How much is the referral fee and what is it calculated on?

Twenty percent of the setup fee we invoice the client, calculated on the GST exclusive amount and excluding anything we pass through at cost such as third party licences, phone numbers or hardware. If a project is staged across several setup invoices, the referral is paid pro rata as each one clears rather than held back to the end. Ongoing monthly subscription fees do not carry a referral, which is a deliberate choice: a trailing percentage on recurring revenue quietly creates an incentive to leave a client on something they have outgrown, and we would rather not have that incentive in the room.

When exactly do I get paid?

The fee falls due when the client’s setup invoice is paid and the funds have cleared, not when the proposal is signed. You issue us a tax invoice for the confirmed amount and we pay within fourteen days of receiving it. The amount is confirmed to you in writing at proposal stage, before the client signs, so there is never a gap where you are guessing what you are owed. If the client signs and then does not pay, no referral is due, and you will hear that from us directly rather than working it out from silence.

Do you offer white label or reseller arrangements?

No, and it is not a matter of tier or volume. Under a white label arrangement the partner sets expectations we were never part of, commits to timelines we never saw, and then passes the support burden to us without passing over the relationship that makes support possible. When an integration breaks at four in the afternoon, the person the client rings needs to be able to see what happened and speak to it honestly, and under a badge deal they cannot. It reliably ends with the client badly served and both suppliers annoyed. If your business model requires your own brand on the delivery, we are genuinely not the right fit, and we will say that pleasantly at the first meeting rather than let it emerge later.

What do you tell my client about where the referral came from?

Exactly what you ask us to, agreed before we make contact. Most partners want the plain version, which is that you introduced us because the client asked for something outside what you do. We will confirm the referral fee honestly if the client asks us directly, and we would encourage you to mention it yourself at the introduction so it never becomes a discovery. What we will not do is contact a business you named and be vague about who sent us, because that helps nobody and it makes you look like you were hiding something you were not.

Will you poach my client or sell services around me?

No. We do not approach your other clients on the back of one introduction, we do not add referred businesses to outbound campaigns, and we do not pitch adjacent services around you to a client you brought us. If that client comes to us directly asking about something new, we tell you before we agree to anything, and if it sits inside your patch we send them back to you. We put that commitment in writing when we agree terms with you rather than leaving it as a handshake, because the whole arrangement collapses the first time a partner has reason to doubt it.

Who makes a good referral partner, and who does not?

The best fits are marketing agencies, managed IT providers, web designers, bookkeepers and business coaches who already have trusted relationships with Australian small and mid sized businesses, get asked for AI or automation work regularly, and have no intention of building a delivery team for it. They typically send a handful of well qualified introductions a year rather than a stream of names. Poor fits are anyone wanting to resell under their own brand, anyone expecting us to fund their marketing, anyone who wants to submit a large list of contacts and call it a referral, and anyone whose main interest is the percentage rather than whether the client is helped. We would rather have six partners who each send one good introduction than sixty who send none.

What if the client I refer is already talking to you?

We tell you immediately, on the day, and the referral does not apply. That is an uncomfortable email to send and we send it anyway, because the alternative is you finding out later and reasonably concluding we took your introduction and paid nothing for it. If the earlier conversation had gone quiet and your introduction is genuinely what revived it, we will look at it on its merits and be straight with you about what we decide. The registration reply within one business day exists precisely so this gets settled before anybody has done work on the assumption of a fee.

For agencies, IT providers, web designers, bookkeepers and coaches

Referral Partner Programme: 20% of the Setup Fee, Terms in Plain English

You look after clients who keep asking for AI work you do not want to build. Introduce them to us, we scope it and deliver it, and you take twenty percent of the setup fee. The client stays yours. Nobody has to pretend they built something they did not.

This page is the whole arrangement written out: how a referral runs from the first email to the money landing, when we pay, what we tell your client about where the introduction came from, and the two or three things we will never do. It also says plainly that we do not offer white label or reseller arrangements, and why. If you want to put your own badge on the work, we are not the right supplier and this page will save you a meeting.

Book a Partner Intro Call (03) 9003 0111

Realistic ROI

20%

Of the setup fee, paid to the referring partner

Calculated on the setup or project fee we invoice, excluding GST and excluding any hardware or third party licence cost passed through at cost

Introduction only

Which is why 20% is the honest number

Higher referral rates almost always carry a delivery, scoping or first line support obligation. Ours carries none, so we publish the rate that matches the work

One introduction

Is the entire partner obligation

No portal, no minimum volume, no annual commitment, no certification course, no marketing development fund with strings on it

14 days

From our client paying to us paying you

Paid against your tax invoice once the client’s setup invoice has actually cleared, not when the deal is signed

Four Reasons the Programme Is Built This Way

Most channel programmes are designed for the vendor. This one is designed to be short enough that you can read it, and honest enough that you can predict what happens next.

