposit/withdrawal. This typically arrives within 24h. You’ll log back in and confirm the amount of the test deposit in order to confirm the bank account. Once it is confirmed you’ll want to set it to be your default account and all future payments will go here unless otherwise specified. Your account needs to be fully verified no later than two days before your Wednesday payout. If it isn’t setup in time, your payout will roll over to the next week and will keep doing so until you’ve verified a bank.
Legacy Payout Methods
Below we describe the payout methods that currently exist and which will be phased out in April. We will leave this in the guide for a while as these legacy options will remain available for existing members until all of their pre-ACH-era sales have been paid.
We currently use OnlineCheckWriter.com (OCW) to send payments, either as an eCheck or as an ACH transfer. Check the box next to the method you prefer and a text box will appear where you can type the email address you want payout communications sent to. Click ‘Save Changes’ to apply.
eChecks
These are straightforward, you’ll get an email for each payment with a link to OCW to download a PDF of the check that you can print and deposit either with your bank’s mobile app or at an ATM or branch. You’ll need to create and OCW account the first time you do this. On future payments you’ll need to login with the account you created.
ACH
ACH is a system of electronic bank transfers. We do not store your banking info so we still only need an email for the ACH option. When we initiate a payment for the first time you’ll get an email from OCW where you will add your banking info. OCW has their own support team and any questions you have about their site should go to their support. Your ACH transfers will not go to your bank until you use the link in the email to give your banking info to OCW so you should do this promptly on your first payment. For some banks there is an option to instantly verify using your bank login; if you aren’t comfortable doing that or it doesn’t work with your bank there is a manual option where they send test deposits the next day and you login and confirm the amounts. After you setup your account on the first payment, future payments will automatically go to your bank with no further action needed on your part.
ACH – Changing Bank Accounts
Setting up an initial bank account is pretty easy but if, later on, you want to change that account in the future it gets a little complicated. The OCW interface is quite confusing. There is no such thing as a “recipient only” account so you’ll see the full interface we see, as though you also wanted to send a bunch of payouts to other people — even though all you’re trying to do is receive money. If you ever need to add an account follow this article.
You will see an option on your bank account to “apply for ACH” but you DO NOT NEED TO DO THIS. This refers to you applying for the ability to send ACH payments to others. You do not need to apply for anything in order to receive ACH payments.
Once you have added your new account you need to set this to be the auto-withdraw location. Go to the “Wallet” tab and click the gear in the top right of the wallet page.
“Enable wallet bypassing” only applies to people who are sending money so it does not matter what you select here.
You probably want to make sure “Enable Auto Withdrawal” is turned on so that when we send payments it withdraws to your bank right away. There are some users who wanted the ability to accumulate their payouts before deciding where to withdraw them. If you wanted to do that then you’d turn this setting off.
Finally you’ll want to choose your bank account from the dropdown menu to let it know where to auto-withdraw to and then save your settings.
We typically start working on payouts the day before we send them so if you make changes too close to a pay date they might not take effect until the following payout.
At some point in 2023 we plan to start handling ACH payments in-house and to remove the eCheck option. This guide will be updated at that time.
Notifications
Next up, let’s customize our notifications (last item on the left hamburger menu). By default, you’re opted into emails from all deal sources but this doesn’t make sense for most users. For example, I live in Texas and have access to HEB so I want to receive HEB notifications. I do not live near a Kroger, Food City, Giant Eagle, etc. By unchecking these boxes I will no longer receive emails when deals are posted for those places. I will still see these deals on the website, however.
Uncheck any deal sources you don’t care about and then save your changes. This helps keep our emails relevant to you so that good deals aren’t lost in a flood of emails at stores you don’t shop at.
Additionally, you can set profit filters on your emails. By default, your global profit filter will be set to -100%, meaning any deal from a source you’ve opted into will be emailed, even if it were a 100% loss. Most people will probably want to change this to something between 0 and -2. If a deal has at least one item that meets or exceeds your minimum and you’ve opted into the deal source, you’ll get the email. For example, if you only want deals that are breakeven or better, you’d set it to 0. If we posted a deal from a source you were opted into that had one item at a 2% loss and one item at breakeven, you’d get the email because at least one item met your minimum. For certain deal sources you might want to have a higher or lower margin than your default choice. For example, deals from iBotta require a debit card so you might only want to see those if they were at least 1% profitable. You can turn the override switch on and type “1” in the box. Deals from Staples.com code as Office Supplies so on those you might be willing to accept a loss of up to 3%:d turn the override on and type “-3” in the box.
