Payment Engine

ViewsBase calculates creator payouts but does not process money transfers. You use it to decide what is ready to pay, export the summary, pay creators through your existing payment method, and mark selected posts as paid.

Competitor/reference posts are excluded from payment calculations.

What Counts as Ready to Pay

A post is ready to pay only when it is:

• Internal creator content
• Finalized
• Unpaid
• Not rejected
• Backed by a frozen finalized view count
• Assigned payment terms

Active posts, Pending CPM posts, rejected posts, and competitor/reference posts do not increase the ready-to-pay total.

The Formula

For CPM deals, every video's earnings follow this formula:

earnings = min(finalized_views, cap) x CPM / 1000

• finalized_views - the payable view count locked at finalization
• cap - the maximum views that count toward earnings
• CPM - cost per mille, or price per 1,000 views

The min(finalized_views, cap) guard means creators are paid up to the cap even if the video keeps growing after it finalizes.

Worked Examples

Example 1: Under cap

• Finalized views: 320,000
• CPM: $0.50
• Cap: 500,000
• Earnings: min(320000, 500000) x 0.50 / 1000 = $160.00

Example 2: Over cap

• Finalized views: 1,200,000
• CPM: $0.50
• Cap: 500,000
• Earnings: min(1200000, 500000) x 0.50 / 1000 = $250.00

The creator gets paid for 500K views max, even though analytics can continue showing post-finalization growth.

Deal Types

When you add a creator, you set campaign-specific deal terms.

Single CPM Rate

One CPM and one cap. Use this when every accepted post from the creator uses the same rate.

Tiered CPM Rates

Multiple CPM tiers with different caps and requirements. Use this when the rate depends on audience quality, content quality, or another manual review rule.

Example:

Tier selection is manual. When a post is waiting on terms, open the post in Posts, choose the correct tier, and save. The post can then finalize with the selected CPM and cap.

Zero-Rate Creators

Owned accounts or unpaid collaborators can use a zero CPM setup. They still behave like internal creators for tracking and reporting, but they do not create payable amounts.

Finalized Views

Finalized views are the payable views.

When a post finalizes, ViewsBase freezes the finalized view count and calculates the payable amount from that frozen number. The post can continue refreshing for analytics after finalization, but later growth does not change the payable view count.

Admins and editors can finalize early when they want to lock the current payable view count before the normal counting window ends.

The Payments Tab

The Payments tab groups payment totals by creator.

Columns

The total row sums all visible creators.

Copying Payment Summaries

Use the copy action on a creator row to generate markdown for that creator's finalized unpaid posts.

The export includes:

• Creator name and handle
• Generated date
• Ready-to-pay posts
• View/cap/CPM math
• Total ready-to-pay amount

Paste it into Slack, email, a spreadsheet, Wise, PayPal notes, or your internal payment process.

Marking Posts Paid

ViewsBase does not support partial payments. Mark payment at the selected-post level:

1. In Payments, click Select for Payment on a creator
2. Review the selected finalized posts in Posts
3. Pay the creator outside ViewsBase
4. Use the bulk paid action to mark the selected posts as Paid
5. Add a payment reference if useful

Paid posts stay visible in analytics and reporting but no longer count as ready to pay.

What Payments Exclude

Payment summaries exclude:

• Competitor/reference posts
• Rejected posts
• Active posts still inside the counting window
• Pending CPM posts without selected terms
• Posts without finalized payable views

This keeps the top-level pending payment total tied to finalized unpaid creator work only.