The relationship stays where it already is

You spent years earning the trust that makes an introduction worth anything, and a referral should not put it at risk. We treat you as the account owner for as long as you want to be. You can sit in every call, receive copies of every document, or step back entirely after the introduction. What we will not do is quietly build a direct relationship behind you and then act surprised when you notice. If your client later asks us to work with them on something unrelated, we tell you before we say yes.

Twenty percent is a real number, not a headline

Referral rates vary widely, and the spread is not generosity, it is workload. A rate at the high end usually means the partner is presenting, scoping, managing delivery and absorbing the first line of support. Twenty percent is what a genuine introduction is worth when the introducing party does none of that. We would rather publish a number we always pay than advertise a headline rate that turns out to have four conditions attached.

Referral only, and we will say why

We do not offer a white label or reseller tier, and we are not planning to. Under a white label arrangement the partner sets expectations we never agreed to, quotes timelines we never saw, and then hands us the support load without handing over the relationship that makes support workable. When something goes wrong, and in integration work something eventually does, the person who has to explain it to the client has no visibility into what actually happened. That serves nobody. If you want your own badge on the work, we will part on good terms and we will still take your call.

We are a small consultancy and we behave like one

We are not running a channel team, a partner tier ladder or a quarterly quota conversation. That means less structure than a large vendor offers, and it also means the person you email is the person who does the work. The practical trade is that we take fewer referrals and give each one proper attention, and that we will decline a referral that is a bad fit rather than accept it to keep a pipeline number moving. A declined referral costs you nothing. A bad delivery costs you a client.

Exactly How a Referral Runs, Start to Finish

Six steps. Nothing here happens by surprise and there is no stage where the terms change.

Referral registered

1. You send the introduction

An email with the client’s name, a sentence on the problem they described, and whether you want to be copied on everything or left out of the detail. That is the whole submission. We reply within one business day confirming the referral is registered against your name, or telling you honestly that we already have an active conversation with that business, in which case the referral does not apply and we say so immediately rather than after the fact.

You approve the approach

2. We tell you before we contact them

Nothing goes to your client until you have said go. Some partners want to make the introduction themselves on a three way email, some want us to reach out cold with their name attached, and a few want us to wait a week while they finish an unrelated conversation. All of those are fine. What we will not do is contact a business you named and forget to mention who sent us.

Fit or no fit

3. Scoping call with the client

A proper conversation about what they actually need, not a pitch. A good share of the businesses referred to us are told the thing they asked for is not worth building yet, and we will tell them that in front of you. You are welcome on the call. If you would rather not sit through it, you get a short written summary afterwards covering what they need, what we recommended, and whether we expect it to proceed.

Referral recorded in writing

4. Proposal and the referral written down

If the work proceeds, the client receives a fixed price proposal with a defined scope. At that point the referral is confirmed to you in writing with the setup fee and the resulting referral amount stated, before the client signs anything. You should never have to work out what you are owed by reverse engineering an invoice, and you should never learn the number after the money has moved.

Fee paid within 14 days

5. The client pays, then we pay you

The referral fee falls due once the client’s setup invoice is paid and the funds have cleared, not when the proposal is signed. You issue a tax invoice for the agreed amount and we pay within fourteen days. If the project is staged across multiple setup invoices, the referral is paid pro rata as each one clears rather than held to the end. If the client never pays, no referral is due, and we will tell you that is what happened rather than going quiet.

Relationship intact

6. After delivery

The client is live, you still own the relationship, and we stay in the lane you set. Ongoing monthly subscription revenue does not carry a referral fee, which is deliberate: we would rather pay a clean percentage on the setup than an ongoing trail that quietly influences what we recommend to your client. If the same client later commissions a genuinely new project through you, that is a fresh referral and it is paid the same way.

How This Compares to a Typical Channel Programme

Task	Traditional	Yes AI referral	Notes
Getting started	Partner agreement, portal login, certification	An email and a short call	There is a one page agreement so both sides have something to point at, and that is the entire paperwork.
Deal registration	Submitted in a portal, approved in days	Confirmed by reply within one business day	Including an honest no if we already have that business in an active conversation.
Who talks to the client	Vendor takes over the relationship	Your call, and it can change	Sit in everything, receive summaries only, or stay out of it entirely. Reversible at any point.
Commission rate	Tiered by volume and partner status	20% of the setup fee, flat	The same rate on your first referral as your tenth. No status ladder to climb.
When you get paid	Quarterly, after reconciliation	Within 14 days of the client’s payment clearing	Against your invoice, on the amount confirmed to you in writing before the client signed.
Ongoing revenue share	Small trailing percentage, often conditional	None, and that is intentional	A trail on monthly fees creates a quiet incentive to keep a client on something they have outgrown.
White label option	Usually the top partner tier	Not offered at all	Set out plainly further down this page. It is a firm position, not a negotiating one.
If the referral does not proceed	Lead absorbed into the vendor pipeline	We tell you why and stop	A business we could not help is not quietly rolled into a nurture sequence with your name on it.

