Pre-Payment and Post-Payment are the two payment stages in the campaign workflow. They determine when creators receive their incentives relative to when they post content.

Pre-Payment

Creators enter Pre-Payment manually, once you promote them from the previous stage. This stage is used when you're sending compensation or product before creators post, such as shipping product, or paying a flat fee upfront.

When to enable 

Use Pre-Payment if you need to deliver product, gift cards, or upfront cash before creators start creating content.

Auto-promotion

Creators move out of Pre-Payment automatically once all their Pre-Payment incentives are marked as fulfilled through a payment integration (Stripe or Tango Card). If incentives are fulfilled manually (product, offline payment), you'll need to promote creators forward yourself.

Post-Payment

Creators enter Post-Payment automatically after completing all their deliverables in Content Creation. This stage is used when you're compensating creators after they've posted.

When to enable

Use Post-Payment for pay-on-delivery campaigns — cash, gift cards, or other rewards sent after content goes live.

Auto-promotion 

Creators move to Complete automatically once all Post-Payment incentives are fulfilled through Stripe or Tango Card. If the incentive is deleted, disabled, or handled outside Later (for example, paid by bank transfer), they'll stay in Post-Payment until you promote them manually.
 

Payment Stages and Workflow Phases

Pre-Payment sits in the Participants phase. Content binding and incentive fulfillment are both enabled here. Post-Payment sits in the Complete phase. Creators at this stage have fulfilled all deliverables and are awaiting their final payment.

For more detail on phases, see From Candidates to Complete: Campaign Phases Explained.

Recommended Message Automation

Consider automating:

• You're Confirmed template at Pre-Payment to notify creators their participation is confirmed and payment is coming.
• Payment Pending or Post Complete templates at Post-Payment or Complete to update creators on their payment status.

Troubleshooting

Creators didn't move out of Pre-Payment after receiving product

Manual product fulfillment won't trigger auto-promotion. Promote them manually once product is confirmed as sent.

Creators didn't move to Complete after payment

Check whether the incentive was fulfilled via Stripe or Tango Card. If not, promote them manually.

Some creators need incentives and others don't

Consider disabling payment stages and fulfilling incentives manually for the subset who need them, to avoid confusion in the workflow.