Reimbursement Options

If you choose "Creator will purchase the product(s) directly" instead of shipping product, you'll need to decide how to reimburse Creators for what they spend. There are two approaches, and at any real volume we recommend the first.

Option 1 (recommended): one flat amount, stated up front

Set one reimbursement amount that covers every Creator — the product price plus enough headroom for sales tax, rounded up generously. Sales tax varies by state, so a flat, slightly generous number is simpler than chasing exact totals, and it scales to hundreds of Creators without a review step.

Put the numbers in the Product step. In the field explaining how Creators should use the product, state two things plainly: what the product costs, and what you will reimburse. That is the field Creators read when they are deciding whether to apply, and two numbers side by side leave nothing to interpret:

This product costs about $18 at X store. You will be reimbursed $22 after you submit your content.

Use the Targeting question only to confirm they will do it. Add a question on the Targeting page (4th page) of the brief builder so applicants opt in knowingly. Keep it to the commitment — don’t restate the money here:

This brief requires accepted Creators to purchase the product from X store. If accepted, are you willing and able to go to X store to purchase?

Keeping the two apart is deliberate. A question that says reimbursement “is included in your overall compensation” reads as though the payment already covers it, and Creators can’t tell what they are actually getting back.

Option 2: reimburse the exact amount from a receipt

Ask Creators to post a photo of their receipt in the Cohley chat. Once you see it, click the edit icon next to that Creator's expected compensation and set it to their original compensation + the exact reimbursement.

This gets you to the cent, but it's a per-Creator manual review — practical for a handful of Creators, not for a large brief.

Note: Seeding briefs work differently

Option 2 is not available in a Seeding brief. Seeding briefs have no Creator chat, so there's no way for a Creator to send you a receipt, and no receipt upload elsewhere in the brief. Reimbursement in a Seeding brief is something you start — nothing triggers it, because Cohley has no way to know a Creator spent their own money. 

Use Reimburse Creator on each Creator in the brief, or ask Finn to reimburse a set amount per Creator. Use the flat-amount approach in Option 1 and communicate it in the brief. See What is a Seeding Brief?

You don’t write the opt-in question on a Seeding brief. Option 1 asks you to add your own question on the Targeting page. On a Seeding brief you can’t — but you don’t need to. If you want applicants to opt in knowingly, write the requirement into your creator criteria in plain language instead — “must go to Target to purchase” — and Cohley generates the question for you.

The product cost and the reimbursement amount go in the Product step either way, exactly as in Option 1. On a Seeding brief that matters more than anywhere else: Creators are spending their own money up front. You can send them a mass message through Finn afterward, but they can’t reply to ask what they are getting back — so the numbers need to be right in the brief before they apply.