Things Worth Thinking About Before You Refer Anyone

Disclose the referral fee to your client

We think you should tell the client you receive a fee, and we will confirm it honestly if they ask us directly. There is no upside to being cagey about it, because the moment a client discovers a fee you did not mention, every recommendation you have ever made gets re examined. For most agencies and IT providers a single sentence at the point of introduction is enough. For bookkeepers, financial planners and mortgage brokers, disclosure may not be optional at all, which is the next point.

Check your own licensing and professional obligations first

Some professions in Australia have specific rules about receiving benefits for referring clients, particularly in financial services, credit, and to a lesser extent accounting and legal practice. A referral fee for an unrelated technology service is usually straightforward, but usually is not a standard we would ask you to rely on. Check your licence conditions, your professional body’s guidance and your professional indemnity policy before the first referral rather than after the first payment. We are not qualified to advise you on this and we will not pretend otherwise.

GST and the paperwork on your side

If you are registered for GST, the referral fee is a taxable supply and you invoice us accordingly. We pay against a valid tax invoice with your ABN on it, which keeps both sets of books tidy and means the payment is never sitting in a suspense account waiting for someone to work out what it was. If you are not GST registered, say so up front and we will pay the fee without GST. Either way the fee is assessable income to your business, not a rebate.

Do not quote or promise on our behalf

The fastest way to sour a referral is for the client to hear a price or a timeline from you that we then have to walk back. We understand the impulse, because a client asking "roughly what does this cost" is hard to leave hanging. The safer answer is that it depends on scope and there is a scoping conversation that establishes it. If you want a rough band to give people, ask us and we will give you one you can actually repeat, along with the conditions that move it.

Watch for a conflict with your own retainer

If you already bill the client for something that overlaps with what we would build, think about whether the referral erodes your own revenue before you send it. A marketing agency referring an AI content workflow may be handing over work it was quietly being paid for. Sometimes that is the right call because the work was a burden. Sometimes it is not. Better to notice it in advance than to discover it when the client cancels a line on your retainer.

A referral is not a guarantee we will take the work

We turn down work fairly often, usually because the business is too small for the automation to pay for itself, because the underlying data is in no state to build on, or because the thing they want cannot be done reliably yet and we would rather say so. If we decline, you get told why in enough detail that you can go back to your client with something useful. That is not us being difficult. A project that should not have been sold is worse for your relationship than no project at all.

What You Get as a Referral Partner

A written referral confirmation before the client signs

Setup fee, referral amount and payment timing, sent to you in writing at proposal stage. No reverse engineering an invoice, no discovering the number after the money has moved, no quarterly reconciliation you have to chase.

A written commitment not to sell around you

We do not approach your other clients off the back of one introduction, we do not add your client to outbound lists, and we do not pitch services around you to a business you brought us. If your client asks us for something new, you hear about it from us first.

A straight answer on whether the job is worth doing

Including when the answer is no. You can put an introduction in front of us knowing we will not sell your client something they will regret, because a bad delivery costs you far more than a referral fee is worth to us.

A polite no if you want white label

We would rather lose the partnership at the first conversation than take a badge deal and have it go wrong in month four. If reselling under your own brand is what you need, say so early and we will part on good terms and probably still refer work to each other.

From First Conversation to First Referral Fee

Five steps. The paperwork is one page and the first referral usually happens inside a fortnight.

A short call about your client base

Twenty minutes on who you look after, what they keep asking for that you cannot deliver, and whether that overlaps with what we actually do well. If there is no overlap we will say so on the call rather than string it out.

One page agreement

Referral rate, payment timing, what each side will and will not do, and how either party ends it. No exclusivity, no minimum volume, no term you have to serve out. Signed by email.

Agree how you want to be involved

Copied on everything, summaries only, or hands off after the introduction. We also agree what you would like us to say about where the referral came from, so your client hears a consistent story from both sides.

Send the first introduction

Name, one sentence on the problem, and your preference for who makes contact. We confirm registration within one business day and tell you immediately if that business is already in play with us.

Delivery, payment, then review

We scope, propose, deliver and support. Your fee is paid within fourteen days of the client’s setup invoice clearing. After the first one we have a short honest conversation about whether it worked for everybody.

FAQ

Send Us One Client and See How It Goes

Book a short call. We will tell you honestly whether your client base overlaps with what we do well, and if it does not, we will say so and you will get your twenty minutes back.