The Pre-Payment and Post-Payment stages help you manage incentive fulfillment inside your campaign workflow.

• Pre-Payment — creators have confirmed participation and are ready to receive incentives before posting.
• Post-Payment — creators have completed their deliverables and are ready to receive incentives after posting.

Both stages are optional, and you can enable either, both, or neither depending on your campaign setup.

When to enable 

• Enable Pre-Payment if you need to ship product, codes, or provide credit/gift cards before creators can produce content.
• Enable Post-Payment if you’re paying creators after they’ve posted (e.g., cash via Stripe, gift cards via Tango).
• Enable both if your campaign provides product up front and payment after posting.

Creator movement & auto-promotion

Incentive stages are designed to move creators forward automatically once their incentive has been taken care of.

Pre-Payment

• Creators enter Pre-Payment automatically after they confirm participation.
• They move forward automatically once all the Pre-Payment incentives (e.g., free product, gift card) are marked as fulfilled in Later.
• If the incentive is deleted, turned off, or handled outside Later (e.g., you ship product manually), they will stay in Pre-Payment until you manually promote them.

Post-Payment

• Creators enter Post-Payment automatically after finishing all deliverables in Content Creation.
• They move to Complete automatically once all the Post-Payment incentives (e.g., cash payment, gift card) are marked as fulfilled in Later.
• If the incentive is deleted, turned off, or handled outside Later (e.g., paid by bank transfer), they will stay in Post-Payment until you manually promote them.

Integrations vs Manual Fulfillment

• Incentives fulfilled through Stripe or Tango Card are automatically tracked and will trigger auto-promotion.
• Incentives handled manually (like shipping product, paying outside of Later) will not trigger auto-promotion — you’ll need to move creators forward yourself.

Payment stages and workflow phases

• Pre-Payment sits in the Participants phase. Creators here are active campaign participants, and content binding + incentive fulfillment are enabled.
• Post-Payment sits in the Complete phase. Creators here have fulfilled deliverables, and payment is the last step before they’re fully complete with the campaign.

Read more about workflow phases here: Phases of a campaign explained

Recommended message automation 

There are no default templates tied directly to Pre-Payment or Post-Payment. However:

• You’re Confirmed → often sent before Pre-Payment, confirming participation.
• Payment Pending / Payment Complete → can be tied to Post-Payment or Complete.

Best practices

• Plan incentives early — decide if you’ll deliver before, after, or both.
• Integrate when possible — use Stripe or Tango for automatic fulfillment + auto-promotion.
• Use for physical product — Pre-Payment is the perfect way to track who has received product or access.
• Stay consistent — don’t mix manual + automatic incentives within the same campaign unless you track carefully.
• Communicate clearly — update message templates to explain when and how creators will be compensated.

Troubleshooting common questions

“Creators didn’t move out of Pre-Payment after receiving product.”

Manual product fulfillment won’t auto-promote. You need to promote them manually.

“We paid, but creators didn’t move to Complete.”

Check if the incentive was fulfilled via Stripe/Tango. If not, promote them manually.

“Some creators don’t need incentives, but others do.”

Consider disabling payment stages to avoid confusion, then fulfill incentives manually for the subset who need them.