Buying Your First Deal
AI is a deal-based platform, meaning we don’t post standing rates for brands. Instead, we post a deal with instructions for where to buy it and details on what we will pay you. If you want to participate in one of these deals you will need a reservation. Your seller dashboard will show you all the deals currently open for reservations. We can click the 
We can click the “reserve” button to get the full details (and the option to request a reservation):
At the top you can see basic information about the deal including deal notes where you can usually find steps on how to complete the deal. You will sometimes find notes about how to derived the acquisition cost number, which is your cost to acquire the items. With Costco, for example, we assume you have an executive membership and generally explain in the notes that the acquisition cost number factors that 2% in. You can also see the buy rate, which is what we will pay you for that item. Deal emails are sent out when we post a deal but if our capacity fills up we sometimes take more cards at a lower rate and often times the deal notes will mention that we added more capacity at a lower rate. The rate that is actually on your reservation is what you will be paid, not the rate you see in the original email.
Next you see a blue note reminding you that the pre-approved limits are the limits that will be automatically pre-approved and that you are still allowed to request more. Any amount you request that exceeds the automatic pre approval limits will split into a 2nd request that goes to admins for manual approval. If and when it is approved or denied you will get an email. When approving overages, admins may lower the purchase rate and/or approve only some of what you requested so be sure to read the full details of the approved reservation.
A reservation is our promise to buy the cards so we suggest you do not buy more cards than you have an approved reservation for. If you are approved for $900 but buy $2000 there is a chance that we won’t take the $1100 overage and you will be stuck with them.
Finally, at the bottom, you can enter the details of your request. In this example we can see that no $100 Xbox cards will be pre-approved but that up to five $50 cards can be. We can fill out that we want five $50 cards and you can see the site will show that this is $250 in total cards:
After you submit your request you’ll get a message telling you about the status. In this case, we were auto-approved for the entire request because the amount we requested (5x$50) was within the pre-approval limits. It is possible that between the time we loaded the deal details page and the time we submitted the request that someone else took the last of the capacity, causing some or all of our request not to auto-approve. For this reason, always read the confirmation message carefully:
If your request exceeds the pre-approved quantity on the deal or if the deal has run out of global capacity then some or all of your reservation will take on a pending status which means we will manually review it and either approve or deny it. Note: if your reservation is manually approved it is possible that we have changed the rate, due date, or any other detail about the deal. You should read the reservation in its entirety before buying anything to make sure you still want to do the deal.
Only your open reservations appear at the top of your dashboard. Every reservation you have ever created (including expired and closed reservations) appears on the “reservations” tab (2nd option on the left hamburger menu).
With an open reservation, we can submit, reduce, or cancel it. Reducing or canceling a reservation that you know you won’t be able to fill helps to reopen capacity for other users and helps us do a better job of estimating our liabilities. We encourage you to stay on top of it for everyone’s benefit. People who habitually fail to fulfill their reservations will be less likely to be approved for overages in the future.
Since we have a confirmed reservation for Buffalo Wild Wings in this example, we can go buy them and then submit them with the submit button, which opens the submission page. On the submission page we have both a simple and an advanced method to submit cards. The simple method is the “Add Card” button in the middle of the page. Here we enter card details one at a time and click “submit” after each card we add. Whether you purchased an electronic gift card sent to you by email or a physical card you enter the card number and (as applicable) the PIN here.
IMPORTANT NOTE! If you enter the wrong denomination at this step, you’ll be very sad! If you’re supposed to submit a $250 and typo it as $25 and the card sells, we have no mechanism to get the money back! Always double check! We rely on the data you provide us to market your cards. If you are trying to submit a denom that is not part of your reservation, DO NOT just pick any random denom we are accepting. Reach out to an admin BEFORE UPLOADING ANYTHING and explain what denom you need changed and why. Most deals are denom-sensitive and we are only accepting the listed denoms for a reason. If we can accept your denom at all, you need to wait for an admin to edit the accepted denoms on your reservation before you upload anything and you need to be prepared for the possibility that we are not interested in other denoms at all.
When we have added all the cards we are ready to submit, we click “done.” At this step, the cards have “draft” status meaning AI has not received your cards into inventory and you can still take a card back by removing it from the reservation. If you have added all the cards you wish to add at this time and you are ready to submit the reservation, you must agree to the T&Cs and click the “Submit Gift Cards” button at the bottom of the page. At this point, you have sold the cards to AI and cannot take them back. This is also the date that determines when the cards you submitted will be paid out.
You are not required to fulfill an entire reservation all at once. If you had a $10,000 reservation, for example, you could submit $1,000 each day, as you process the cards. If, for example, you submit $5,000 on Sunday and $5,000 on Monday, the cards you submitted on Sunday will be paid one week before the cards you submitted on Monday, as the pay period is based on when the card was sold to us, not when the reservation was fulfilled. We encourage you to upload cards as you go.
