An approved transaction is a transaction that is approved and accepted for the campaign. An approved transaction is a qualified transaction that you have decided to pay for. An approve transaction becomes a business decision to pay the affiliate commission for the transaction.

A qualified transaction is the reporting of a successful transaction in terms of technology.

For example, in a CPA campaign, when a tracking link is clicked, a cookie is placed on the consumer’s PC. When the consumer lands on the confirmation page, the confirmation pixel fires and attempts to locate the cookie. If the cookie is present, the confirmation pixel consumes the cookie and reports home with a success. This generates a qualified transaction.  

For a CPC campaign, when a tracking URL is clicked by a consumer, LinkTrust registers the click and a qualified transaction is recorded.

If you have 100 qualified transactions and 3 of these transactions are fraudulent, you want to unapprove 3 transactions, so you do not pay commissions for these. After you adjust the transactions for the fraudulent transactions, LinkTrust shows 100 transactions in the Qualified Column and 97 transactions in the Approved Column.

By default, campaigns are set to auto-approve all qualified transactions.

For more information, see How do I turn auto-approve transactions off?