Setting Up Photographer Payouts
Set what each team member earns per service or package, how travel fees and tips pay out, when payouts lock in, and how earnings show up for owners and members.
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Payouts let you run commission-style pay with your crew — a flat dollar amount each member earns per service or package they shoot, tracked automatically as orders move through your workflow. This isn’t a bank transfer or payroll feature; Spatiko tracks and reports what each person earns, and you handle the actual payment yourself.
Setting a member’s rate
Rates are configured per team member, per service or package, on the Team Capabilities tab under Settings > Services. For each member, you toggle which services and packages they can be assigned to, and set a payout amount alongside each one.
A member with no capability row for a service or package simply doesn’t earn a payout on it. Note that having zero configured capabilities at all makes a member eligible for every service by default; adding even one capability restricts them to only their assigned services. See assigning shoots for how that affects who can be booked.
Payout rates are always a flat amount, not a percentage of the sale price. If a service or package is priced by tiers — by square footage or by named variations — you set one payout amount per tier, matching the number of pricing tiers. You can leave a tier blank if it shouldn’t pay out at all.
Editing rates requires catalog-management permission and is only available on paid plans — see roles and permissions and pricing.
How payouts resolve on an order
Each line item’s payout follows the photographer assigned to the session it belongs to, using that member’s configured rate for that service or package.
Travel fees and tips work differently: both pay out 100% to whichever photographer is assigned to the order’s earliest session — they aren’t split across multiple photographers on the same order.
Custom line items and cancellation items always resolve to the assigned photographer, at a $0 payout rate.
Payouts recompute automatically whenever something that affects them changes — items, session assignment, or the travel fee — so you don’t need to manually refresh anything.
When a payout locks in
Payout amounts snapshot onto the order at delivery. Once an order is delivered, changing a member’s rate afterward only affects future orders — it never changes what a past, already-delivered order paid out.
An owner or admin can also hand-edit a specific order’s resolved payout — per item, travel, or the delivery date itself — directly on that order. Keep in mind a later change that triggers a recompute, like reassigning the photographer, will overwrite a manual edit.
Viewing earnings
- Owners and admins get a business-wide payout report for any date range, broken down per member and per service, based on each order’s delivered date — see team performance and payouts analytics for where accrued payouts show up.
- Any team member can see their own earnings — items, travel, tips, and total — for a date range, without needing extra permissions.
- On an individual order, the Payouts tab shows the live breakdown of who earns what, including whether each line is resolved, unresolved, or unassigned.
For the delivery step that triggers the snapshot, see sending a delivery.
Frequently asked questions
How do I set what each photographer earns per shoot?
Rates are configured per team member, per service or package, on the Team Capabilities tab under Settings > Services. Payout rates are always a flat dollar amount, not a percentage of the sale price, with one payout amount per tier on tiered services.
Do travel fees and tips pay out to photographers?
Both travel fees and tips pay out 100% to the photographer assigned to the order's earliest session — they aren't split across multiple photographers on the same order.
When do payout amounts lock in?
Payout amounts snapshot onto the order at delivery. After that, changing a member's rate only affects future orders — it never changes what an already-delivered order paid out.
Does Spatiko transfer the money to my team?
No — payouts aren't a bank transfer or payroll feature. Spatiko tracks and reports what each person earns as orders move through your workflow, and you handle the actual payment yourself.