Requesting Help
If you need help with a specific reservation, use the “request help or extension” button in the details for that reservation (viewed by clicking the submit button next to a reservation on your dashboard). You can do this even for reservations that have already expired by opening those expired reservations from your reservations tab. Use the “reason” field to include the details of your specific request:
You should use this option for requests that requires us to edit a specific reservation for you, this commonly includes:
- Requesting a later due date
- Requesting a denomination other than what was requested in the deal
- Any time an admin has told you to flag your reservation by requesting help on the portal
For requests related to an email we sent to you, just reply to the email. For requests which are unrelated to a specific reservation, send an email to: support@alignedincentivesllc.zendesk.com
Pay Period
Your dashboard always contains a notice of the current pay period at the top of the page:
The pay period runs Monday-Sunday, Central Time. The payment for all cards submitted in that period (with a standard payout) will be on the 2nd Wednesday after the pay period. If there is a bank holiday Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, the payment date will be moved back a day. The banner on the site usually accounts for this but sometimes we miss one. If you opt for an extended payouts (and on some deals you will have no choice but to do so) then your payment date will be farther away. If you had a reservation with a +2 week extended payout then, instead of being paid on the 2nd Wednesday after the pay period closes, you would be paid on the 4th Wednesday (2+2).
Bulk Submissions
If you have a large number of cards to submit you will probably store them in a spreadsheet. We can accept spreadsheet uploads or copy/pasted submissions. Clicking the “Bulk Import” button inside a reservation will bring up the bulk import screen:
We pre-generate a CSV in the format our system expects. This is important because the brand name needs to exactly match our internal brand name (e.g. “The Home Depot” vs “Home Depot”). Additionally, you need to have all the headers in your file even if you aren’t using them:
If you use a spreadsheet to hold your inventory we suggest you make an export tab that you can copy this info into so that you do not overwrite the formatting style in your sheet. Alternatively, you can make a column in your sheet that uses concatenate to create a comma separated list (see the example inventory sheet in the next section for an example).
Note: If you open a CSV in excel by double-clicking, it defaults to treating your card numbers and integers with scientific notation which will mess them up. You can get around this by ‘importing’ the document instead of ‘opening’ it. Read more about excel, data types, and CSVs here.
Once you add your card info just save as a CSV and upload. Alternatively, you copy the info (including ALL of the headers). Toggle the “Use paste/direct entry mode” switch and then paste the data in.
Tracking Your Inventory
We do not require that you track your own inventory on a spreadsheet (although, per the terms, we require that you hold onto your card and proof of purchase for a year after selling it to us). However, the unanimous advice you will hear from anyone in our Telegram channel is “I wish I had done a better job of tracking my inventory on day 1.”
To that end, we’d like to point you to GCGalore.com’s guide on tracking inventory as many of our sellers use his sheet and find it helpful. After you read Stephen’s guide, allow me to make a few suggestions for additions that you can find on our adaptation of the sheet here.
Column A – UUID, this is a unique inventory serial number so that it is easier for your to track your inventory on the site. Once you submit your cards we no longer let you access the full card number or pin on the site in case your account were to be compromised but we do let you see your card notes which you can cross-reference to your inventory. If you add more rows to the sheet you’ll need to copy down new UUIDs as well.
Column B – AI Export, this column automatically formats the data into a CSV. You can copy this cell for any lines you need to add to your reservation:
Then just paste that into the direct import method:
Column U – Magstripe. We suggest you buy (<$20) a magnetic card reader and, once you have one, you can swipe your cards into this column instead of typing the card numbers. You’ll only need to type the PIN by hand. The magnetic swipe data will look like nonsense because it is encoded but our site should be to decode it for you.
Images
There are two kinds of images we can require: card and receipt. We require card images for any cards that must be hand-typed so this would be brands like Uber, AirBNB, Xbox, etc. Because the alpha-numeric codes are often hard to read and because you can’t use a magstripe reader, these are very prone to having typos. If a card turns out to have a typo, we will use your images to try to fix it promptly. This happens in the background and you are not debited or even notified if it occurs. If you don’t have images or if the images aren’t legible, however, we will debit you for the card and you’ll have to find the card and fix the typo yourself. We require images here to make your life easier.
The other kind of image we can require is a receipt image. These images are required any time a deal could be purchased in-store. One example would be a Target deal that works in-store and online. We have no way to know whether you bought the cards in store on online and have to require receipt images for all of them. If you bought them online you would just submit a screenshot of your receipt. The purpose of these receipts is to satisfy random audits from our bank to make sure we are not aiding money launderers. This means that the part of the receipt we need is the part that shows you paid with a card and not cash, NOT the smaller activation receipt that some retailers print. We can also accept a credit card statement that lines up with the size/date/location of the purchase. All we’re looking for is proof that you’re not using cash to buy the cards. If you continually fail to supply compliant images you’ll be kicked off the platform. We reserve the right to remove anyone from the platform at any time for any reason so if your failure to upload images is part of a larger pattern of unusual behavior you may be removed immediately.
What image formats are accepted?
Image formats like JPG and PNG are accepted. Documents like PDFs and DOCs are not. You can convert a PDF to an image using many free online tools you can find on Google.
What if I need to add or correct an image?
You can request help as described above and use request type ‘other’. In the description you can write ‘adding a photo’ and then you can upload the photo and submit.